[linux-help] Re: Drivers?

[Nate Bargmann <n0nb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

* John Heffington <john1982@xxxxxxx> [2002 Jul 16 12:11 -0500]:
> How does one install a driver for a piece of hardware (Video Card)? I had the 
> driver for my card, but not figure out how to install it. Especially since S3 
> required you to save the web page as a *tgz file instead of downloading it.

Well, that depends (nice concise answer, huh).  In this case I assume
you're talking about a vendor supplied driver for XFree86.  If so, then
you need to know whether it is for XFree 4.X.  If so, then you'll want
to place the driver file in a specific directory.  On my Debian system
it would be put in:

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers

as that is where all the video drivers reside.  On my system the driver
file is named:

nv_drv.o

For my Nvidia GeForce 2 adaptor.

Then your X configuration will need to be changed.  On my system the
file is located at:

/etc/X11

and is named:

XF86Config-4

Now, the relevent portion of this file will look something like this:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Abit GeForce2 MX200"
    Driver      "nv"
EndSection

Notice how the drive is named only by the characters up to the
underscore.  This is important.  Also, notice that I have the bare
minimum in my video device section as the X server probes the hardware
and takes care of the details at run time.

Hope this is of some help.

- Nate >>

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