I can't install the nv drivers

[david]

I've got the latest everything as far as I can tell :

ie woody, kernel 2.4.19 and xFree86 (I 4get the ver. but I'm pretty sure it's latest - it's definitely compatible)

and I've found out from reading another posting on this forum from a couple of weeks back that I need to get the deb kernel-headers package, include it in the nv_kernel, and compile it; but I can't find it anywhere!

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong in my search (apt-cache search kernel-headers-2.4.19) but it retrieves nothing - or it retrieves something but doesn't tell me.

Ive been presuming headers come with the kernel but I guess it's possible they're not installed. How can I find out if they're installed or not and where can I get them if they're not?

My experience with linux is about a week old so it's v. possible I've overlooked something obvious.

Thx for any help.

[david]

I tried doing a "make install" in the /usr/src/NVIDIA_kernel and it seemed to work fine (I'm sure it didn't do that before) so with my confidence renewed I moved to my .../NVIDIA_GLX dir and did the same there. Ofcourse it didn't work!

It came up with a message saying something to the effect that there wasn't any install to make.

I checked the ls and found that there are no files in that dir, only another dir called usr/ and another one after that leading to the only file in the entire .../NVIDIA_GLX dir. Is that right?

[bwkaz]

No... not really...

There should be a Makefile in the NVIDIA_GLX directory. From that directory, what does find . -type f | wc -l print? (In a nutshell, this will count the number of files under that directory.) It should tell you 15.

If it doesn't, then back up a directory (to /usr/src, from the sounds of it) and rm -rf NVIDIA_GLX (and hit tab to autocomplete the directory name). Then try to re-decompress from the .tar.gz you downloaded.

If it still won't work, then verify the md5sum of the .tar.gz matches what's posted on the driver download page. Run md5sum on the NVIDIA_GLX-xxxxx.tar.gz file to find out what the md5sum is, then compare it.

[david]

Thanks loads for that. I got kde working after a lot of fiddling and configuring. It's still not 100% (I've got to reinstall the drivers on every reboot) so I'm off to peruse the forum for a bit.

[bwkaz]

Rather than reinstalling every boot, does running modprobe NVdriver on every boot help? If so, then you can edit /etc/modules to make NVdriver load on every boot automatically. Just add "NVdriver" to the file, and save & exit, and it'll get loaded the next time you reboot.