linux-kbuild-2.6.29 - backport your own NOW

Yes, Once you have installed, go to Synaptic (do it now, don't install again!). You have to "reload". Then do "mark all upgrades". You can also do this from terminal with: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade Update means "update package lists from the enabled repositories". Upgrade means "update packages which are installed but not up to date". In a month or two, several packages will be outdated. Some packages the CD installed are outdated today. I mean, upgrading is a "good practice" after installing any GNU/Linux distro but it is not really necessary for the purposes of this tutorial. In this case, nothing to do with the NVIDIA installer. GNU/Linux is flexible to a great extent. I think that's why many people get lost, because this is not a "next-next-next" way of doing things. In addition, it's difficult to document how to do things when there are at least three ways of getting the same result, and ten ways more of getting similar but slightly different results. But mind that many times instructions omit steps that are "taken for granted". The tooltips and help in the GUI's help a lot. For the terminal, you have the man pages. As an example, do a "man apt-get". I like GNU/Linux because it puts logic over intuition, whereas "the other" OS puts intuition over logic. Intuition is poor and full of prejudices. Logic is much better but it requires a mental effort and a lot of reading and experimenting yourself. Sorry, I'm going off-topic. Don't forget that this is a beta release. Anyway, I'm trying to encourage you, not the contrary. 64Studio 3.0 beta is a great distro and it works very well on the whole and most things "out of the box". When it reaches the official release, you will only have to upgrade, as per step one. Ubuntu documentation is a very good place to look at. https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/index.html Also, the WIKIpedia, I also like tuxfiles. Of course, FAQ's and Manual here (although they are not up to date in some cases). Back to the topic, I don't quite understand that part where NVIDIA installer tries something and it fails. You don't need it. Go ahead and the driver will built into the actual kernel you have. At least, it went smoothly in my case. Use TAB to select one option or the other. I can't remember exactly but it is not a big deal. Tell us how it went. You almost have it! Cheers! Pablo.

Hi Pablo, I followed your very clear instructions to the letter and almost got to the Nvidia driver. During the install the Nvidia driver says that it does not recognize the kernel and wants to find a preconfigured kernel. I let it try to find it at the Nvidia site and it fails. I did have a question about your comment #1 above where you recommend updating the clean install of the beta by installing anything updateable. By that do you mean before I go to step 2? Thanks, James

Hi Pablo, I will make a run at this today or tomorrow. Thanks so much for the very clear instructions. James

I can confirm Pablo's post this is the way I used to install NVidia dirver and works ok on my 8600GT Bye

I have followed Quentin's instructions and voilà. I will try to put them more clearly for beginners. You can "select and drop" (drop with the middle button) from here to the terminal, where needed. I have done this: 1) From a clean beta install, you have to upgrade the distro. You can use synaptic and update all updatable packages. This will install some more. Go ahead. Reboot if you are asked to do so. 2) Install the build-essential package, from synaptic or with sudo apt-get install build-essential 3) Edit the sources.list and add the sid repository: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list Add: deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free 4) In terminal (#these are my comments): sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get build-dep linux-kbuild-2.6.29 #ignore the key error mkdir kbuild cd kbuild sudo apt-get -b source linux-kbuild-2.6.29 sudo dpkg -i *.deb 5) Edit again the sources.list and remove or comment out the sid repository 6) Update the package lists and install linux headers (you also can do this from synaptic): sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.29-1-all 7) Download the Nvidia driver from Nvidia site. I have put on the Desktop the file "NVIDIA.....(your version).sh" (From here Dave's instructions, slightly changed, as I have not installed gcc-4.1 neither have I needed) 8) Drop to shell by [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F1] 9) Run the Nvidia installer: Login with your username and password sudo -i #superuser shell cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup #back it up!! cd /home/username/Desktop #then you can do a "ls" to check NVIDIA driver is here telinit 3 /etc/init.d/gdm stop sh NVIDIA....(your version).run #Use [TAB] to autocomplete NV[TAB] 10) Go ahead with the default options. 11) Add "nvidia" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf: nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf At Section "Device", above "EndSection". Write: Driver "nvidia" Or if there is a line with Driver "nv" change it to "nvidia" (not in my case) Save changes with ctrl+O halt Reboot. Try activating the "normal" effects. They should work. I have a GeForce 8400 GS I need (sometimes) the effects and I like googleearth so I choose the propietary driver. That's my choice, I'm not 100% free software though. Nothing is perfect. I hope this helps. Cheers! Pablo

Hi James, Adding the Sid repository is done exclusively to install the kbuild package as per Quentin's instructions, just because you can't do that with the ubuntu and 64studio "official" repositories. The key error is normal and it does not avoid that the kbuild package can be installed (although Alex has had problems anyway so he has used another estrategy). Once installed the kbuild package Sid has done his work. "linux-headers-2.6.29-1-all" is already backported from Sid to the 64studio repo, so you don't need it anymore. And believe me, you don't want it. Quentin is "breaking a rule" for a particular purpose. From the Debian site: "sid" is subject to massive changes and in-place library updates. This can result in a very "unstable" system which contains packages that cannot be installed due to missing libraries, dependencies that cannot be fulfilled etc. Use it at your own risk! The key is that you need the "linux-headers" to install the nvidia driver but the linux headers won't install without this workaround. I'm going to try this and report here. Cheers! Pablo.

Alex, In your note to Quentin you stated: "I simply added the repo to synaptic, and installed kbuild and source from there. No problems, and i too have a running driver/module." How did you do that? Was it in the sources.list file? I am running into all kinds of trouble getting it done the way Quentin did. I am new but very determined and want to learn. Thanks for your help in advance. James

Hi Pablo, I tried the update per Quentin's tutorial above and got in to a jam where it said I did not have the proper key for the Sid repo. I then went to debian and downloaded the new kbuild kernel and such. And, I somehow got it to work. The only hitch was that once again, the nvidia driver would not work on my system. Also, synaptic could not remove something. So, I really messed up the system and am a bit lost. I will reinstall the beta3 and try again. What confuses me in the last entries here is the reference to removing sid from the sources.list when it was recommended by Quentin. I am still very new at this but bound and determined to get it working. James

As far as I know, the official Repos for 64Studio 3.0 are, at this time: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy main restricted multiverse universe deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy-updates main restricted multiverse universe deb http://apt.64studio.com/backports hardy-backports main There was a "deb http://people.64studio.com/~free/64studio ./" but it was deprecated. Please, Dave, Quentin, can you confirm this? I' ve added the medibuntu repo for hardy to have some codecs and apps needed for playing DVD's and Win videos, and googleearth and things of the sort: deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free (got the PUB Key from the medibuntu site) These four are the ones that I have permanently active. In case a particular package is needed from other repo, I activate it provisionally, download-install and de-activate immediately afterwards, not to forget. This is especially important in some cases, for example when you use a bleeding edge and unstable repository like Sid. As long as you pick a package from there and it has no dependencies, it can be OK, but you are warned. For example, Synaptic will tell you that there are newer versions of packages. But these may or may not be from 64studio. You can mess up your system very easily! Mind the repositories! I understand your English perfectly :). I am not a native speaker either. Don't worry, we all are learning everyday! Cheers! Pablo.

Hi Pablo I consider another time your and Quentin opinions and I removed SID repo. Your suggets are right. Question : what's the best sources.list file for 64STudio 3.0 alpha3 with "official" and added repo ? Please be patience with me for my language and if you don't understand please tell me I try to explain better Bye Guido

Hi Guido, Once the problem it's there, it won't be solved just by removing the sid repo. Believe Quentin, remove it now or it will cause problems not easy to solve by a non expert user. You can enable "foreign" repos for installing particular packages that you know they help, like in this case. But keep the sid repo enabled and you will end up with an unstable system before you even realise what happened. Sticking to the distro's official repos is for our best, we, the plain users. Problems that arise can be discussed here because are common to 64studio users and maintainers should know. Mixing repos is your worst bet, I can tell you at my own experience. EDIT: You can just "comment it" by putting an # before it. This way, you disable it without removing the line. Also, I usually put a comment above the new line, as a reminder, in my own language, like: I added this one to have the linux-headers. See http://www.64studio.com/comment/edit/4586 Of course, with an "#" before it. (oh, if I write it, the letters get bigger, and the "#" disappears, but this is just this forum's thing) Cheers! Pablo.

Hu Quentin. Thanks for answer and for your explain. I think not remove this repo now . If in the fiture this cause problem I'll removed it immediatley Bye Guido

1) Solution would be the inclusion of the linux-kbuild packages to out 64 Studio repository - In the pipeline 2) Not a problem, because we would normally not want to install anything from debian SID 3) Yes, remove Sid - it is a possible cause of trouble - you don't want...

Hi guys . First I must tell about an error after add of repo in sources.list and start with sudo apt.get update W: GPG error: http://ftp.debian.org sid Release: The followinf signature are not verified beacuse public key are not available : NO_PUBKEY A70DAF536070D3A1 W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems But Unfortunately, re-running apt-get update did not fix anything. I have start to install packet anyway and installation work ok on my &$ STUDIO 3.0 BETA 3 already installed, but after this finally I can be able to install NVidia driver originally forn NVidia from my 8600GT 180.44 by Nvidia installer and 3D acceleration now is ok. Then I have some questions 1.there- a solution for this ? 2. Is not a problem ? 3.after installation of packet it-s better to remove repo forn sources.list ? See you later Bye Guido

Quentins howto worked fine on beta3 clean install. Update: Built linux-kbuild-2.6.29 on two different PC's. Installed headers, source and nVidia driver on one. Cheers! Dave.

Quentin, I simply added the repo to synaptic, and installed kbuild and source from there. No problems, and i too have a running driver/module. So it's fixed, and most significantly, synaptic didn't throw up any dependency errors. Alex.

Hi. Ok, i managed to build linux-kbuild, but the nvidia building failed because of xen. "The NVIDIA driver does not currently work on Xen kernels" he told me. How did you avoid this problem? Do i have to build the kernel without Xen support? Thanx.

Yep... 64

hhm, ok, thanks. Same here. And you're building this as 64bit, yes? Alex.

libperl5.8 (5.8.8-12ubuntu0.4)

Quentin, can you tell me which version of libperl5 you have installed? Alex.

It looks like there might be a problem somewhere in the dependencies... Mine worked perfectly :-S I am actually typing this of my freshly booted system running the latest nVidia driver from their site. Going to try it on my laptop quickly Cheers, Q

Quentin, i get the following build fail with the "sudo apt-get -b source linux-kbuild-2.6.29" command: make[2]: Entering directory `/home/alex/kbuild/linux-kbuild-2.6-2.6.29' dh_testdir Undefined subroutine &Getopt::Long::GetOptionsFromArray called at /usr/share/perl5/Debian /Debhelper/Dh_Getopt.pm line 76. make[2]: *** [install-kbuild] Error 255 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/alex/kbuild/linux-kbuild-2.6-2.6.29' make[1]: *** [binary-arch] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/alex/kbuild/linux-kbuild-2.6-2.6.29' make: *** [binary-arch] Error 2 dpkg-buildpackage: failure: debian/rules binary gave error exit status 2 Build command 'cd linux-kbuild-2.6-2.6.29 && dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc' failed. E: Child process failed Any clues? Alex.