NVidia .run files not working anymore(NFORCE and video)

[tom61]

I've been trying to resolve a sound issue with the onboard sound (NForce2 with MCP+ southbridge) most of today, by tryingout different kernel options. I had a fully working system with both ALSA and OSS sound as modules, but this had troubles with more than one sound playing at a time, or serveral seconds after a sound made by ARtS (such as KDE start up) another program couldn't use the sound.

I set up 2 compiles of 2.6.9 (official kernel.org sources); one with only OSS for sound, one with ALSA and drivers for NForce compiled in. I set the System.map symlink to to the OSS version, and boot the entry I added to grub. X can't come up for the obvious reason that I have Xorg setup to use the NVidia accelerated drivers. I run the NVIDIA[blah].run file, no troubles what so ever. Next I run NFORCE[blah].run, no troubles there either. I attempt to boot KDE, but ARtS tells me (many times) that it can't initialize sound, so I Ctrl-Backspace and drop to the GDM chooser. Start up Gnone, no troubles. Audio works, but there's a horrible screeching sound when I play ut2004. I remap the symlink for System.map to the ALSA-only kernel and reboot.

This where things go awary. I choose the ALSA kernel from grub. Xorg doesn't start for the same reason as above. I go through the menus, and get to the point where it should compile the kernel module. It fails saying it doesn't know where the kernel source is. I start it again with the option telling it where the kernel source is (/usr/src/linux), it errors out at the same place telling me if I made a special directory for configs or modules or something to tell it about it. I have no idea what it's talking about, so I I set the System.map symlink back to the old ALSA + OSS System.map.

ALSA+OSS kernel fires up fine, the NVidia logo comes up (meaning accelerated Xorg works) and I login. ARtS complains once with what looks like it noticing that it failed last time. No sound, and more importantly, no network. With this compile I forgot to add network cards to the kernel, but the NForce driver has what is needed. So, I attempt to run the NFORCE[blah].run, and get the same error as the NVIDIA video installer! Sorry that I didn't take down what the error said exactly, and I don't really want to run it again in fear of it messing up what I have now.

[needless info, but part of the story]I figured that everything 2.6.9 was messed up at this point, so I set the System.map symlink to a 2.6.8 kernel, and changed the /usr/src/linux link accordingly. Reboot, XFree errors out, since it doesn't know about the newer version of the NVidia drivers. I pretty much give up and shut down the computer. I remember that 2.6.9 OSS only kernel was the last known good kernel, so I turn the computer back on, and somehow I set everything back correctly to use the OSS kernel, which I'm posting from now, with sound and network.[/needless info]

What can I do to get the NVidia drivers back working on the ALSA+OSS kernel? Anybody with a NForce2 board with MCP+ southbridge care to comment if you've gotten the sound working fully?

I'm really, really, really tired of playing with the kernel right now, so I don't want to mess with installing a new soundcard. That is because I have no idea what sound drivers I had as modules or compiled into the ALSA kernel (which should have network compilied in) or ALSA + OSS kernel (which lacks network anyway), and the OSS kernel has no sound card support as modules or compilied in.

Edit:
I'm just having barrels of fun. Tried to emerge nforce-audio on the OSS kernel, to get KDE's sound working. Results:

[tom61]

KDE is now working with the OSS kernel, at least that's good news. UT2004 still sounds like crap. Playing around with ~/.openalrc didn't help, nor did symbolically linking the openal lib compilied by system. Looks like that only helps with ALSA based systems

Tryed to emerge nvidia-glx with with ALSA kernel, it failed:

[tom61]

Looks like something went wrong with the source directory, I copied it over to the new install (Vida Linux 1.1 sucks, BTW) and initrd couldn't build an image, and there was no .config file for some reason.

I'm going to re-extract the source and see if I can salvage this installation.