NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Issues related to hardware problems
Post Reply
slwelch33
Posts: 10
Joined: 2013/08/12 08:00:19

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by slwelch33 » 2014/09/21 10:24:35

I'm having a problem with a new video card and the CentOS install.
I have a Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 Motherboard and had a ASUS GeForce GT 610 video card installed and everything was fine.
This computer is a "play with" with hot swap SATA carriers installed and I have multiple OS's on seperate disks including:
Windows 8.1 Pro
Centos 6.5
Centos 7.0
Fedora 2.0
All of the above work fine with the GT 610 video card and the default video drivers (nouveau)
I just purchased a new Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 video card and none of the linux installs boot with anything visible.
The Windows 8.1 boots fine (I have the latest Nvidia drivers installed (Nvidia 344.11)
I did re-enable the onboard video port (Intel HD Graphics) and attached another monitor and the only thing that I can get any information on is the CentOS 7.0 LiveCD booting up fails with information indicating that the nauveau EI DEVICE [000:01:00.0] Unknown Chipset 0x117010a2.
If I try to do a fresh install, booting from the CentOS 7.0 install DVD it fails, and if I try to boot one of the previously installed disks, they fail also.
I have another computer with Windows 7 Pro with the same video card and it works perfectly.

Does anybody have any information that might help me get the linux OS's working with this video card?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve

jsalpha2
Posts: 9
Joined: 2014/09/14 20:33:06

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by jsalpha2 » 2014/09/23 05:41:16

Your new video card is based on new NVIDIA Maxwell architecture and Linux drivers are hard to find and install.
Look here http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverRe ... 7844/en-us
You will probably have to read up on how to install the driver manually. I would guess Fedora will have the driver in their repo soon, Centos will take longer.

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by TrevorH » 2014/09/23 08:51:59

The GTX750 is not a Maxwell card and has been around for some time and is supported by nvidia drivers newer than 334. ELRepo have kmod-nvidia 340 drivers so that would be the best choice since they survive a kernel update where the binary download from nvidia does not.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

slwelch33
Posts: 10
Joined: 2013/08/12 08:00:19

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by slwelch33 » 2014/09/24 10:06:54

I see that ELRepo does indeed have the kmod-nvidia-340.32 driver.
My main problem is that with the GTX card installed, CentOS will NOT boot up with anything visible on the screen (either the GTX 750 or the on-board intel port).
Nothing I do gets me anything visible on the main screen (Alt-Fx, Alt-Ctl-Fx) and I'm having a really hard time getting rid of the nouveau drivers.
I did have some success with Fedora 20 and the GT-610 card and the nvidia-304 drivers, but I can't find anything above that. (the 304 drivers do not support the GTX 750)
I currently have a GT 610 card installed and will attempt to install the nvidia 340 drivers and then swap out to the GTX 750 to see what happens.
I will post the results of this test and let you know.
Thanks,
Steve

BTW, attempts to install fresh from the DVD with the GTX 750 card installed, fail every time, nothing at all visible.
I will attempt to install from DVD with the monitor connected to the on-board intel video and see what happens.
Last edited by slwelch33 on 2014/09/24 11:09:02, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by TrevorH » 2014/09/24 10:22:01

The ELRepo drivers do it all for you. They blacklist nouveau and just work (mostly!)
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

slwelch33
Posts: 10
Joined: 2013/08/12 08:00:19

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by slwelch33 » 2014/09/24 12:14:58

SUCCESS! (at least for the most part)
After installing kmod-nvidia which installed:
kmod-nvidia-340.32-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64
and
nvidia-x11-drv-340.32-2.el7.elrepo.x86_64
and rebooting, lsmod now shows nvidia drivers but no nouveau presence.
Shutdown, remove GT 610, install GTX 750 and boot:
System booted up properly, Applications-Other-Nvidia X Server Settings shows:
GPU 0 - GeForce GTX 750
/etc/default/grub now shows the addition of
nouveau.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau
at the end of GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= line.
No files added or edited in /etc/modprobe.d at all.

It does appear that the nouveau drivers for CentOS 7.0 (current build) do NOT support the GTX 750 card whatsoever, it is not even possible to do an install from the DVD.
I WILL attempt a kickstart install with the addition of the nvidia drivers in the %Post section after enabling the ELRepo repository and see if it works - I will post results after I do this.

One final point here, this DOES seem to be a real 'clunky' work-around to get the GTX 750 card enabled, hopefully, the CentOS 7.1 release will have the nouveau drivers updated to handle this card properly.

TrevorH, Thanks for the info and help on this.

Steve

jsalpha2
Posts: 9
Joined: 2014/09/14 20:33:06

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by jsalpha2 » 2014/09/24 12:41:41

TrevorH Thanks for correcting me. I've been looking at purchasing this card, but wanted to make sure it works ok in Linux.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by TrevorH » 2014/09/24 14:29:50

Actually you are right: the GTX750 _is_ a Maxwell card, it's just that nvidia released Maxwell 1 and then Maxwell 2 which came out just last week.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

slwelch33
Posts: 10
Joined: 2013/08/12 08:00:19

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by slwelch33 » 2014/09/26 18:57:20

Final post from me on this card.
I attempted a kickstart install (with the 'text' Command section option added) on the machine with the GTX 750 card (Attempted Fedora 20) but after the initial boot screen and the adding of the ks instruction, again, NOTHING on the screen at all. I didn't even attempt the same for CentOS as I'm sure that the results would be the same.
The only way that it appears to be workable is to use another nvidia card (I used GT 610), make sure that the ELRepo repository is enabled and install:
yum install kmod-nvidia
Which will install both kmod-nvidia-340.32-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64 and nvidia-x11-drv-340.32-2.el7.elrepo.x86_64 and any other dependencies.
Once those drivers are install, shut down the machine, remove the GT 610 card, install the GTX 750 card and reboot.
All should be good after that (I'm still waiting for the first kernel upgrade to see how to get past that as I see dire warnings about the kmod driver issues!!)

Hopefully, by the time CentOS 7.1 is released, the nouveau people will have a driver which will handle this card and all this fuss can go away:-)

Thanks again for all the help.
Steve

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 boot/install failure

Post by TrevorH » 2014/09/26 19:42:15

You can do a vnc install and then boot in runlevel 3 and install ELRepo and kmod-nvidia
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

Post Reply