Debian + Nvidia drivers, bad compilation

[Prodigy]

Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I still haven't found the soluton to the problem.

I've had Nvidia's drivers working flawlessly in other distro's (except Suse),
and I just tried installing them in Libranet (Debian). I downloaded the tarballs, and
tried compiling them, but "make" gives an error that
"nv.c:22: linux/modversions.h: No such file or directory". I've donwloaded
the kernel-headers, and installed those, and then copied the linux dir into
/usr/src but now it gives an error that it can't find NVdriver.
GLX seems to install fine, but I still need to have the kernel installed.
Anyone know what's wrong, or had the same problem, have fixed this,
or is there a different driver to download?

Thanks in advance!


Vlado

[mtrr]

you have to _configure_ you kernel at least once :(

I'll check if I still have a detailed debian procedure.

CU

[Prodigy]

Very awesome! Thanks very much :)


Vlado

[mtrr]

found it, it's from a post in the past (very poetic :) )

if you don't use xfs from sgi, forget about that specific patch.

btw: worked for me

HTH

[Prodigy]

I don't quite understand what needs to be done though lol. Please post the link to the previous post or whatever if they explained in detail how to compile it :D

Once again, thanks for the reply :)

[mtrr]

argh, fat fingers!

found that some months ago on the old forum, here you go:


get the kernel source and make your own kernel.
apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.18 kernel-package nvidia-kernel-src nvidia-glx-src kernel-patch-xfs

cd /usr/src
tar xvjf kernel-source-2.4.18.tar.bz2
tar xvzf nvidia-kernel-src.tar.gz
ln -s kernel-source-2.4.18 linux

cd linux
cp /boot/config-2.4.18-bf?? .config (to get the same conf as your running kernel)

export PATCH_THE_KERNEL=YES (to apply the XFS patch during make-kpkg)
make-kpkg --config=xconfig --revision=custom.1 kernel_image (--config is optional)
make-kpkg modules_image

cd ../nvidia-glx-version
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc

dpkg -i packages generated in /usr/src

update lilo or grub and reboot

as you see kernel compilation is easy with debian as it is integrated with package management.

read /usr/doc/nvidia-*-src/README.Debian



-----------

can't remember the original poster

[Prodigy]

Hooray!

Once again, thanks for the quick reply! I'll get to recompiling the kernel right away, so I'll post back any results/screwups :D


Vlado

[Prodigy]

Hmm...everything went by smoothly, but I don't know how to update grub. I've looked thru the man file and the info file, but it all looks like a bunch of gibberish to me. Is there a single command that I can just execute in order to automatically update?

[mtrr]

is grub your boot-loader? if yes, then you're lucky.
way more comfortable than lilo :)

cheers

ps: seems that my ICQ-client is feeling better now....shall we give it another shot?

[Prodigy]

Sounds good, Just look my number undr my profile. I would suggest using GnomeICU or KXicq. I've had crap and nothing else from Licq, for some damn reason half the messages never got thru, but with Gnomeicu, and kxicq they both had no problems :P

If you're at work or whatever right now and can't use icq, then post the grub re-configuration here.

thanks once more :)

[raistlinneo]

Hey mtrr, I was having the same problem, and i tried doing what you said in the above post, but it wont install the new kernel, no matter what i do. even if i put it in lilo manually, it says its too big. am i doing something wrong?

[Prodigy]

Hey again mtrr, I've done a clean re-install of the system since my kernel compilation killed my sound and network modules, so I'd like to know whether the instructions above will include them as well, or if it'll just recompile the kernel with the nvidia modules?


Vlado

[ashoksagar]

Hi there.
Thanks to everyone who has posted here!
Special thanks to mtrr for providing the detailed instructions
I finally have everything working all right now, after a week
of agony!

[Thunderbird]

It is not really needed to compile a new kernel. You need to install for example the kernel headers package: apt-get install kernel-headers-2.4.18-bf (this was the name in my case, in other cases use "uname -r" to find the kernel name)

When you would try to compile the kernel module it will still spit out an error about modversions.h and that's because the kernel headers/source dir is: /usr/src/kernel-2.4.18-bf. To make the nvidia kernel module happy you can do two things:
fix 1 do: make SYSINCLUDE=/usr/src/kernel-2.4.18-bf
fix 2: "ln -s /usr/src/kernel-2.4.18-bf linux" and after this compile the kernel module.

[Prodigy]

Hey all,

I just re-did the steps mtrr posted, and everything went fine until i had to
dpkg -i *.deb in the /usr/src/ dir

I kept getting some error, but I just tried compiling the Nvidia drivers from the tar.gz again, and it worked. I'm guessing that all the compilations needs is for the first few steps to point ot the correct location. All is well now, and I'm getting incredible performace out of my card. UT now beats the hell out of the Windows version, as does Quake3!

Long live Debian!


Vlado

P.S. Thanks for the help everyone, I greatly appreciate it!

[mtrr]

sorry for beeing unavailable for a long time :(

glad to hear everything is working at a reasonable speed now.

congrats!

this evening I'll be reachable in chan #germany

[botio]

Originally posted by Prodigy
Hmm...everything went by smoothly, but I don't know how to update grub. I've looked thru the man file and the info file, but it all looks like a bunch of gibberish to me. Is there a single command that I can just execute in order to automatically update?

you can use update-grub

to have it automatically updated when you install a new kernel package, put these lines in /etc/kern-img.conf:

postinst_hook = /sbin/update-grub
postrm_hook = /sbin/update-grub
do_bootloader = no

this trick is in : /usr/doc/grub/README.Debian
README.Debian files are ALWAYS very instructives