Problem installing Nvidia Legacy drivers on Debian
 

I am trying to install the Nvidia drivers using the instructions this link:
Nvidia Drivers Wiki

I have a GeForce 256, so I need the legacy drivers. I followed the steps using the module assistant method. When I do modprobe nvidia, I get this error:

The Nvidia GeForce DDR GPU installed in this system is supported through the Nvidia Legacy drivers. Please visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more information. The 1.0-8776 Nvidia driver will ignore this GPU. Continuing to probe...
No Nvidia graphics adapter found!


To install the userspace librabries, I did apt-get install nvidia-glx-legacy. I think the problem is that the user space libraries are the legacy version which is correct, but the kernel module is the NON-legacy version. I think when I did

m-a auto-install nvidia

it did not install the legacy driver, it install the regular one.

I tried installing a pre-built module since I'm using the stock etch kernel, but it said I already have the newest version installed. Anyone have any ideas?

First off remove the driver package that you installed with the apt-get --purge remove nvidia-kernel-???... option then use apt-cache search nvidia-kernel to see what you have available to install pick the nvidia-kernel-legacy-??? version using its name with apt-get install.

Thank you, that worked. I can't believe it was that easy. Was there even any point to using module assistant? I could've just done

apt-get install nvidia-kernel-legacy-$(uname -r) nvidia-legacy

in the first place right?

Exactly right no need at all your running a stock Debian kernel so the module is built for it already one thing you may want to check is there is usually a meta package, a package which will keep you in sync with the latest of each of the kernel and nvidia driver when the kernel gets upgraded, on my system the nvidia driver is called nvidia-kernel-legacy-2.6-amd64 and linux-image-2.6-amd64 for the kernel you should check for yours and install the package(s) to keep them both updating at the same time.