Installing nvidia driver for new kernel ?[Solved]
 

The other day, I came home from work, to find the installer icon telling me that there was 29 updates/upgrades available.

Great, so I install them. One of which, was a new kernel version - 2.6.15-25-386. So with what I thought was everything installed/updated/upgrade etc, that I was ready to go.

Wrong.

If I just let the system boot itself, it will boot into the new kernel, but that only gets as far as the bootsplash screen - which is frozen. I can get into a console login with alt+F4, but if I then try to run the package manager, and do sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-common it just tells me that the latest version(s) are already installed, so if I then do apt-get remove for the same packages, but then do the apt-get update and apt-get upgrade - finally followed by the apt-get install for the nvidia packages again, it still only seems to be getting the versions for the older kernel version (2.6.15-23-386).

How do I get round this snag please ??

regards

John

The old kernel should still be there and you should be able to boot into it. If it isn't there, install it from the console:then reboot into the old kernel and remove the newer kernel:On my system, the 2.6.15-23 kernel is installed and the -25 version is not an automatic upgrade. Therefore, I think you should be able to use the -23 version and run updates without automatically installing the newer version. If not you can avoid upgrading the kernel until the nvidia modules for the new kernel are available. You can also pin the kernel to prevent it from being upgraded. See: http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html Give the kernel package a pin priority of 1001 and it will never be upgraded. You can later remove the pin priority when you want it upgraded.

Ok, I could boot into the old kernel and the nvidia driver worked fine in that i.e. the -23 version, but I'm thinking along the lines that it (the linux-restricted-modules for the -25 kernel version) might be available in on one of the mirrors/sources as I've read stuff where people are saying that they've got it fine and others who've yet to run the update, but have looked at whats available to them via synaptic, and it seems to indicate that the packages are available for the -25 so I wonder how or if I can look at a mirror/repo and see if it has the package(s)? Hell I haven't even managed to find out if theres a list of available repositories despite much looking

regards

John

I handled the problem differently. I stayed with the new kernel but edited my /etc/X11/xorg.conf to change the video driver from "nvidia" to "nv" which is the 2D driver and rebooted into the new kernel. I tried to use easyubuntu to get the nvidia 3D driver and it compiled me a new kernel as well. I was at AMD64-generic -23 and the available update made it -generic -25. After easyubuntu was run I also had AMD64-xenon -25 which I've been running after editing xorg.conf to the "nv" driver. I have a Sempron 2800+ 64 bit processor and am a little confused about should I use AMD64-generic or AMD64-xenon. My inclination is to stick with the xenon which I'm assuming is the k8 kernel. anyone able to unconfuse things for me?

Here is the way to fix it and get the latest kernel:For whatever reason, the restricted modules are unavailable for the 386 kernel, but are there for the 686 kernel. I just tried this myself and my Nvidia driver is still working. You can see what is available by searching using synaptic or by using "apt-cache search" from the command line.

Ok, so I followed your suggestion. It seems to have not worked (I'm probably missing something here).

What I did, was which worked fine. So I then I booted into it and did the strangely, that just dumped me back to a prompt - not sure why as normally the system will tell me if it can't find something.

So, I then tried your trick of using apt-cache searchand and for good measure, I also did apt-cache search for linux-restricted-modules gives me this
I've tried various combinations (sorry, can't explain any better as I'm thoroughly confused over this) but the only one that seems to work is -23-386. Also, I now have 4 different kernels installed i.e. -23-386, -25-386, -23-686 and -25-686 which is making my confusion worse as I have made sure that I can see the grub menu but as I've commented out the "hiddenmenu" option in the menu.lst the highlight bar seems to have disappeared and I have to count the number of "presses" of the arrow to work out what kernel I'm booting into (and check with uname -r post boot process, once I'm into the CLI).

Now I know that this must sound like I'm babbling like some complete idiot, but it's come to mind that if you, and others say that you can find the linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-25-686 but my system is failing to disclose this package could only be (as I understand it) that I haven't got the correct entry in my sources.list - my sources.list currently looks like this

So have I got something wrong there ??? i.e. is there a source that I've missed so that it won't show some of these more elusive packages ?

regards

A very confused John

Are the instructions that I used to get this sorted out.

regards

John

I have things working again. Your steps may vary depending on your processor but the concept of what I'm doing will work with all.

1. http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-8762.html and download NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-8762-pkg2.run

2. Logout and then Ctrl+Alt+F1 exit X and go to level 3

3. Login at the terminal command line

4. cd {dir of where you put the download}

5. sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-8762-pkg2.run

6. The Nvidia installer will prompt you. If in doubt select defaults. The installer will even offer to edit your xorg.conf which you should let it do.

7. sudo reboot

It seems restricted modules are now also available for the 386 kernel. Here is the current output of "apt-cache search linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-25":I just upgraded a second system with the Nvidia driver and used the 386 kernel. I guess your problem was not all repositories were activated (maybe security missing?). Here is my sources.list:

Yes, I suspect that you are exactly right. I does strike me as a little unusual for the upgraded package to be released in such a way. I'm familiar with having to wait for something, but it's always been that when it's available on one repository, it's also hit all the mirrors.

I have to say, that with respect to the above, gentoo seemed to have the right idea, because I found when I ran that, that when I was "emerging" something, if it wasn't available at one location or that location was busy/didn't reply, then it would go to the next location until it found what it was looking for. Spooky!

anyway, thankyou very much for your assistance. It is, very much appreciated.

regards

John