I am pounding my head against the wall trying to update my video drivers. I am running Redhat 8 and I have the 2.4.20-19.8 kernel on an AMD XP 2100+ box with 1 gig of RAM.

I log in as root. I have downloaded the new drivers in the following directory:
/home/downloads/nvidiadrivers

I then try to install the drivers with the following command:
(I forget the exact driver name, I am on my Windows partition now)
sh nvidia_driver_name --kernel-include-path /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/athlon/kernel-2.4.20-19.8.src.rpm

and it gives me a message saying that the kernel source does not exist. I have verified that the RPM files do exist in that directory and that I am spelling everything correctly.

Needless to say, I am a newbie when it comes to Linux and this is driving me up the wall.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks,
Christian

thats because that is not the kernel source, that is the kernel source rpm package...you have to point it to the directory where the source is extracted...and the only reason why you should use this command argument, is if you have more than one kernel on your system.

I do have more than one kernel on my system. I thought it might have extracted to a different directory, but I couldn't find where that destination directory was. The RPM just ran and finished without any messages. Is there a directory somewhere called "kernel"? If so, is that what it is asking for?

Try looking in /usr/src/linux as this is where the kernel source should be. IF not download it from http://www.kernel.org and build an appropiate kernel

Rus

I tried looking at www.kernel.org, but they didn't have my specific kernel (2.4.20-19.8), though interesting enough they had some newer kernels. i thought I had the latest one.

Going back to my first reply, shouldn't the RPM have extracted some code somewhere? I keep doing a search and I am not finding anything useful. My distro of RH 8 has the following folder structure:

/usr/src/redhat

Is the NVidia driver looking for a ".h" file? I have two kernel.h files in the following locations:

/boot/kernel.h
/usr/include/linux/kernel.h

Or is it looking for the ".o" files? I have some ".o" files at the following location:

/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.8/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpuid.o
/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.8/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/edd.o
/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.8/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/microcode.o
/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.8/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/msr.o

Or am I just way off base?

With RH they ship a base kernel 2.4.xx + Patches which is the -18. IF you are up for it I can take you through a nice new kernel compile

Rus

Ok...I think i can deal with a kernel compile. I have a book called Linux for Windows Addicts that has a section on recompiling your kernel. I guess my only fear is that I might really screw something up if I can't even find the damn source that the NVidia drivers require. If I recompile my kernel, will that process show me where the the header files are so I can update my stupid video drivers?

show us what contents you see when you go to the /usr/src folder and type ls -al..

Well best thing it get a new kernel installed and it will setup all the background things which should make the nvidia stuff easy. Make sure that you get 2.4.21 and not anything higher. Also try putting stuff in /usr/src/linux or at least create a symlink

Rus

or just download the source instead of compiling another kernel, which makes more sense..
that is if the source doesn't already exist.

What are the source files named? I don't even know what i am looking for, that is 90% of my problem I think. If I knew where the source were located an d what their name was, I would just point the NVidia drivers to that location.

I also saw another post that said the newest NVidia drivers released today incorporate RH 8 distros. I have downloaded those and I am going to try and get those to run.