How-to install legacy driver Nvidia driver on your old PC.

How-to  install legacy driver Nvidia driver on your old PC.

 
My PC is 8 years old has a AMD dual core processor and Nvidia graphics chipset.



I still remember during 1999, i used to go and get a Nvidia card to get the Xserver working in many PC's at that time as it was supported out of the box.
15 years later things have changed Nvidia drivers are not part of the disto :-).

You will be able to install Linux but soon you may encounter issues related to display similar to one i got 

"nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:01:00.0] MMIO read of 0x00000000 FAULT at 0x610260 [ IBUS ]"

There is a solution, you don't have buy new graphics card or throw away your old PC.



1) find out what Nvidia VGA card you have and what is the recommended driver.

ramya rammi # nvidia-detect
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] [10de:03d0] (rev a2)
Your card is only supported up to the 304 legacy drivers series.
It is recommended to install the
    nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver
package.
If you don't have nvidia-detect, you can install it using apt-get install nvidia-detect

2) Since Nvidia chose to release only binaries instead of source, many Linux distributions don't include the drivers provided by Nvidia any more.

Most Distro's comes with nouveau driver for Nvidia, but in my PC this driver used to cause freeze and kernel panic.

3) Now you know you need to install nvidia 304xx drivers to get the xserver running on your old PC.

Remove all the NVidia drivers you have in the PC

# dpkg -l|grep -i nvidia

# apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*

Make sure no drivers left to be removed , i wasn't able to remove glx-alternative package 
but it did not cause any issue.

4) Install following packages 


 # apt install nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-dkms nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver build-essential nvidia-settings-legacy-304xx nvidia-xconfig

 You may see messages on console like nvidia is the driver currently used but a reboot will fix it!!

Now after all package installation , configure xorg.conf under /etx/X11/xorg.conf
Easiest way to do it is to ...

# nvidia-xconfig

# reboot

Enjoy panic free Linux Mint :-)




Wireless setup for Mediatek USB adapter in Linux Mint Debian Edition.(LMDE)

Rusty UNIX/Linux Howto on Mediatek (ra0) wireless USB adaptor configuration.

Note: Please read the document carefully and donot skip any step,I don't own any responsibility of the result of the how-to

Usb wireless adapter: MT 7601U

Operation system: Linux Mint Debian edition

Things I've done:
1) download driver from http://www.ralinktech.com or like use like, I used the drives provided with the Wayona Mini USB adapter.

When i checked the /var/log/syslog I found I have Meiadtek 7601U chipset.

2) copy  linux folder and unzip to /home/rammi/Downloads/linux 

#)bunzip2 DPA_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130916.tar.bz2

#)tar xvf DPA_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130916.tar

#)cd DPA_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130916

3) vi /home/rammi/Downloads/linux/DPA_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130916config.mk
Change the following attributes from “no (=n)” to "y"

# Support Wpa_Supplicant
HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=n

# Support Native WpaSupplicant for Network Maganger
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n

… to value “yes (=y)”:

# Support Wpa_Supplicant
HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y

# Support Native WpaSupplicant for Network Maganger
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y

Save and come out of vi

4) make

5) ./load

after this step you should be able to see device ra0 with some ipadress and in UP state.

 

#) iwlist ra0 scanning

ra0       Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: D0:7A:B5:4B:D9:D1
                    Protocol:11b/g/n BW20
                    ESSID:"DAPPI-WAN"
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality=23/100  Signal level=-81 dBm  Noise level=-88 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:72 Mb/s
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
                    IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
                    IE: Unknown: DE0050F204104A000110104400010210497342550372A0001201054000800060050F20400011011000842726F6164636F6D

You should be able to see your AP name in the scan output.

6) cat the load file

rammi@ramya ~/Downloads/linux/DPA_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130916 $ cat load
dmesg -c
insmod UTIL/os/linux/mtutil7601Usta.ko
insmod MODULE/os/linux/mt7601Usta.ko
insmod NETIF/os/linux/mtnet7601Usta.ko
ifconfig ra0 10.0.0.100

Copy above listed files to /lib/modules/<your kernel version>/kernel/

7) update /etc/module

etc/modules
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
# Parameters can be specified after the module name.
mtutil7601Usta
mt7601Usta
mtnet7601Usta

8) depmod to create the kernel dependency

9) make sure your Internet AP has WPA/WPA2 key management option enabled.

10) setup wpa_supplicant 

wpa_passphrase <password> >> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf 

 

11) wpa_supplicant conf shopuld look like this 

/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf 

 

network={
ssid="DAPPI_WAN"
#psk="mumma21mia"
psk=b812d469c4d5e72baf96362301b55f33c8675a5dd912b1da56b255c388cf45677

}

12) #  wpa_supplicant -i ra0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf  &

 

13) you should be able to see wireless network connected to your AP in the systray-->Network settings

I had to spend almost 5-7 hours to search and get all details, following this how-to may take 30 minutes.