LMDE & nVidia Driver

[EmyrB]

Hi Folks,

I just installed LMDE on a spare machine that has a GeForce 8400 GS card. I followed the instructions here http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/331 and rebooted. The 2.6.39-2-686 PAE kernel just dumps me to a command prompt, but xserver is running. I change the driver in xorg.conf to vesa and I get a GUI. If I select the default kernel that comes with LMDE 201101, 2.6.32-5-686, I get a GUI using the nvidia driver. So, my question is how do I compile the 2.6.39 PAE kernel to use the nvidia driver?

Cheers

EmyrB

[DrHu]

One could always create a custom kernel to add or remove device support,--it will always be custom, but based off the generic kernel, meaning that most items won't change, only the device you need to add or edit..
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel/Compile

• Reasons for compiling a custom kernel
  * You have hardware the stock Ubuntu kernel does not support.
  Reasons for NOT compiling a custom kernel
  * You merely need to compile a special driver. For this, you only need to install the linux-headers packages

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnablingPAE
http://credentiality2.blogspot.com/2009 ... reaks.html
pae and nvidia driver..

http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... -1004.html
a little further data ref: nvidia driver install, depends on your version of Linux ?
list]This bug still is present in 11.04.
After upgrading my system, the pae kernel is automatically selected and the nvidia binary driver is not working!
[/list]

Possibly it is still a bug...
http://www.mailrepository.com/ubuntu-bu ... g/3772448/

[affirmedatheist]

Yeah, apparently there have been some problems in LMDE with the architecture change from standard to PAE kernels. The linux-headers for 2.6.39 are apparently not getting downloaded when people update (nvidia's driver requires these to compile its driver against). This is ok, you can manually install them from the command line and run a reinstall of the nvidia drivers.

First, check EXACTLY the name of the kernel:

Code: Select all

uname -a

Then:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.39-2-[your architecture] 

You can use aptitude in place of apt-get if you prefer.

(I've made these instructions generic for the sake of anybody else who comes along. in your case it would be i686-PAE or something similar).

After this just run a reinstall of the nVidia drivers and things should be back to normal. Hope this helps.

[EmyrB]

Thanks guys. I'll give each suggestion a go.

Cheers

EmyrB

[CiaW]

You'll probably also want to install the nvidia-kernel-dkms package, here's the description:
Provided that you have the kernel header packages installed, the kernel
module will be built for your running kernel and automatically rebuilt for
any new kernel headers that are installed.
The NVIDIA binary drivers provide optimized hardware acceleration of
OpenGL applications via a direct-rendering X Server for graphics cards
using NVIDIA chip sets. AGP, PCIe, SLI, TV-out and flat panel displays
are also supported.

[EmyrB]

@affirmedathiest & CiaW - thanks guys, your suggestions worked like a charm. Although I think I'll stay the updates for a while as per this topic: - http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=76239

Cheers

EmyrB