help with NVIDIA driver

[mariosan]

I am trying to install the NVIDIA driver for my geForce 4 video board, without success. Here is part of my nvidia-installer.log:

ld -m elf_i386 -r -o /tmp/selfgz10652/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1/usr/s
rc/nv/nvidia.ko /tmp/selfgz10652/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1/usr/src/nv/n
vidia.o /tmp/selfgz10652/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nvidia.mo
d.o
NVIDIA: left KBUILD.
-> done.
-> Kernel module compilation complete.
ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.ko'. This is most likely
because the kernel module was built using the wrong kernel source files.
Please make sure you have installed the kernel source files for your
kernel and that they are properly configured; on Red Hat Linux systems,
for example, be sure you have the 'kernel-source' RPM installed. If you
know the correct kernel source files are installed, you may specify the
kernel source path with the '--kernel-source-path' command line option.
-> Kernel module load error: insmod: error inserting './usr/src/nv/nvidia.ko':
-1 File exists

Well, I searched the web and tried a lot of things that people pointed out as a possible solution for this problems, but nothing seems to work. A few information:

kernel 2.6.12-10
kernel-source-2.6.12-10 is installed
gcc is gcc-3.4 (same that compiled the kernel)
installing the driver though the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8756-pkg1.run

I would appreciate ANY help on this issue. Thanks a lot,

MS

[claydoh]

Re: help with NVIDIA driver

Did/do you have another Nvidia driver installed? it sounds like you may.

You will need to get rid of all the previous driver bit installed via apt/adept/synaptic:

sudo dpkg --purge nvidia-glx
sudo dpkg --purge nvidia-kernel-common
sudo dpkg --purge linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r`

Then make sure you have all the proper tools installed (which i think you already have done):

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
sudo apt-get instal gcc-3.4

Then run the installer like this:

export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-3.4
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg2.run <-- your filename may be different

[Aldrik]

Re: help with NVIDIA driver

Yeah make sure you do sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nvidia-kernel-common

Here's a nice guide with all the steps needed to install.

Good luck.

[mariosan]

Re: help with NVIDIA driver

Still didn't get it working...
I did what claydoh and Aldrik suggested, I mean, purged the system from the previously installed driver (yes, I tried to do that via apt-get before) using the commands you guys told me, but I still get the same error when I try to run the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8756-pkg1.run.

Am I missing something? Thanks for all the support,

MS

[circleback]

Re: help with NVIDIA driver

I followed these instructions and got it to work pretty well. Thanks for the help. However there is one annoying little bug that maybe you can help me out on. When I installed the driver, it initially did not work. So I apt-get install nvidia-glx. Then I started X and everything worked beautifully. I got the Nvidia splash screen and all the fonts and icons render very nicely. However when i rebooted and logged in I got the Nvidia screen but the previous "old" rendering with scratchy looking fonts etc... So I decided to play around. I logged out into the console mode then typed startx. Lo and behold I got the good configuration. Any ideas about that??