Etch upgrade went pear-shaped
 

Hi,

I was a happy user of Debian Etch, when yesterday I thought of upgrading to lenny (actually lenny, and a bit of sid)

I can't start X now. I've got Nvidia 7600GT. I used to have
nvidia driver installed 'the debian way' then after the upgrade I couldn't start X (it said 'can't open /dev/nvidia0 - although when you ls -l /dev/ you could find nvidia0, and nvidiactl)
then I installed the drivers from the nvidia website, so now I guess
it's a bit of mix of everything. I changed to 'nv' driver to start X, but I'd like to uninstall everything connected with nvidia drivers, and install a fresh driver. So my question is: which packages am I supposed to remove and which modules to delete, which config files to modify?
Is it possible to do it like that?

thanks

http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

Note that, if you install The Debian Way, nvidia-kernel-source is not in lenny, though it is in etch and sid, so you will have to run a slightly mixed system. Also, as it says on that page, kernel 2.6.21 breaks it, so you either need another kernel or to apply the patches linked to.

No, the nvidia drivers are working just fine with 2.6.21 although I had to use the drivers from sid instead of Lenny. All you need to do is put the sid repositories in your /etc/apt/sources.list and then install the nvidia driver (after uninstalling your older driver, of course). And remember to disable the sid repos again after that or you whole system will get turned into unstable (I have some experience with that, it luckily didn't break anything but it sure was a bit of a shock when I suddenly realized what I had done). If you don't like the manual editing, you can just leave the sid repos commented in sources.list and enable/disable them ad hoc from System > Administration > Software Properties.

Thanks guys, so there's a light at the end of the tunnel?

Which packages am I supposed to uninstall first? nvidia-kernel-common, anything else?

And later on which repos exactly do I need to change to sid? all lenny's?

thanks

Here's a howto I wrote about setting up a mixed Lenny/Sid system correctly. Sid has kernel 2.6.22, so you may not need to delete anything. Just get the new Nvidia source, and build it against the new kernel.

thanks, I'll follow it.

I try to mix as little as possible. The only things I used from sid are the nvidia driver, vlc and monodevelop. The less you mix, the smaller the chance of breaking anything.

Ok, I did it, but it failed to start X because I still have some old nvidia modules:
I more or less understand what it means however have no idea what to do about it:)

Open up Synaptic, search for anything "nvidia", remove and start over.

I'm new to Nvidia (gave up on ATI a short time ago) and I managed to install at the first try following this:
http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debi...tallation.html

thanks jay73,


I've checked also some other websites, and nvidia forum. I can't find anything relevant. There's some old module somewhere conflicting with the new one. I don't know. In the past I installed this very card on a few computers many times, I've never had any problems with it, until now. Anyway...
I think I'll be coming back to etch:(
no nvidia, mplayer won't start, gnome crashes once an hour
thanks

Weird, I've got an Nvidia 7600GST - not very different, I guess. Have you checked the output of lsmod for any traces of older modules?

I mean lsmod just shows one entry of nvidia and nothing else

Is it ok? I mean the versions, and the kernel (I've got 2.6.18.4-686)
In synaptic it says
nvidia-glx 100.14.11-1
nvidia-kernel-2.6.18-4-686 100.14.11-1+2.6.18.dfsg.1-12etch2
nvidia-kernel-common 20051028+1
nvidia-kernel-source 100.14.11.-1

Oh, wait a minute. Did you update your kernel? I had the same issue at first: tried to install the drivers right after installing Lenny and it didn't work - then I suddenly noticed that the kernel had been bumped to 6.21 already. Maybe you simply need to use nv in xorg.conf, remove the old nvidia, reboot and make sure you are using the right kernel?

thanks
still have 2.6.18
Was it supposed to update to 6.21 automatically? it hasn't.
So do I now need to manually compile 6.21?

It didn't update? Are you sure that you upgraded your sources.list to Lenny? I had the updater popping up a message literally within seconds after first booting into Lenny.