X server on lenny - broken after today's dist-upgrade
 

On Sat, Nov 17, 2007 at 20:08:33 -0800, David Fox wrote:
> I am having a problem and I've only got a minimal xfce4 setup right
> now, enough to press alt-f2 to run iceweasel. I've basically lost the
> ability to start x into my normal KDE environment. I get some errors
> on the controlling terminal - these error messages are strange to me.
> startkde never gets to start; I get a blue screen with a mouse cursor,
> and nothing more.
>
> In desperation, I tried geting X back by doing a basic reinstall of
> the xserver-xorg package but in turn seemingly lost nvidia - and now I
> cannot install nvidia-glx. I had it running (from sid) up until now.
> Most if not everything xserver-xorg is running from sid rather than
> from lenny because at the time lenny did not have nvidia-kernel-source
> or the proper revision of nvidia-glx.
>
> When I attempt to install nvidia-glx I get unresolved dependencies
> wanting nvidia-kernel-100.14.19, saying this is a virtual package. But
> I want nvidia-kernel-source and nvidia-kernel-common, right?

Yes, and then you need to auto-install the nvidia kernel module with
module assistant. This will generate and install a .deb file which
provides "nvidia-kernel-100.14.19". Afterwards it should be possible to
install the nvidia-glx package.

> I have those two packages installed from sid's repository but still
> can't get nvidia-glx (re)installed.
>
> Also this setup as it is is difficult to get a cut/paste or a script
> of the error(s) I get when I try and startx with my normal kde
> install. But I remember errors along the line of bad font path element
> - and unfortunately, nothing in /var/log/Xfree86 seems to be there
> detailing these errors.

The relevant file is /var/log/Xorg.0.log. (The Xfree86 file only
contains stale leftovers from your pre-Etch days.)

> I'll probably follow up to this message in a little bit.

I saw your other mail, but the startup messages do not provide anything
that is useful, therefore I continue the thread here.

> Meanwhile, X is at least *somewhat* usable but this partial xfce
> environment I have (no taskbars, no panel, nothing but a gray screen
> and alt-f2 to run an app) isn't wanting to be tried that much longer.

My guess is that there is a problem with GLX; nvidia-glx and
xserver-xorg-core tend to play tug-of-war with libglx.so in
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/. The Debian nvidia packages use
dpkg-divert to avoid this, but an unclean deinstallation of the nvidia
packages can lead to lingering problems with the normal libglx from
Xorg. ("I seemingly lost nvidia" sounds like this might have happened to
you.)

At the moment it seems to me that you have a fair chance of getting the
nvidia driver to work again if you rebuild the kernel module with
module-assistant and reinstall nvidia-glx. That is what I would try
first.

If that does not work then I would purge all nvidia packages ("remove"
is not enough), reinstall xserver-xorg-core and set xorg.conf to use the
"nv" driver. If this does not give you a fully functional Xorg and KDE
(except for 3D acceleration, of course) then you should run

egrep '^((EE|WW))' /var/log/Xorg.0.log > errors.txt

and send errors.txt to the list. (Please try to convince Gmail to attach
the file as "text/plain" and not as an "application/octet-stream" in
base64 encoding.)

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Florian |


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X server on lenny - broken after today's dist-upgrade
 

On 11/18/07, Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian@icfo.es> wrote:

> Yes, and then you need to auto-install the nvidia kernel module with
> module assistant. This will generate and install a .deb file which
> provides "nvidia-kernel-100.14.19". Afterwards it should be possible to
> install the nvidia-glx package.

Aha. I ddn't have that missing step. module-assistant simply
reinstalled the .deb I already had, which was living in /usr/src.

> I saw your other mail, but the startup messages do not provide anything
> that is useful, therefore I continue the thread here.

I was really wondering about those 'bad path' messages in the start
up, and not being able to get startkde to run. I understand not having
'cyrillic' and that's OK since I don't do Russian, and just having
that font path get deleted on startup is fine by me. It was those
other errors "expecting keysym" lines also that are throwing me for a
loop.

Meanwhile, I've since restarted X with the nvidia driver, and all is
fine at least running xfce4 - I remembered of course to save my
original tweaked xorg.conf to a different name while I was trying to
figure it out.


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X server on lenny - broken after today's dist-upgrade
 

On Sun November 18 2007, David Fox wrote:
> Meanwhile, I've since restarted X with the nvidia driver, and all is
> fine at least running xfce4 - I remembered of course to save my
> original tweaked xorg.conf to a different name while I was trying to
> figure it out.

well, it bit me today. I had to reboot, I thought I had a mail issue. When I
rebooted, all I got was the console login, no X..
changed xorg.conf to nv from nvidia, and at least I am back in X..

runny lenny ~$ uname -r
2.6.22-2-686


--
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux user # 367800
Registered Ubuntu User #12459


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X server on lenny - broken after today's dist-upgrade
 

On Sun November 18 2007, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> Yes, and then you need to auto-install the nvidia kernel module with
> module assistant. This will generate and install a .deb file which
> provides "nvidia-kernel-100.14.19". Afterwards it should be possible to
> install the nvidia-glx package.

could you explain this a little more??
I am running 2.6.22-2-686 and have an NVIDIA graphics card
nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7300 LE]"

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Paul Cartwright
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Registered Ubuntu User #12459


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X server on lenny - broken after today's dist-upgrade
 

On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 07:36:17 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:
> On Sun November 18 2007, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> > Yes, and then you need to auto-install the nvidia kernel module with
> > module assistant. This will generate and install a .deb file which
> > provides "nvidia-kernel-100.14.19". Afterwards it should be possible to
> > install the nvidia-glx package.
>
> could you explain this a little more??
> I am running 2.6.22-2-686 and have an NVIDIA graphics card
> nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7300 LE]"

Provided you have unstable/non-free in your sources.list, it should work
like this:

- Install the "module-assistant" package.

- Run "m-a update" and "m-a prepare" as root.

- Then you can try to build and install the module like this:

m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source

(Users of older cards will need nvidia-kernel-legacy-96xx-source or
nvidia-kernel-legacy-71xx-source instead.)

- If you are successful in the previous steps then it should be possible
to install the nvidia-glx package from unstable.

--
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Florian |


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X server on lenny - broken after today's dist-upgrade
 

On Mon November 19 2007, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> > could you explain this a little more??
> > I am running 2.6.22-2-686 and have an NVIDIA graphics card
> > nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7300 LE]"
>
> Provided you have unstable/non-free in your sources.list, it should work
> like this:
>
> - Install the "module-assistant" package.
>
> - Run "m-a update" and "m-a prepare" as root.
>
> - Then you can try to build and install the module like this:
>
> * m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source
>
> * (Users of older cards will need nvidia-kernel-legacy-96xx-source or
> * *nvidia-kernel-legacy-71xx-source instead.)
>
> - If you are successful in the previous steps then it should be possible
> * to install the nvidia-glx package from unstable.

that worked, thanks.
I was also able to get the NVIDIA driver working, using the beta driver,
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.04-pkg1.run



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Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux user # 367800
Registered Ubuntu User #12459