[solved]nvidia driver problem

[godsotherhand]

Searched the net for a way to install the nvidia drivers, but they all fail, my terminat telling me that
"
Uncompressing NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver for Linux-x86_64 275.09.07.............................................................................................................................................
Received signal SIGTERM; aborting.
"
Please help me install my nvidia driver.

[LifeInTheGrey]

You and me both bro ... I literally tried 6 different methods for install, and I've only found one that works:

apt-get install smxi

Basically, smxi is a program that runs dist-upgrade, and installs proprietary drivers. so after you install it, run it in the Root Terminal by just typing smxi ... here are the steps that follow:

1) It will run, and give you the option to exit the desktop, which you want to do.
2) Once out of the desktop, you'll just have a flashing cursor. Hit Alt+Ctrl+F1 to go to command prompt. Login as root, with your normal sudo password.
3) Once logged in as root, run smxi again. Run a dist-upgrade, and once it completes, continue until you see a menu that has an option for "continue to graphics drivers".
4) You will continue until you have an option of which one to install ... I believe it is dependent on the card that you have (legacy drivers vs. newest). My card is spankin new, so I installed the newest, however if you are unsure I would recommend just the new drivers.
5) It will download the driver and then remove the nouveau driver (this was the problem with other setups ... COMPLETE removal of nouveau is necessary). Once complete, it will ask you to shutdown for 30 seconds and then turn back on.
6) Once back into the desktop, you'll notice nouveau is gone. Hit Alt+Ctrl+F1 to go back to command line, login as root again, and run smxi again. Just hit continue (don't dist-upgrade or anything) until you get to the graphics drivers install again.
7) This time when you run the graphics driver install, it will actually INSTALL the nVidia driver (don't ask me why the reboot was necessary, but it was).
Once installed, it will prompt you to open your desktop again ... and voila, you have the proprietary drivers working.

***KEEP NOTE***

ANY upgrade to xorg, the kernel, or anything that can affect graphics display will break this UNLESS DIRECTLY AFTER UPGRADING you input this command into terminal:

sgfxi -! 40

This will basically install the graphics drivers for ALL kernels, including the one you just upgraded to. If you don't, upon reboot you will get a blinking cursor. If xorg updates without a reinstall, certain acceleration components will be broken. Consider this your warning ... its pretty straightforward, just remember that extra step after upgrading.

Before you ask ... I'm sorry, this is the only way I was able to get my nVidia stuff to work. They're working on a jockey-based simple installer, however right now, this is whats up. If you hate this but desperately want to use LMDE ... try an ATI card haha. Good luck!

[richyrich]

+1 for smxi/sgfxi

http://smxi.org/

[gosa]

And another vote for sgfxi...

I've been using sgfxi to manage my Nvidia drivers since I first installed LMDE and realized that my graphics card wasn't supported (was too new back then) and even though I consider myself being a real newbie with these things I've never really had any problems.

Actually - the only time my Nvidia card has bothered me was yesterday when I realized that the latest (275.09.07) drivers messes up Twinview on my HDMI-port (Nvidia settings just crashes when I try to activate my TV - needing a reboot to get back to normal) That problem got solved by using sgfxi to first trying the nouveau-drivers and when that didn't go so well (they kind of sucked actually - my pointer got parkinson's with those and everything got very sluggish) to force a downgrade to the previous version of Nvidia's own release. (270.41.something...)

Anyway - I know that there's a lot of people who think that sgfxi is a bad road to choose, but for me it's been nothing but pleasure.

[godsotherhand]

$ sudo apt-get install smxl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package smxl


>.<

[gosa]

$ sudo apt-get install smxl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package smxl

>.<

Don't think smxi/sgfxi ever were in the repos... or did I really miss that part?

Go here: http://smxi.org/ - or more specifically here: http://smxi.org/site/install.htm and follow the instructions. I believe the code for downloading & installing only sgfxi is:

Code: Select all

cd /usr/local/bin && wget -O sgfxi smxi.org/sgfxi && chmod +x sgfxi && sgfxi

Then when you have it installed you have to hit ctrl+alt+F1 to exit "X", login and run smxi/sgfxi (depending on which one you choose - for graphics you only need sgfxi)
The instructions should be quite easy to follow...

Edit: There's some additional info in this thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=61441

[Dr.m0x]

$ sudo apt-get install smxl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package smxl

>.<

Don't think smxi/sgfxi ever were in the repos... or did I really miss that part?

Go here: http://smxi.org/ - or more specifically here: http://smxi.org/site/install.htm and follow the instructions. I believe the code for downloading & installing only sgfxi is:

Code: Select all

cd /usr/local/bin && wget -O sgfxi smxi.org/sgfxi && chmod +x sgfxi && sgfxi

Then when you have it installed you have to hit ctrl+alt+F1 to exit "X", login and run smxi/sgfxi (depending on which one you choose - for graphics you only need sgfxi)
The instructions should be quite easy to follow...

Edit: There's some additional info in this thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=61441

Thanks I had to reinstall lmde after accidentally borking the partition while trying out pclinuxos. After finding the nvidia driver in the repo broken this was a lifesaver.

Now I'm going to see if I can use it to get fglrx working on a fusion netbook.

---
Sent from my Cyanogenmod-ified phone.

[godsotherhand]

ty very much, works like a charm i get even more FPS than on my mint11 install that i had before
btw, is it safe if i run sgfxi -! 40 after every update, just to be sure?

[gosa]

btw, is it safe if i run sgfxi -! 40 after every update, just to be sure?

That one I'm going to hand over to someone else... I didn't really know it existed until I read about it in this thread, so my way of doing upgrades affecting the grafhics drivers has been:

"- Ooops, It seems I have to run sgfxi again!"

...about every time (two or three times I think) that I've been met with a non-graphic environment (what is it called anyway?) after making that kind of upgrades...

[h2-1]

sgfxi -! 40 only works for nvidia. The requirements are: driver is already installed, and is current driver. If you are using a different driver, like beta or an older one, you have to tell sgfxi explicitly to use that one, with either: sgfxi -B -! 40 OR sgfxi -o <driver version number> -! 40

sgfxi -! 40 builds a module for each kernel, that's all, so you can boot into any kernel and have graphics working.

As with all advanced sgfxi features, they depend on well done driver code, ie, nvidia's, and fglrx only works with a subset of sgfxi features.

However, smxi will track kernel changes (unless you use metapackages, then I'm not sure that feature works, might) and xorg version numbers pre and post upgrade, and if either a kernel changed or xorg version changed, it will tell you that you need to reinstall your non-free drivers, if you had them installed to begin with.

This functionality of course cannot be sgfxi, because sgfxi itself cannot know the state of the system prior to an upgrade, or after it.

you can build new modules for nvidia without rebooting via smxi, or using sgfxi commands, if you got a new kernel, and you can reinstall the driver if it's just an xorg change. sgfxi will just rebuild the module if you already installed the current driver with sgfxi previously.

[chessmaster]

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current



Go inside terminal and type that.

[zerozero]

chessmaster, LMDE is debian-based, not ubuntu-based, so your method won't work here;

Apart from that, trying to update a fundamental part of the system, like the xserver with alien pkgs, is asking for troubles.

[chessmaster]

chessmaster, LMDE is debian-based, not ubuntu-based, so your method won't work here;

Apart from that, trying to update a fundamental part of the system, like the xserver with alien pkgs, is asking for troubles.

"Linux Mint is Ubuntu-based". This method will install your GUI for nvida as well instead of using
"gksu nvidia-settings".

I have installed this since 2 months ago and it has worked for me consistenly I'm running 275.09.07. So, yes I can confirm this does work for LM.

[smiley_lauf]

adding ppa repo to Debian (LMDE) --is this even possible or 'safe'? This blog http://blog.anantshri.info/howto-add-ppa-in-debian/ seems to have tried it.

EDIT: I just tried the steps in the blog--but get lots of errors when trying to add the ppa

Code: Select all

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:iaz/battery-status
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/add-apt-repository", line 65, in <module>
    if not sp.add_source_from_line(line):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py", line 630, in add_source_from_line
    (deb_line, file) = expand_ppa_line(line.strip(), self.distro.codename)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 47, in expand_ppa_line
    sourceslistd = apt_pkg.Config.find_dir("Dir::Etc::sourceparts")
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Config'

[zerozero]

@smiley_lauf,
that method has a few problems whem comes to LMDE:
- he uses squeeze, LMDE is wheezy;
- he bases in lucid!! why? why an outdated version when atm LMDE is pretty much cutting edge and you going to be faced with version problems?

@chessmaster,
sorry, but no! LMDE Gnome and xfce are debian based!
you should know first what you are talking about before advising others

[LifeInTheGrey]

sorry, but no! LMDE Gnome and xfce are debian based!
you should know first what you are talking about before advising others

LMDE = Linux Mint Debian Edition ... I can't believe that had to be spelled out haha.

[Dr.m0x]

chessmaster, LMDE is debian-based, not ubuntu-based, so your method won't work here;

Apart from that, trying to update a fundamental part of the system, like the xserver with alien pkgs, is asking for troubles.

"Linux Mint is Ubuntu-based". This method will install your GUI for nvida as well instead of using
"gksu nvidia-settings".

I have installed this since 2 months ago and it has worked for me consistenly I'm running 275.09.07. So, yes I can confirm this does work for LM.

We are talking about Linux mint debian edition here. It is not based on ubuntu. If it were id not use it.

---
Sent from my Cyanogenmod-ified phone.

[godsotherhand]

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current



Go inside terminal and type that.

I am quiet new in linux, but even i can see that is wrong >.<