Nvidia annoyances

After the latest kernel upgrade from Ubuntu, my nvidia card drivers suddenly stopped working and I was back to native 640x480 and couldnt get out. Why? BEcause at 640x480 the "Screen resolution" window height is larger than the viewport!
I had to use the tab controls and "guess" which button would be "Apply". Hooray for brain dead GUI errors.

After setting resolution to a respectable 1024x768, I googled to get the envy package to get my nvidia fix. Envy worked like a charm installing the nvidia drivers... But then I realized that none of my applications could detect the nvidia drivers.

Since I wasnt intent on playing games at that time, I let the issue rest for almost 2 weeks.. During that time, VmWare Workstation refused to permit direct3d rendering in any guest. This in itself didnt matter much - I typically prefer to RDP / VNC into the guest anyways.

Today however, I had the urge to play UT and it crashed saying no display device (!).

After reinstalling various flavors of nvidia drivers, I eventually stumbled upon the realization that glxgears complained about not being able to open /dev/nvidiactl unless it was run as root.

It turned out to be a f***ing permissions issue.

Long story short, on the next Ubuntu kernel upgrade that breaks the nvidia drivers, reinstall nvidia driver, dont bother with EnvyNG and make sure you "chmod g+r,g+w,a+r,a+w /dev/nvidiactl".

... and then bask in the awesomeness of your Nvidia card and the hackety hack that brought it back to life!