ubuntu-x-swat team mailing list archive

["Brian D. Carlstrom" <bdc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm adding this comment to document my own experience that I resolved
myself just to provide another datapoint.

I was running 9.04 with proprietary Nvidia drivers with rebuilds done
with DKMS (but installed via Ubuntu restricted drivers as fas as I can
recall, nothing done by hand).

After upgrade 9.10 could no longer compile the drivers with DKMS.
Reverting from "nvidia" to "nv" in xorg.conf would fix things. It was
disappointing that when X failed to start Ubuntu didn't automatically
fall back into some safe mode which I've seen distros (including Ubuntu
I believe) do before.

The problem with DKMS was that I was using a -i386 kernel, not -generic
(linux-image-386 vs linux-image-generic). However, the wrong headers
were installed (linux-headers-generic instead of linux-headers-386).
Once I installed linux-headers-386 DKMS was able to build the nvidia
driver and I was able to switch my xorg.conf back.

I can imagine than a non-technical user would have been hopeless to
debug or resolve this.

Myself, I'm not sure what happened with 386 vs generic for the my
kernel. I don't remember what I ran before in 9.04 but I don't recall
manually choosing such a thing before. I append my /proc/cpuinfo before.
One off the top of my head theory is somehow during the upgrade either
my kernel was switched from -generic to -i386 or my headers were
switched from -i386 to -generic or some "unnecessary" package was
removed (linux-headers-386) even thought it was needed to compile nvidia
with DKMS...

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 8
model name      : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping        : 6
cpu MHz         : 996.663
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 mmx fxsr sse up
bogomips        : 1993.32
clflush size    : 32
power management:

-- 
upgrade breaks graphic drivers and x, preventing login or startx
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/464591
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