Now then, this is just plain damn strange as far as I am concerned.

I have an NVidia FX 5200 Card and am running Novell Linux Desktop (essentially Suse 9.2)

After building I did my usual and brought the system up in runlevel 3 and did:

'sh NVIDIA_blah_blah_blah.run'

and let it compile a new kernel module followed by:

'sax2 -m 0=nvidia'

then a quick:

'startx'

All looks good, graphics are crisp and sharp and all working.

So, now would be a good time to try init 5 yes?

No.

Init 5 makes X respawn 6 times before getting the error message that it will try again in 2 minutes.

Now WHY ON EARTH would startx work but Init 5 wouldn't? After all XF86Config is XF86Config is XF86Config is it not?

Any help much appreciated!!

something is wrong with your dm (xdm, entrance, kdm, gdm). What dm are you using?

I'm using gdm

I found this in /var/log/messages:

Nov 23 16:15:32 emapc001 kernel: nvidia: no version for "struct_module" found: kernel tainted.
Nov 23 16:15:32 emapc001 kernel: nvidia: unsupported module, tainting kernel.
Nov 23 16:15:32 emapc001 kernel: nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.

But have no idea what that means, and don't know whether it's relevent.

1) do lsmod. if nvidia or something with nvidia in it isnt there, chances are thats your problem. look at modprobe docs for information on modules that taint the kernel. thats not the problem, though, I dont think, as most modprobes load anyway =]. So try this:

2) Recompile gdm, use a different dm, or
3) dont use a dm at all =], or
4) ask somebody who actually has an nvidia card =D

has suse moved to Udev like Fedora? because I had this same problem, and how it was solved was by copying the nvidia modules into udev as well.

I had this same issue, for some odd reason after the first time you run in init 5 you must reinsert the nvidia module. Just do modprobe nvidia one time and you won't have this problem again.

Ok...

I came up in runlevel 3, did lsmod |grep nv and there was no nvidia module, so did a modprobe nvidia followed my lsmod |grep nv and there it was. Then did init 5 and still got the same problem. Tried doing the modprobe nvidia whilst in runlevel 5 and then tried again with still no joy.

Is this along the right lines??

I guess next I should try the Udev suggestion but I don't understand that? Could you explain a little more please?

Many thanks for your help so far!

Gaz.

I had a problem with sax2 bombing out after the install - saying there was no screen available.

To fix this, after the install I did

modprobe nvidia

sax2 -m 0=nvidia

Once everything was set up right here, I did

depmod

startx

nVidia logo came up and everything was cool!

Hmmm, but if you read my first post, startx WORKS fine, looks beautiful, it's just init 5 that doesn't?!

Further investigation shows that an 'lsmod |grep nv' during startx shows the nvidia module with 10 in use.

If I do the same command after an init 5, it shows 0 in use.

there should be some kind of module autoload file, dunno where it is in SuSE, but stick it in there, and try again...