Fight for the Internet 1!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Nvidia-settings parse fail with xorg.conf

There is a bug in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic with the default /etc/X11/xorg.conf involving Nvidia. If you try running 'kdesu nvidia-settings' or 'gksu nvidia-settings', then try to save with "Save to x confguration file" button, but receive the error:
Failed to parse existing X config file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'
I found the problem by running:
sudo nvidia-settings 2>/dev/null

VALIDATION ERROR: Data incomplete in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
Undefined Device "(null)" referenced by Screen "Default Screen".

Erreur de segmentation
My default /etc/X11/xorg.conf looks like this:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection
To fix the problem, just remove the Section "Screen" part. IF YOU NEED HELP EDITING CONFIGURATION FILES UNDER LINUX, please see this link: http://awesomelinux.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-edit-configuration-file.html

The final version (before you edit it with the nvidia-settings program) should look like this:
Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Default Device"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection