nvidia driver installation

[archp2008]

Hello,

I recently did a clean install of Mint 8 in a multiboot environment. One problem I have is that the automated process for installing the proprietary NVidia driver fails with systemerror install errors followed by broken package notifications. I also tried downloading the driver directly fron NVidia but I don't know how to manually find the Package Manger which I presume is the program it asks me to find to install the download. Any help on this issue would be appreciated.

[rich_roast]

Jockey-gtk (which is the automated tool) is the recommended way of installing the proprietary nVidia drivers and it might be worth trying again or capturing the actual error for posting here to try to fix it; from your description and knowing that servers go down occasionally it occurs to me that it possibly just couldn't download the drivers properly when you tried, that or there're actually broken dependencies somewhere - either way that output might provide a clearer answer to your problem and in any event will help bring the issue to the developers' attention.

An alternative route is to go with envyng, which can be installed using Synaptic Package Manager which you launch from mintMenu's left-hand column (the bit titled System). Before doing that I'd suggest researching it a bit on these forums or on Ubuntu's boards. Best of luck.

[archp2008]

Thanks for the try. Actually, I did get it installed eventually, but now I can't change the configuration. It says, "You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run `nvidia-xconfig` as root), and restart the X server." I did that a couple of times and it says, " arch@arch-desktop ~ $ sudo nvidia-xconfig
[sudo] password for arch:
sudo: nvidia-xconfig: command not found
arch@arch-desktop ~ $ sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo: nvidia-xconfig: command not found
arch@arch-desktop ~ $ su
Password:
_________________________________________
( A light wife doth make a heavy husband. )
( )
( -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Merchant of )
( Venice" )
-----------------------------------------
o
o
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/

arch-desktop arch # nvidia-xconfig
The program 'nvidia-xconfig' can be found in the following packages:
* nvidia-glx-173
* nvidia-glx-185
* nvidia-glx-96
Try: apt-get install <selected package>
nvidia-xconfig: command not found
arch-desktop arch # apt-get install nvidia-glx-185
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
dkms fakeroot nvidia-185-kernel-source
The following NEW packages will be installed:
dkms fakeroot nvidia-185-kernel-source nvidia-glx-185
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/21.0MB of archives.
After this operation, 60.6MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
dkms fakeroot nvidia-185-kernel-source nvidia-glx-185
Authentication warning overridden.
E: Invalid archive signature
E: Prior errors apply to /var/cache/apt/archives/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
E: Invalid archive signature
E: Prior errors apply to /var/cache/apt/archives/fakeroot_1.12.4ubuntu1_i386.deb
E: Prior errors apply to /var/cache/apt/archives/nvidia-185-kernel-source_185.18.36-0ubuntu9_i386.deb
E: Prior errors apply to /var/cache/apt/archives/nvidia-glx-185_185.18.36-0ubuntu9_i386.deb
debconf: apt-extracttemplates failed: Bad file descriptor
dpkg-deb: `/var/cache/apt/archives/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb' is not a debian format archive
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb (--unpack):
subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
dpkg-deb: `/var/cache/apt/archives/fakeroot_1.12.4ubuntu1_i386.deb' is not a debian format archive
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/fakeroot_1.12.4ubuntu1_i386.deb (--unpack):
subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
Selecting previously deselected package nvidia-185-kernel-source.
(Reading database ... 108314 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking nvidia-185-kernel-source (from .../nvidia-185-kernel-source_185.18.36-0ubuntu9_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package nvidia-glx-185.
Unpacking nvidia-glx-185 (from .../nvidia-glx-185_185.18.36-0ubuntu9_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/fakeroot_1.12.4ubuntu1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
arch-desktop arch #
Still no go.
I reinstalled Mint 7 to another partition - better OS recognition and got Grub 1 back but same problem not being able to configure nvidia resolution.

[rich_roast]

Someone else has complained about xorg.conf in latest versions; might be related, fwiw.

[archp2008]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. This was all I needed to do to fix Mint 7
and re-access Nvidia configuration :
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

No such luck in Mint 8, though. I can't recall the errors when I tried that.
I tried removing and reinstalling the driver but got these lines at the end of installation:

Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/fakeroot_1.12.4ubuntu1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

That, of course, is a totally unknown language to me, much more foreign than Greek.
What is error code (1)?
It's odd that a Mint distro refers to the name Ubuntu when I am entering low resolution mode.
On a positive note I'm very happy that I have all 6 OS's booting now, thanks to Grub 1 and Mint 7.

[archp2008]

I picked the easy solution. The same as I did for Ubuntu 9.10. I used Gloria to delete the entry for Helena in menu.lst. Problem solved. I wonder is there any way to install the new distros without having to use Grub 2?

[rich_roast]

I tried removing and reinstalling the driver but got these lines at the end of installation:

Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/fakeroot_1.12.4ubuntu1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

That, of course, is a totally unknown language to me, much more foreign than Greek.
What is error code (1)?

I'm no developer but an error code is the result of the programmer putting in some code which deliberately returns an error code when something has gone wrong and the programme has to exit, to make it more convenient to debug it. Usually if all goes well then a program exits with error code (0), anything other than that usually means something bad. While I'm not certain what (1) means exactly, (there's a (2) as well which sometimes crops up), there are guidelines for remedial action in the bottom of this page.

It's odd that a Mint distro refers to the name Ubuntu when I am entering low resolution mode.

Mint is based on Ubuntu, while I'm unsure as to at which point you're seeing a reference to Ubuntu this is probably the explanation.