Lucid upgrade: Nvidia or Nouveau I don't care...

[pcawdron]

It's been a week now... and at least eight hours trying this and that and something else... getting something as basic as a Nvidia video driver to work should not be so hard... it is very disappointing...

Does anyone know how to fix this?

[ratcheer]

I am bewildered by your problem. I hang out a good bit in the ubuntu channel on freenode.net (irc) and I am seeing quite a bit of similar troubles. I don't understand what is going wrong because the standard installation by the package manager has worked so well for my system.

On the other hand, I want to upgrade to the latest nvidia driver release, but I am waiting for it to go to the main repository, first. I am afraid that attempting a manual install will bork my system, too.

Tim

[Catharsis]

You could try booting with "nomodeset". Pretty sure this only work with nouveau though, not the proprietary driver.

1) Hold down Shift while booting to get to grub.
2) Hit 'e' to edit. Type "nomodeset" after "quiet splash".
3) Ctrl+x to boot.

[pcawdron]

You could try booting with "nomodeset". Pretty sure this only work with nouveau though, not the proprietary driver.

1) Hold down Shift while booting to get to grub.
2) Hit 'e' to edit. Type "nomodeset" after "quiet splash".
3) Ctrl+x to boot.

nomodeset didn't work with nvidia-current. I'll try it tonight with nouveau as I really don't care what works, I just want something to work... will also try going back a nvidia driver but I suspect it's Ubuntu not the driver set that's causing the issues...

[Beefboy17]

pcawdron - I blindly did the "upgrade" tonight and now have the same issues as you describe. Its been about 4 hours of reading / testing, and I am exactly to where you are now. I am probably more noob than you at this, but if I do find the answer I will post it here. -Beefboy17

[Beefboy17]

Before I go into describing what I have found, lets make sure we are actually experiencing the same issue. It seams that my issue can be boiled down to this example.

With all of the previously mentioned blacklist items added and previously installed nvidia software purged, I run

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Which returns the following... and on first look it looks as if it installs correctly, but I suspect not.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libgda3-sqlite
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
nvidia-current
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/23.3MB of archives.
After this operation, 72.5MB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package nvidia-current.
(Reading database ... 231886 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking nvidia-current (from .../nvidia-current_195.36.15-0ubuntu3_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up nvidia-current (195.36.15-0ubuntu3) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf (gl_conf) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 because associated file /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 (of link group gl_conf) doesn't exist.
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libvdpau_nvidia.so because associated file /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so (of link group gl_conf) doesn't exist.
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
Loading new nvidia-current-195.36.15 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building for 2.6.31-14-generic and 2.6.32-22-generic
Building for architecture i686
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
Building initial module for 2.6.32-22-generic
Done.

nvidia-current.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/2.6.32-22-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod....

DKMS: install Completed.

From the output above, this is the part that bothers me:

Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.

Here is the modprobe -

sudo modprobe nvidia
FATAL: Module nvidia not found.

Is this your same error? If so, here are two bugs that seam to resemble the issue possibly.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ey/+bug/503094
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ka...ey/+bug/451305

I am very very new to tracking down issues on this level, so if someone reads this and I am way off, please correct away.

[pcawdron]

Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.

I removed and reinstalled nvidia-current and got the same error you quoted above.

The strange thing, though, is the following are installed by the Ubuntu Software Centre

* Header files related to Linux kernel version 2.6.32
* Linux kernel headers for version 2.6.32 on x86/x86_64
* Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86/x86_64
* NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
* Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver

Currently, I'm backing everything up to an external HDD. Then I'll try a fresh install from a USB memory key to see if a fresh install fairs better than an upgrade.

[Beefboy17]

I am happy to report that my problem is FIXED, but it was different from yours in this thread. I blame my issue on user error.

uname -r indicated that I was running an old kernel, but the drivers were in fact being compiled correctly for the new 2.6.32-22 kernel that was not in use. This can even be seen in the previous log output I posted. So, why was I running an old kernel? This happened because I have a custom menu.lst file for grub and forgot that I did not want the installer for 10.04 to touch it during the upgrade. In my excitement for 10.04 I forgot to update a boot options in menu.lst for the new kernel after installation.

Solution - I made a new entry in menu.lst for the 2.6.32-22 kernel, rebooted and made sure uname -r indicated I was running it as expected. I then re-installed the nvidia-current driver install, rebooted. At this point the driver was properly installed but my xorg.conf file was not updated to use the driver. I found this because when I went to SYSTEM >ADMINISTRATION > HARDWARE DRIVERS it indicated the driver was properly installed but not in use. Instead of modifying the xorg.conf by hand to point to the nvidia driver, I ran "sudo nvidia-config" to let it do the dirty work. Rebooted, and now my screen is very nice.

Yes it turns out this was different from your issue but I thought my user-error experience may help someone else here if they see these types of symptoms.

I should have posted the uname -r output to begin with. Would have saved me many hours.

[pcawdron]

OK... the USB booted into Ubuntu with fully functioning NVIDIA drivers so rather than upgrading, I've done a re-install. First, I backed up everything to an external HDD, then, during the install, selected the following options...

* Specify partition manually (advanced)
* Change partition settings, select your existing partition and click change. "Use as" whatever your current file format is (mine was Ext3 so I simply selected that again). Don't format. Set the Mount point as /
* You'll be warned about directories that already exist being deleted, that's relating to system directories so don't worry, you'll have a chance a bit later to grab your personal directories and files
* Enter your computer name and password (I kept mine the same)
* Now you can "Migrate documents and settings" so click on your old home folder name

Fingers crossed, it all goes well. I'll update this post tonight, but I suspect that is (1) the issue resolved and (2) an install that didn't wipe out my previous files, pictures, videos, etc.

We'll see...

Damn... Ubuntu video ran fine from the USB but still failed with a clean install...

[2hot6ft2]

We think we found the fix for nvidia. And pcawdron you'll love this it's on an Australian forum.
First if using 64 bit you want to install the driver using the 2.6.32-21 kernel NOT the -22 kernel. We have tried pretty much every fix we could find and this one is looking like the best one yet.

So here's the fix.
http://ultimateeditionoz.com/forum/v...hp?f=69&t=1112

Replace the 2.6.32-22 kernel with the server kernel

sudo apt-get purge linux-headers-2.6.32-22 linux-image-2.6.32-22-generic

when that finishes install the server kernel per Blackwolfs's instructions

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server

You will have to reboot after it finishes.
That's it.
Let us know if it works or not for you, so far we're getting good results and we want this bug squashed.