nVidia Display driver can't determine kernel version
 

Hi

I have openSUSE 10.2 on my i386 PC. I can't install nvidia display driver on my system and it prompts me that it can determine my kernel version.

before this , it prompted me that it can't find my kernel but with "--kernel-source-path" I fixed this problem but but the upper problem occured.

what I must do?

The kernel version will be confirmed if you open a terminal/konsole and do the command For the nvidia driver to install, the system also needs to have the kernel-sources/kernel-headers. I don't know which SuSE call them.

I'm guessing, that if you google for suseforums, theres a couple that might give you some direction - I seem to recall that theres actually an easy way of installing the nvidia driver using YaST - but as it's been a long time since I used any SuSE version I don't recall how this is done.

But, I seem to recall that if you have a look at nvidia.com's linux drivers pages, there used to be a nice additional note about installing it under SuSE.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but thats all from memory.

regards

John

p.s. Oh or there might be something at the distributions (SuSE) forum here at LQ ???

It writes :

Unable to determine the version of the kernel sources located in
'/lib/modules/2.6.18.2-34-default/source'. Please make sure you have
installed the kernel source files for your kernel and that they are
properly configured; on Red Hat Linux systems, for example, be sure
you have the 'kernel-source' RPM installed. If you know the correct
kernel source files are installed, you may specify the kernel source
path with the '--kernel-source-path' command line option.

Before using --kernel-source-path

And after that writes :

ERROR: Unable to determine the version of the kernel sources located in
'/usr/src/linux-2.6.18.2-34'. Please make sure you have installed
the kernel source files for your kernel and that they are properly
configured; on Red Hat Linux systems, for example, be sure you have
the 'kernel-source' RPM installed. If you know the correct kernel
source files are installed, you may specify the kernel source path
with the '--kernel-source-path' command line option.

what I must do?

I think??? it's telling you to install the kernel-source files. Not certain though.

regards

John

The NVIDIA installer compiles the kernel interface it needs to create the driver. This has similar package demands to that of a installation using source code. Although you may not need them all, I recommend using YaST to install the following standard packages used for this work. After doing so, the installation of the NVIDIA driver should proceed normally:

kernel-source (the SUSE 10.2 source code)
binutils (GNU binary utilities)
gcc (the GNU C Compiler)
gcc-c++ (the GNU C++ Compiler)
glibc-devel (development libraries for the C compiler)
make (the GNU make command)

First :
I have installed all of them but I still have problem.

Second :
With Suse 9.2 and 10 I didn't have any problem with installing of nVidia display driver , but this problem is with openSUSE 10.2.

Can anybody help me?

9.3 and 10.0 included proprietary drivers as part of the distribution. Starting with openSUSE 10.1, Novell no longer included proprietary software, although several proprietary video driver RPMs were available from an "extras" CD or a separate repository. Although I do not know the details, starting with 10.1, the video driver RPMs available for SUSE have been poor performers and the only viable alternative is to download the .run file from NVIDIA and use the command line (shell) install. The result is a superior driver, but one that only works with the specific the kernel you are using. For example, if you patched the kernel, you need to reinstall the drivers since the kernel interface you created originally will no longer work with the (now changed) patched kernel.

So what do you do? Hard to say. I have installed the current NVIDIA driver (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9755-pkg1.run for my 32-bit systems) multiple times on different machines and it seems to work fine if the appropriate packages are present. Therefore, I can only suggest that you carefully review the process and make sure you have not missed any steps.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html