Since the last testing update I have rebooted and found myself being ensnarled in what seems to be a kernel issue, whereby a module “nouveau” by default seizes control of the graphics card which prevents the nVidia driver from loading.
Here’s some history [1]
However, for some nouveau doesn’t seem to work as one would hope [2]. The problem is that nVidia drivers don’t load and therefore xorg can’t find any screens and X doesn’t load.
The resolution to this problem seems to boil down to two solutions:
1. If you use grub2 then edit
/etc/default/grub
then add
nouveau.modeset=0
to the end of the line that reads
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet”
(“quiet” seems a typical default option), so that that line now reads
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet nouveau.modeset=0″
run
update-grub2
and reboot. [3]
2. Add repository for experimental to apt sources, and in addition to the usual group you’d download to upgrade your kernel (i.e. module-assistant, nvidia-kernel-source, build-essential, etc.) also install
nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-dkms
and pursue the usual update process and reboot. [4]
Option 1 didn’t work for me, but that might be because I am using lilo and not grub
So I removed nouveau directly and then went for option 2 and rebooted.
Then I stopped the *DM
/etc/init.d/*dm stop
and installed the NVIDIA-*-pkg*.run and restarted my *DM
/etc/init.d/*dm start
All seems to be fine now. How sustainable this is though, I don’t know
I pass this along and hope that this helps anyone who finds themselves similarly disposed.
AG
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[1] http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.user/msg/9ab8ecdc1149f898 http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=151694&page=2 [2] http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2263528&postcount=1 [3] http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2263801&postcount=8 and http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2263812&postcount=12 [4] http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?s=751d48d7876bf377b3e02695fa186dde&p=2263851&postcount=14