Only experience interacting with linux/UNIX is a fair bit with FreeBSD, but never configured X, only ran network-related services. Ports tree spoiled me rotten.

Now trying Ubuntu Linux, and installed (not very difficult) quite successfully. Nice little distro, everything seems to work out-of-the-box, except the option to update packages during install, which crashes X (on that particular daily release, anyway.)

Now I want to install nForce motherboard drivers (I'll try radeon 9200 drivers after this is working!) As per nVidia's instructions, i did:

sh NFORCE-superlongfilename_version_blah-blah.run

which brings up a nice little text-based mini-GUI, but then...

"No precompiled kernel interface was found to match your kernel; this means
that the installer will need to compile a new kernel interface."

and then...

"ERROR: Unable to find the kernel source tree for the currently running
kernel. Please make sure you have installed the kernel source files
for your kernel; 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' commandline option."

followed by...

"ERROR: Installation of the audio driver has failed. Please see the file
'/var/log/nvidia-nforce-installer.log' for details. You may find
suggestions on fixing installation problems in the README available
on the Linux driver download page at (nvidiawebsite)"

I'm guessing that this is a path issue, but I have no idea where the kernel sources are suppposed to be, or how to compile/decompile if I need to. I know this is probably easy to solve, but a noob has to start somewhere.

Thanks in advance.

Since it's debian based ...
Try a
to see whether you have any kernel-source
installed ...


Cheers,
Tink

code:

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
un kernel-image-2 <none> (no description available)
un kernel-patch-b <none> (no description available)
un kernel-patch-d <none> (no description available)
un kernel-patch-e <none> (no description available)
ii linux-kernel-h 2.5.999-test7- Linux Kernel Headers for development
un linux-kernel-l <none> (no description available)
un nvidia-kernel- <none> (no description available)
ii nvidia-kernel- 1.0.6111+1ubun NVIDIA binary kernel module common files
un nvidia-kernel- <none> (no description available)

That's the output...what am I looking for??

You do have the kernel headers, but not the kernel source.
nVidia's driver therefore refuses to compile on your machine.

Remedy: apt-get the kernel-source that matches your kernel.


Cheers,
Tink