On Mon, Jul 03, 2017 at 09:17:00AM -0700, tony mollica wrote: > On another note, > > just checking to see if anyone has used the nvidia driver (304 series) > install and if there were any problems that arose or needed to be resolved > either before or after the installation? > I had to do this for the first time with the upgrade to stretch, apparently my circa-2009 nvidia geforce card is now "legacy".
I did think the upgrade process was compromised a bit by this, but I got it working in the end. The upgrade news said "Don't install the new driver if you have an old card." Well thanks, but what am I supposed to do instead??? During the upgrade, it pointed out that my card was not supported by the new driver, and that I needed the legacy driver (previous question answered). It said, do you want to go ahead and install the new driver anyway? With the previous warnings not to install the new version ringing in my ears, I answered NO and the upgraded promptly stopped leaving my system in a broken state. apt-get dist-upgrade reported a shedload of dependency problems, and recommended running apt--fix-broken install to try to fix them. That worked and allowed me to complete the upgrade (which I was running in a virtual terminal having disabled Xorg before starting the upgrade). A reboot left me, as expected, with a broken X. I then installed the legacy driver which didn't immediately help. I faffed around for a bit trying to figure out what new driver was installed and being used. Once I did so, I uninstalled it and it complained / warned me that the xorg.conf was still referencing it. I set off to figure out what to do about that and eventually was able to find the nvidia setup tool which gave me a properly configured X which I was able to start and which works properly now at boot. Somewhere in there I realised I needed to separately install the legacy nvidia x server and uninstall the new one, since the dependencies on the driver didn't force that to happen. So lessons learned, dependencies / conflicts between nvidia packages, one version to another, and between them and the X servers they support, are a bit loose and removing one part of it doesn't remove the other parts or help you figure out what the other parts are. It wasn't as easy as it could have been but there were helpful nuggets here and there which, when combined by a reasonably technical person who was paying attention, could be pulled together into enough information to solve the problem and get it working. Mark
