What package(s) are needed to install nvidia support ?

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto]

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, James Gregory wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 14:37 -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 04:20:05PM -0500, Scott Dier wrote:
> >
> > > You'll need to install the kernel-headers files and then get the
> > > nvidia-kernel-common and nvidia-driver source packages from debian
> > > unstable.  Then, after building them install the module source package and
> > > build it.
> >
> > If you use the stock kernel, you don't need to build anything; just make
> > sure that the 'restricted' component is in your sources.list, and apt-get
> > install linux-restricted-modules and nvidia-glx. :-)
>
> Apologies, this is probably the wrong time and place for this, but...
>
> Just on this, I expected that installing the packages would alter my X
> config, like the livna packages for fedora. I was quite surprised when I
> had to edit my X configuration (I was unaware that using the reconfigure
> script would do that for me). I think the expectation for Joe User would
> be that installing drivers makes the hardware work straight away.

You will have to use dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86. Automaticaly
altering X config is not a good idea at all. The is only one case over
several in which i can do it, and hounestly it is more trouble than joy.

> Also, I managed to get them going but it's not automatically loading the
> nvidia module. I ran update-modules, because there are nvidia files
> in /etc/modules.whatever but still no joy. It's quite likely I've done
> something "wrong", but I didn't get any clues as to what was "right".

These files are used to create the proper devices in /dev. You can add the
module to /etc/modules.

> Finally (and this probably belongs in bugzilla but anyway), I upgraded
> my kernel with apt and used apt to get the nvidia stuff. The nvidia
> package installation complained that there was already stuff
> in /lib/modules/`uname -r`. I thought to myself "of course there is!".

It didn't happen here.. can you show us the errors please?

Fabio

-- 
<user> fajita: step one
<fajita> Whatever the problem, step one is always to look in the error log.
<user> fajita: step two
<fajita> When in danger or in doubt, step two is to scream and shout.