Re: problem with nvidia on debian buster

["Alexander V. Makartsev" <avbetev@gmail.com>]

On 10.11.2020 18:18, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Ma, 10 nov 20, 15:02:42, Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> > On 10.11.2020 14:04, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > On Ma, 10 nov 20, 13:32:13, Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> > > > I want to stay on stable branch for as long as I can, so I found that
> > > > installation of nvidia-driver (with myriad of its additional relevant
> > > > packages) from buster-backports is a bit tricky.
> > > > Personally, I had to setup apt preferences [1], so that only nvidia driver
> > > > packages are installed from "buster-backports" and also their updated
> > > > versions once they become available for installation.
> > > >           
> > > This should work fine in the default stable + backports configuration.
> > >
> > > Care to provide more details?
> > >
> > >         
> > At some point in the past I had to build backports to buster for 
> > nvidia
> > drivers from unstable, because newer versions were not yet available in
> > buster-backports.
> > The whole build and install procedure was a bit messy, because I need both
> > AMD64 and i386 packages and updating nvidia drivers later from
> > buster-backports using Synaptic wasn't straight forward either.
> > So now, after I setup apt preferences, I can see if updated nvidia drivers
> > are available in buster-backports via Synaptic and I also can see and update
> > nvidia-cuda-toolkit in same manner.
> >       
> In the default configuration backports is automatically assigned a 
> priority of 100, which is the same as already installed packages.
>
> This enables you to install packages and their dependencies from 
> backports with 'apt install -t buster-backports <package>' and such 
> packages will also be automatically upgraded should a new version become 
> available in backports.
>
> This should work with synaptic as well (though you must find out what is 
> the equivalent of '-t buster-backports').
>
> So it's still unclear for me why pinning backports was ever necessary.
>
> Kind regards,
> Andrei
>     
    This is probably the case, because afaik there is no straight
    forward way to make Synaptic to upgrade already installed packages
    from "buster" to "buster-backports", some of them will appear as
    broken and complain about some dependencies being unavailable for
    installation, because they were not yet marked to be installed from
    backports.
    Also as I mentioned before, I need foreign architecture packages
    (i386) too, and those are not dependencies of "nvidia-driver" meta
    package and have to be manually installed.
    I wish I could provide exact messages and refrain from vaguely
    describing the problem from my poor memory, but it's all updated now
    and works.
    I'll probably test in near future if removing my apt preferences
    file won't make any difference now, because all necessary packages
    already installed from backports.
    
-- 
With kindest regards, Alexander.

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