[plug] nvidia driver

[Jim Householder]

Michael wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Jim Householder wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>>
>> Is anyone having any luck with installing nvidia drivers?  I'm getting 
>> nowhere.
>>
>> I just built and installed 2.6.8.  I used
>> make mrproper
>> make O=xxx mrproper
>> make O=xxx oldconfig    (which used the Mdk 10.1 Official .config)
>> make O=xxx
>> make O=xxx modules_install
>> make O=xxx install
>>
>> It boots and appears to run with no problems.  However when I try to 
>> build the nvidia driver it falls over telling me that it's looking at 
>> the wrong source files.  There is only one source tree installed.
>>
>> The directory in /lib/modules is 2.6.8.jeh-1 and the source tree is 
>> under /usr/src/linux-2.6.8.1-12mdk.
> 
> 
> This tells you the problem, the kernel you're running and the source are 
> different, otherwise you would have /lib/modules/2.6.8.1-12mdk.
> 
> Just update to kernel-2.6.8.1-21mdk and the appropriate (same version) 
> kernel source.
> 
It would probably (but no guarantee) help if I had a clue as to what I was doing...

Having failed to heed the warning not to put a new kernel tree (2.6.10 in this case) in /usr/src, I messed up the original 2.6.8. (Don't ask...)

I did a fresh install of mdk 10.1, formatting /, /usr, /boot, and /var.  I kept /home and /usr/local.  Then I installed the 2.6.8.1-12mdk source tree and tried to build the nvidia driver.  No luck.  It tried to build, but fell over with nv.c wanting PM_SAVE_STATE which used to be defined in pm.h but was not in the copy that the build was using.

I built a new 2.6.8.1-12mdk kernel using the config file from /boot.  It took forever and there were lots of warnings, so I chopped a lot of stuff out that I thought I did not need.  It worked (without sound) but I still could not build the nvidia driver.

Today I booted into the original 2.6.8.1-12mdk.  Crack-attack, which worked immediately after the install, failed citing lack of GLX support.

I extracted the nvidia files to see what was there, and then ran nvidia-installer.  To my surprise the build succeeded.  Not only that, but the driver works as well.  The best I could get before, after a modprobe, was the nvidia splash screen which hung.

Now that everything is working again I'm going to forget 2.6.10 until I can locate the intermittent hardware problem on my test machine.

Jim