So my slackware box was running perfectly fine until I just tried to boot it up. I recently bought a new house and after plugging it in at the new house and booting up I get this error when I try to start x...what did I do?

Fatal: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp/modules.dep : No such file or directory
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration
Fatal Server error:
No screens found
giving up

xinit: Connection reset by peer(errno104): unable to connect to X server
xinit: no such process (errno3): server error


Did something happen to my box in the move or was this something I did previous to moving it? and if it is what did I do? lol I have windows vista dual booted on here just as a back up because my laptop is still at the other house and vista is running fine...

Probably the latter.

As root, try running depmod -a.

Good question! I don't know, I wasn't a fly on the wall in your house to watch you. Were you playing around with compiling a new kernel? Or installing a new version of the nvidia kernel module and driver?

I'm guessing here, but did you compile or install a new kernel without recompiling the nvidia driver ? This would likely result in what you posted.

So I haven't messed with my kernel at all other then once when I changed it to get my usb drivers working. And everything was running fine up until I tried to boot it up today. When I ran depmod I got:

Fatal: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp/modules.dep : No such file or directory

Whats missing? This is over my head

At a command line type:

uname -r

Then look in /lib/modules to verify you have a directory of the same name.

Based upon your error message, uname -r should show:

2.6.21.5-smp

You should have a directory named /lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp.

Just to make sure, you have to run depmod -a as root.

Maybe your box got a bump in the move that dinged the head into the disk where that file is located?

In any event, what is the output of I am wondering if you have more than one drive that has to be mounted, maybe disconnected - though that makse little sense because it boots...

So next, what is the output of That will tell us if the file is there or not and maybe a few other things...

So I think I figured out what the problem is, the NVIDIA driver is looking for version 2.6.21.5 and the one located in /lib/modules/ is 2.6.24.5...

and depmod comes back looking for .21 and not finding it. How do I tell everything I'm using a different version? Or is there something else I need to do?

What does ...show, as Woodsman asked?

The /lib/modules/2.6.24.5... is not just the 'driver' version so much as it is the kernel version, so what kernel are you actually using? If you are runnig 2.6.24.5 (Slackware 12.1) then we need to ask why it is trying to load modules for a different kernel...

uname -r brings back 2.6.21.5-smp

Seems that you have updated your kernel modules to 2.6.24.5, but the kernel is still 2.6.21.5 for which the nVidia driver was compiled.

What version of glibc do you have installed?

You can upgrade to the 2.6.24.5 kernel and kernel headers, then recompile the nVidia driver to suit, if you have the appropriate glibc installed. (Note that glibc changed between 2.6.21.5 and 2.6.24.5(glibc-2.7)).

Otherwise it may be better to uninstall the 2.6.24.5 kernel modules and reinstall the 2.6.21.5 kernel modules.

The easiest solution would be to just reinstall the nVidia drivers. However, if `uname -a` really returns just 2.6.21.5 with no mention of SMP, then the nVidia kernel module may not compile (the Slackware kernel sources are configured for the -smp kernels. You should probably be running an -smp kernel anyway unless your hardware is really old or strange, but if you insist on running a non-SMP kernel you would have to follow the instructions from README.TXT here for Slackware 12.1 or here for 12.0 to patch the sources for the non-SMP kernels to allow you to build the nVidia kernel module). What version of Slackware are you running, by the way? Clearly you had 12.0 installed at some point. Did you upgrade to 12.1 or are you still running 12.0?

Regardless, you will have to rebuild the nVidia drivers. Please don't try to upgrade your kernel headers/glibc as allend suggested -- although in theory this could work, you should really only upgrade your glibc/kernel headers when you are upgrading the entire system (unless you know what you're doing).

Do you have the 2.6.24.5 kernel installed? Look in /boot.

If you have 2.6.24.5 kernel modules installed then you likely installed the 2.6.24.5 kernel too. But you might have forgotten to update the boot loader menu option to point to the newer kernel. Therefore your boot loader loads the 2.6.21.5 kernel.

Get the kernel/modules issue resolved, then reinstall the nvidia module and drivers. The slackbuild.org build script works fine. I just updated from 177.80 to 177.82 yesterday using those scripts.

As a interim move, consider also installing the stock nv driver. Then maintain two xorg.cong files. When you have problems with nvidia, you can quickly copy xorg.conf.nv to xorg.conf and have a way into X and use your graphical browser. Look here for a mini-mini-howto.

I did not suggest a glibc upgrade. I want to find out the status of this system. Is it a 12.0 install that has had some 12.1 packages installed, or is it a 12.1 system that has had some 12.0 packages installed?

What is the output of 'ls /var/log/packages | grep glibc' and 'ls /var/log/packages | grep kernel'?

Knowing this is required so that the system is either reverted to 12.0 or correctly upgraded to 12.1.

Hey sorry about the slow reply, I just sat back down at the computer, moving sucks lol. But before I do anything its a 12.1 install and the only change to the kernel that I made was what ever the script below does:

Also its 2.6.21.5-smp I didnt think about it, im having to turn off this box and switch to linux then power back down and switch to windows.

It looks like I only have 2.5.21.5 installed, how do I go about re-installing 2.6.24.5? (that's what comes standard with 12.1 right?)