NVIDIA driver causes kernel freeze

[Thomas Olsen]

On Thursday 26 August 2010 03:51:40 Steve Morris wrote:

> Thomas just a thought that I should have woken up to earlier. If you are
> using the nvidia binary driver from the ubuntu repositories, that driver
> may be set up for a specific version kernel which is why the kernel
> taint message (if this is the case then ubuntu have compiled their
> kernels with module version compatibility turned off, because by default
> if a kernel module has not been compiled for the version of the kernel
> you are running the kernel will not load it).
> In the repositories there is a dkms environment which will build kernel
> modules from source files, there are nvidia packages in the repositories
> that are designed to work with that environment, you might be better off
> investigating those (this environment works like the drivers you
> download from nvidia themselves that compile against the active kernel
> at install time). The dkms environment requires you to have the kernel
> header package installed as well, but the advantage with this
> environment is that because the module is compiled against the kernel
> headers it can be guaranteed to be version compatible with the kernel,
> plus when you upgrade kernels the nvidia module will be automatically
> compiled against the new kernel (assuming you upgrade the headers at the
> same time) at kernel upgrade time or on the first boot of ubuntu from
> the new kernel.

It sounds reasonable but I think that the kernel modules was actually being 
compiled in my installation attempts. It downloads some dkms stuff and compiles 
something (my memory fails me now but I think amongst others the initrd). I 
have no idea how dkms, kernel modules and X drivers work together.

BTW: If you install the driver from the NVIDIA website how do you remove it 
again if needed? Ah, after reading back in the thread I can see that you use 
the Ubuntu supplied drivers so you probably wouldn't know...

-- 
Best regards / med venlig hilsen

Thomas Olsen