Fedora 12 nVidia woes

Fedora 12 has been the best install in my time of using Redhat/Fedora (RH5.2, RH6.x, RH7.x, RH8.x, RH9, FC1, FC2, FC3, FC5, FC6, F9, F11, and now F12). I started early with Fedora 12 Beta, actually, and have installed the released F12 on a number of systems since.

My home MythDora 10.21 MythTV system was showing its age (based on Fedora 10, which is no longer supported). I decided it was time to upgrade to F12.

I did my due diligence, backed everything up, and the did a fresh F12 install. Basic install was great, yum update to the latest kernel and whatnot, rebooted, and then on to getting the nVidia 3D graphics working to replace the OSS 2D nouveau drivers. Just a lil' snag.

I followed the nVidia via yum using kmod method as I've done before.

Starting with the basics, here's the onboard nVidia card:
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51 [GeForce 6150 LE] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a34
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at fb000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 80000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidia, nouveau, nvidiafb


/var/log/messages wasn't too helpful:
Dec 26 18:34:24 localhost gdm-binary[2093]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.078026 seconds
Dec 26 18:34:24 localhost gdm-binary[2093]: WARNING: GdmLocalDisplayFactory: maximum number of X display failures reached: check X server log for errors
Dec 26 18:34:24 localhost init: prefdm main process (2093) terminated with status 1
Dec 26 18:34:24 localhost init: prefdm main process ended, respawning
Dec 26 18:34:24 localhost init: prefdm respawning too fast, stopped


/var/log/Xorg.0.log was equally vague:
(EE) Dec 26 18:34:24 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device PCI:0:5:0.
(EE) Dec 26 18:34:24 NVIDIA(0): Please check your system's kernel log for additional error
(EE) Dec 26 18:34:24 NVIDIA(0): messages and refer to Chapter 8: Common Problems in the
(EE) Dec 26 18:34:24 NVIDIA(0): README for additional information.
(EE) Dec 26 18:34:24 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device!


dmesg had some info that actually helped solve things:
vmap allocation for size 16781312 failed: use vmalloc= to increase size.
NVRM: failed to map registers!!
NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x10:0x32:1394)
NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed

nvidia-config-display disable and nvidia-config-display enable core dumped as well.

fenris02 in #fedora on Freenode IRC suggested this url:
Common_F11_bugs#nvidia-vmalloc

This didn't solve my problem. However, after trying other suggestions, and nearly ready to give up, I circled back to this after someone asked me how much memory the video card had. The system still had Windows XP MCE on a minimized partition. I dual-booted to this and found that it was using 256mb of RAM.

On a hunch, I increased vmalloc=128MB to vmalloc=256MB in /etc/grub.conf at the end of the kernel line (see the nvidia-vmalloc link above). I rebooted, and X loaded. Hurrah!