I had abject problems with the nVidia non-free driver over the last
10 days but I think I finally have sorted them out now - almost.
I can't use "nv" because my Java IDE started crashing on a frequent
basis, so I decided to install and compile the non-free packaged
driver.
This was a story in itself, and after getting that sorted, I thought
I'd be OK, but I guess it built up a lethal mixture on my system of
old drivers and modules
- suffice it to say I had kernel 2.6.26 from backports and I had to
ditch that, and I had used nvidia-installer from nvidia.com and had
ditched that, following some instructions on the net which left the
non-free package uninstallable, so my system's not exactly pristine,
but it's back in a state where everything appears OK.
So after compiling and configuring nvidia-glx, I'd get xorg up and
running with the Driver "nvidia" in xorg.conf, but each reboot led
back to xorg failing to start.
I followed the latest wikis and install instructions and still, each
reboot killed it. I couldn't find any reference to a similar problem
with a solution that helped, and the logs on my system reported no
errors - all fine and dandy and then EOF.
I've used dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg so often I've memorised the
key strokes. I also used nvidia-xconfig. I've played around with
lspci and lsmod and "modprobe -r" and mesa-utils and all that jazz
trying to figure out my issue.
What finally sorted it out for me was /etc/default/nvidia-glx - I
really wish I'd seen that sooner.
Now I can use xorg with the nVidia driver if I boot to a CL and then
run
sudo /etc/init.d/nvidia-glx stop
sudo /etc/init.d/nvidia-glx start
startx
with the /etc/default/nvidia-glx USE_TLS=1 setting.
I guess I'm ranting, but does anyone know what I can do to fix this
last thing?