Bitcoin-qt quantal

Following the adventures in OS setup from last time, here is a step-by-step guide to make Ubuntu 12.04 play nice on a nvidia card setup:

1. Plug your screen on the sockets associated to the nvidia card.
2. Get into the BIOS -> chipset -> Display configuration -> Initiate graphic adapter. Set it to PEG/PCIEx4
3. Boot the ubuntu 12.04 installation disk or usb key
4. Install the system normally.
5. reboot into the new system
6. Login. Open a terminal. Ignore any popup, and close any software manager emerging. Do

   sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-quantal linux-headers-generic-lts-quantal

7. Tea break. When the three commands are completed, reboot.
8. Back into the system. Open a terminal
9. Go into System settings -> Additional drivers. Select and activate the “version current” of the NVIDIA driver.
10. Do not reboot. Instead, open a terminal, do

    cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

    If it contains something like

    Section "Device" Identifier "Default Device" Option "NoLogo" "True" Endsection

    this is wrong, and you have to issue the following command

    sudo nvidia-xconfig

    Disregard any VALIDATION ERROR messages. Check if the new xorg.conf file contains (among a lot of other things) something like this

    Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" Endsection

11. Reboot.
12. Now you are using the Nvidia drivers. Test them with the following from a terminal

    sudo apt-get install mesa-utils glxgears

    You should get a nice spinning gearset. Close the glxgears window

13. Edit the /etc/rc.local as root with the following command

    sudo vi /etc/rc.local

    and add the following line before the “exit 0″

    /usr/bin/nvidia-smi -pm 1

14. Reboot. You are done.

The magic line nvidia-smi -pm 1 deserves some explanation. The problem with the corrupted screen and inability to get back to lightdm once logged out is due to the fact that X releases the nvidia driver. with -pm 1 you force the module to be persistent and not be unloaded, The reason why X did not start is probably due to a race condition between the instantiation of the driver and the access of the new X session started by lightdm after logout.