Unable to get Nvidia Drivers direct in Mint 8

[nibb42]

Morning (or evening) folks,
I have just done a fresh install of Mint 8 - all went fine - and have tried to get Nvidia drivers installed via the Hardware Drivers feature. It fails with this error:

Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... 1_i386.deb Could not connect to archive.ubuntu.com:80 (91.189.88.30). - connect (111: Connection refused) [IP: 91.189.88.30 80]

To see if I could find any more information I put the URL into a browser and, sure enough, yesterday the archive declared a 404 - not found, and today, just now, I can actually get a download of the file through the browser.

Any solutions?

best wishes and thanks in advance

[Rizla]

Hi nibb42,
I'm not sure about the repository issue that you have, maybe the repo is down?

Anyhoo, I thought I'd mention an alternative for Nvidia drivers users - Nvidia have linux drivers, I downloaded this for my Geforce 9600GT. I think the version is at 190 (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.42-pkg1.run".
If you attempt to install via the terminal on your desktop, you'll eventually get an error saying that "X" need to be shut down. "X" is the graphical front end on the desktop for gnome/mint/ubuntu - confusing, as how can you disable it and still see what your doing? - luckily there is a simple method:

Here's the method:
(Note: write this down as you won't beable to refer to this in the process)

1) Place the download somewhere handy like /home/nvidia

2) Press CTRL+ALT+F1 (this will take you to a full-screen terminal

3) type:

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sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

This will stop the X display (it can be brought back with "start" at the end instead, so don't worry)

4) using the "cd" command locate your directory with the nividia download with the .run extension
example: cd/nvidia

5) type:

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sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.42-pkg1.run 

Providing that's the version you've downloaded

6) You'll be asked for your password

7) Then just answer the questions in the install.

When done, just type:

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sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

To restart X

9) Now just type "exit" and you'll be back at your desktop with your new driver installed - There will be config settings in the Control Centre.

Hope that's of some use