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net install debian - video drivers

N

ndruw

Member
every time i try to net install the nvidia drivers using the debian net install disk, it corrupts the video.
secondly, if i try to install from nvidia's site, i download the installer, shutdown X, and install from a command line, it says it cant install because i need to configure X for something

^^any guides/solutions to my second problem (or first if possible)

ive really liked debian so far, pretty easy to work with actually.


-1 other problem for anyone who wants to help -> i have sound working with my apps, but whenever 2 programs need to use the soundcard, there is a problem...that and im not sure if my drivers are not installed correctly since my mic wont work

-hardware for reference (since i cant seem to post rig in myanandtech section for some reason)

video card - nvidia 6600gt agp
sound - cmi 8738 pci
32-bit debian
 
Look in /etc/x11 for an xorg.conf file. Maybe Debian's still backwards and using the obsolete XF86, so it might be a bit different (I forget what it's called exactly, something like xfree86.conf). If it doesn't exist, run the X configuration program (xfree86config or something or xfree, and xorgconfig or something for x.org).

For the sound problem, use something like esd or artsd.
 
That sound problem shouldn't be an issue with newer versions of alsa which have software mixing built in. What version of debian are you trying to install?
 
need exact errors. You should download the binary drivers, run them then edit /etc/xorg/xorg.conf and change the driver line. I can't remeber what you change to (I've only done ati's recently)
 
If you've installed the nVidia drivers all you need to change is the Driver "nv" line to be Driver "nvidia" and it'll use their driver.
 
Well if you can't compile it you have more problems like I did. To be honest, I can't remember exactly how I got it working. First was getting the kernel sources in the right place which was hard enough in the first place. Then loading it was another story. This page helped me get mine working (in GLX mode too): http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debian-nVidia/

Compiling it (once I knew the steps) was the easy part. You could get prepackaged NVIDIA binaries (almost always older from my experience) but it probably wouldn't help you much, you still have to setup all the stuff in x conf. Let me find my other thread on it.

Hope this helps: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...&STARTPAGE=3&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

Tell me any errors and I can probably help you get it working, probably.... (if you had the same hurdles (not really problems) I did.)
 
First was getting the kernel sources in the right place which was hard enough in the first place
Click to expand...

Installing the kernel-headers-<version> package is difficult?

ou could get prepackaged NVIDIA binaries (almost always older from my experience) but it probably wouldn't help you much, you still have to setup all the stuff in x conf. Let me find my other thread on it.
Click to expand...

All the stuff? You just need to change the driver name from nv to nvidia. There are driver options you can set, but they're just that, optional.

And you really shouldn't have to compile anything anyway, there are nvidia-kernel packages in non-free. I don't know how close to up to date they are, but they're there and they'll probably work fine.
 
Installing the kernel-headers-<version> package is difficult?
Click to expand...

And copying the kernel config to the right place (I never would have figured it out on my own what the NVIDIA installer wanted; nor was it properly documented anywhere as far as I can tell. I'm just lucky somebody in my thread told me what I needed to do. He just knew from experience I presume.) I didn't know you had to do all the build-kpkg stuff. That is nowhere at all in the NVIDIA documentation...no where. It just says install the kernel-source package, and I did with aptitude, but I needed to copy various files to there as well.

(^That applies to compiling. The below would apply for both the compile or the precompiled .ko files.)

XF86 config isn't hard if it works. But I got some weird SIGSEGV termination errors. Not a lot of config, but lots of debug (that Debian NVIDIA site was a lucky find). It was a very frustrating maybe 3 hours of fussing around for me to get it to install fine. All the other drivers were just fine but the video driver was really hard to get working correctly.

I'm just surprised I had so many problems with it. Never had a whole lot of trouble configuring other drivers like sound and network. Video is hell in comparison.

Maybe if I made some compromises like installing an older version it wouldn't have been nearly as hard. I just don't see why I should have to make those compromises (it's not like I'm installing an experimental/unofficial driver.) I'm happy with it now, but I don't feel like ever installing that nvidia driver again. 🙂 I don't really blame it on Debian, it's nvidia for not even mentioning Debian most of the time. They mention SUSE, RedHat, Mandriva problems a lot.

And even then I'd consider myself to be very patient and persistent with things like this (relatively).
 
And copying the kernel config to the right place (I never would have figured it out on my own what the NVIDIA installer wanted; nor was it properly documented anywhere as far as I can tell. I'm just lucky somebody in my thread told me what I needed to do. He just knew from experience I presume.) I didn't know you had to do all the build-kpkg stuff. That is nowhere at all in the NVIDIA documentation...no where. It just says install the kernel-source package, and I did with aptitude, but I needed to copy various files to there as well.
Click to expand...

If you install the kernel-headers (linux-headers now) package for your kernel you don't have to do anything with make-kpkg or your kernel config.

I'm just surprised I had so many problems with it. Never had a whole lot of trouble configuring other drivers like sound and network. Video is hell in comparison.
Click to expand...

That's because nVidia won't/can't release their drivers as free software, if they could the driver would be included in the default kernel and Xorg and everything would 'just work' like with sound and network.

I'm happy with it now, but I don't feel like ever installing that nvidia driver again
Click to expand...

Also, if you compile your own kernels it pretty much 'just works'. Now I do the make-kpkg stuff in the kernel source to build the image for the new version, install the kernel and module packages with dpkg -i, make sure grub is ok and reboot and everything is happy.

 
kernel-headers didn't do the config thing for me. I'm pretty sure I selected all packages that had kernel in them that related to source,headers,whatever else was there (except for the kernel itself.)

Well the closed-source nvidia driver worked great on every other distro I've used. I don't know, it's weird.
 
I don't know the particulars because I generally run custom kernels so I have the source laying around, but AFAIK kernel-headers should be all you need.
 
This is the general steps that I take when installing nvidia's drivers on Debian or Ubuntu.

For ubuntu make sure that you have the 'extra' repositories like universe and multiverse setup.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
#makes sure the system is up to date.
apt-get install module-assistant
module-assistant update
module-assistant prepare

Module-assistant prepare should install your kernel headers package or find your sources if you compiled a custom kernel. It should also get other little bits and peices of software you may need, although you may want to install build-essential to make sure.

That should download everything you need to get the propriatory kernel drivers installed. If you want you can use module-assistant to go and automaticly install the nvidia drivers built by Debian/Ubuntu OR you can choose to install the drivers from Nvidia.

The drivers from Nvidia make you compile and install with a bit more effort, but they are up to date. The normal nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx drivers provided by distros are out of date.

They are more then likely non-compatable. You have to make sure that one is completely out of your system before trying the other. "apt-get remove --purge packagename" can remove most traces of debian/ubuntu packages.. if they can't then it'll give you a list of directories it can't remove.

If in doubt use the official Nvidia drivers. It's closed source software and they are the only people that can support it. So it makes sense to me to go with the newest and get them directly from nvidia's website.

This is the exception. Generally for Linux drivers the best ones come from your distro or official kernel sources, the closed source drivers provided by vendors are usually of very low quality compared to official kernel stuff. However nvidia is the only source of drivers for their 3d cards so you are forced to go through them.

So then you go and download Nvidia's installer from their website. Download the 'README' also as it contains invaluable information on properly configuring and enabling different features. (such as twinview for dual monitors)

Copy the nvidia drivers to a convient location, like /tmp or whatever. Log out of X Windows, switch to console (ctrl + alt + F1) , log in as root or if your using Ubuntu log in as your regular user and go sudo su - to get around the no-root-password restriction and log in as root.

Turn off X:

/etc/init.d/gdm stop
(or /etc/init.d/kdm or /etc/init.d/xdm, depending on your graphical login manager)

Change to your directory with the Nvidia drivers. And go
sh NVIDIA-*
(or sh NVIDIA-<whatever the version is>.run)


If everything works out you should have Nvidia drivers compiled and installed in under a couple minutes. The latest drivers include a utility to change your /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/XF86Config file. You can use that or you can choose to do it manually.

It will also isntall a couple more utilities for controlling your nvidia card.

That's about it.
 
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