Installing nvidia driver from cmd line -- no video

[A.D. Burrows]

On 2/24/10, kubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com
<kubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday 24 February 2010 09:47:07 am Alvin wrote:
>> On Wednesday 24 February 2010 15:13:28 Nigel Ridley wrote:
>> > A guy in work has tried to install 9.10 from the live CD.
>> > The install went OK but he can't log in as his nvidia card is not
>> > supported by the nv driver. He just gets dropped to a shell after X
>> > tries to start a few times.
>> >
>> > What commands does he need to install the latest (or best) nvidia driver
>> > and enable it?
>>
>> That should be:
>> $ sudo aptitude install nvidia-glx-185
>>
>> The installation will automatically enable it. I don't think you need to
>> alter xorg.conf
>
> Depending on how old the card is you may need older nvidia drivers.  Start
> with the 185 and if that doesn't work try nvidia-glx-180, nvidia-glx-173,
> and nvidia-glx-96 in that order.  Like Bruce said envyng will work great too.
> I had an old machine with an nvidia 6200 LE card, only the -96 and -173
> drivers worked.  I think it was running 8.10 though.

I've been having a little trouble with an old nvidia card. (e-GeForce
FX5500 -- Don't laugh it's what i could afford. I plugged in and it
worked but I still got occasional lagging and it didn't seem as if I
had hardware acceleration at all, especially Youtube videos paused and
stuttered as with the video on my motherboard. (ECS L7MM3)) So I tried
the above procedure in case there was a problem with the driver. I had
the following results.
nvidia-185 -- booted to terminal, KDE couldn't run
nvidia-180 -- booted to terminal, KDE couldn't run
nvidia-173 -- booted, but no video, black screen
tried different terminals, (Crtl/Alt/F#) -- no video, black screen
switched to MB video connector -- booted, but no video, black screen
tried different terminals, (Crtl/Alt/F#) -- no video, black screen
switched back to FX5500 video connector -- booted, but no video, black screen

Incidentally, before trying the above procedure, I tried to install
nvidia-glx-185, 180 and 173 using kpackagemanager; it reported
dependencies that it couldn't resolve. I don't know if that means
anything. (I didn't try 96 because that's what I believe was already
there.)

To send this message, I had to boot from my install disk. I have no
way now to re-install nvidia-glx-96.

Can I regress to nvidia-glx-96 using my install disk? Will I need to
re-install Karmic? HELP!

-- ADB