On Wed, 5 Aug 2009, David Nelson wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>        Thanks for the helpful suggestions.
>
> - I MD5 checked both copies (!) of the DVD that I downloaded to my
>   laptop and neither was correct, and both were different. I downloaded
>   it to a separate (windows XP) computer, burned it from there and
>   tested the media (successfully). It's now installed and (sort of!)
>   working. (Thanks Renato, I'm getting back into the Linux way of things
>   - after a year of no Linux I now have two boxes to play with, one at
>   home one in the office - and I completely forgot about MD5).
>
> (Sorry for all the questions, documentation seems thin)
>
> - Are nVidia drivers supplied or ought I to source them independently?
>   Due to the network policies I won't have an IP address and hence
>   internet connectivity on the box for a few days so installing them off
>   the disk would be ideal. (1280x720 on a 22in 1680x1050 monitor looks
>   like arse)

The 'nv' driver (included with Xorg) works for us with the Quadro 295 
though without hardware acceleration.  The nvidia (proprietry) drivers are 
available in the contrib area though if you want newer CUDA support you 
need something newer (not relevant on the Quadro 295 I think...)

Look in the disribution tree at 53/x86_64/contrib/video/ the one you want 
for newer Nvidia cards is the nvidia-x11-drv ie 
nvidia-x11-drv-180.22-1.0.x86_64.rpm should be fine for the Quadro 295.

These use the dkms magic to build the kernel modules whenerver the kernel 
is updated.

I can provide rpms of 185.18.14 if anyone wants them (we are just testing 
them for the CUDA 2.2 stuff atm)...

> - It's crashed on me three times (complete hard lock, unresponsive
>   numlock/capslock) each time when opening the system monitor, possibly
>   due to it trying to track 16 CPUs? I've disabled HT for now and the
>   problem seems to have gone away.

Have you upgraded to the latest kernel?  I seem to remember that some of 
the recent updates may be relevant...

> - We would have bought it with RHEL but (a) it was indeed cheaper with
>   XP64 AND Vista 64 bit and (b) we want to run XP64 or Vista64 in a VM
>   at some point. The main application of the box is DFT with Spartan 08
>   but we'll be using the odd bit of (decidedly less CPU intensive)
>   Windows-only software such as Berkeley Madonna.

I keep meaning to ask someone who understands MS licencing if that is 
actually ok.  I worry that they may claim that the outer machine is 
licenced for windows but not the vm - and OEM licences can't be 
transferred... :-(

> - If there is any way I can contribute back to the project please let me
>   know, I'm not a programmer in any way/size/shape/form but even if I
>   can help with a little documentation I'd be happy to.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> --
> David J. Nelson, J. M. Percy Research Group, WestCHEM
> Department of Pure & Applied Chemistry, The University of Strathclyde
> 295 Cathedral Street, Glasgow, G1 1XL

  -- Jon