Re: Nvidia package installation problems
On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 7:15 PM, Jon N <jdnandroid@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been getting pretty good with breaking my system lately. Today
> I got it in mind to stop downloading the Nvidia binary driver and
> installing it myself and switch to using the version available as a
> Debian package. I first uninstalled the downloaded version and
> rebooted to the normal desktop OK. I tried using lspci to see just
> what driver it was currently using but either it didn't say or I
> didn't understand the output. But the vesa driver was installed and
> it seemed unlikely it was using the driver I just uninstalled, so i
> went forward thinking I had the old drivers removed. I'm not sure if
> that was necessary, but cleaning out the old before installing the new
> seemed to be a good idea.
>
> I wasn't sure exactly what to select (in Synaptic) for the new
> drivers, and unfortunately don't remember exactly everything that may
> have been selected as a dependency. But I know I at least the
> following were installed:
> xserver-xorg-video-nvidia'
> nvidia-kernel-dkms
> dkms
>
> And I'm pretty sure these were installed
> nvidia-vdpau-driver
> nvidia-support
> nvidia-kernel-commen
> nvidia-installer-cleanup
> nvidia-alternative
> nvidia-kernel-686-pae (it does match my kernel, and making the kernel
> module ends without error)
>
> There are also other packages related to glx, and probably more I
> don't remember.
>
> But, I can't get the xserver to start. I can log into virtual
> terminals OK. At the end of the boot sequence I get the following
> message:
>
> "NWRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 304.108, but this
> kernel module has the version 319.76. Please make sure that this
> kernel module and all NVIDIA driver components have the same version."
>
> That sounds simple enough, but I have searched all packages I can
> think make be related in Aptitude and can not find anything that
> mentions version 304.108. Either they all say 319.76, or a version
> like '20131102+1 (that's the 'nvidia-kernel-common among others).
>
> I just noticed that 'glx-alternative-nvidia has a version of '0.4.1',
> but even if that's the problem I can't uninstall that without it
> taking most of the packages listed above.
>
> I checked my 'sources.list' and all the '...debian.org' lines are set
> to jessie. I'm not sure if any of the packages related to my problem
> could have come from other repositories, but I do have the following:
>
> www.deb-multimedia.org/ testing non-free main
> packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/debian/ jessie main
> ftp.mowgli.ch/pub/debian/ wheezy unofficial
> Also apt.last.fm, download.skype.com and dowload.webmin.com, but these
> seem pretty unlikely sources of wrong version Nvidia drivers to me
> (then again, if I knew what I was doing I woudn't be writing to you
> :-)).
>
> I love the idea of not having to re-installed the downloaded Nvidia
> drivers every time the kernel updates (plus it seems to keep breaking)
> so I would like to get this to work. Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> Jon
Hmmm, I've been having a little luck trying to track down the source
of my own problem. I checked the Xorg.0.log and noticed it seemed to
be trying to load about every dirver that made sense at all for my
Nvidia 8600 GT card. They are (not necessarily in this order): nv,
nvidia, fbdev, vesa and nouveau. And I know that I had nouveau
blacklisted before. Heck, I had to, the downloaded nvidia drivers
wouldn't work if it wasn't. I did notice that the contents of
/etc/modprode.d had changed with 2 new symlinks
(nvidia-blacklists-nouveau.conf and nvidia.conf) since trying to
install the nvidia driver package that both point to files in
/etc/alternatives. I'm not sure if they are blacklisting it or not at
this point.
But, I'm not sure if that is the problem, since nouveau doesn't load
either. I was also surprised that /etc/X11/xorg.conf apparently isn't
being looked at, it's using /root/xorg.conf.new, and
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d. /root/xorg.conf.new has sections for each
of the drivers mentioned above, so I guess that's why it's trying to
load them. But I renamed it and the behavior remains. Apparently,
that lack of an xorg.conf file of some type just causes X to try a
bunch of stuff. But nvidia isn't one of them (I'll take a guess that
because it's closed source it's not included in some sort of list of
default drivers to try).
It's getting late so I'm going to have to look at this again in the
morning. I think I should be able to make a new blacklist file for
nouveau (hopefully you can't have it blacklisted too many times) and
copy the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to /root/xorg.conf.new to reference just
the nvidia driver. Anyone know where I can get a list of the order in
which, and locations of, config files for X? I would have sworn
/etc/X11 was first, but it's not the first time I would be wrong
either :-).
Thanks,
Jon
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