Before I could finish composing a request for help, I solved my own
problem. I thought I'd finish the email in case anybody else runs into
the same issue.


Problem:

When I run various (new or old) versions of the nvidia installer
(provided by nvidia), it freezes right after I 'agree' on the license
agreement screen. Hopefully the screenshot gets sent to this list
properly? Before upgrading from etch to lenny, the nvidia driver
installed fine (with a legacy driver for the NVIDIA GPU Quadro FX 1000
(NV30GL) chipset).






There are some interesting spawned processes, which are inactive at
this point:
root 5893 3167 0 19:25 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-
x86-173.14.12-pkg1.run

root 5919 5893 0 19:25 pts/0 00:00:00 ./nvidia-installer
root 5928 5919 0 19:25 pts/0 00:00:00 sh -c env
LD_KERNEL_ASSUME=2.2.5 rpm --query NVIDIA_GLX 2>&1
root 5929 5928 0 19:25 pts/0 00:00:00 /usr/lib/rpm/rpmq --
query NVIDIA_GLX


The nvidia-installer log doesn't show anything of value.


Solution:

The process list gave it away. I guess the installer detected a rpm
binary and assumed that I was in a rpm based environment? I don't
actually use 'rpm' on this system so I apt-get removed it. After this,
the nvidia installer works fine.


-Chris

Solution:

The process list gave it away. I guess the installer detected a rpm
binary and assumed that I was in a rpm based environment? I don't
actually use 'rpm' on this system so I apt-get removed it. After
this, the nvidia installer works fine.


On second thought this isn't a solution, but rather a workaround. If
anybody figures out what might be wrong here, and knows how I might
install the nvidia drivers without removing the 'rpm' package I'd
appreciate it.


Thanks