Nearly wrecked system with steam install, nvidia drv problem

[moongate]

Hello All,

Linux is my first foreign language in terms of operating systems. I'm practicing since I got a hold of Suse back in 1998 from University and had a look into some distributions over time until I finally found myself at home with Debian Wheezy.

I have it installed on my Dell D830 dual core with Nvidia NVS 140m and use it on a daily basis. I switched it to KDE and have everything I ever wanted all the years before: Wifi, Bluetooth, Shares, Multimedia - I love it.

It could have gone on like that until I decided I wanted to try to get Steam running which is not as easy as running apt-get install steam.

I had to add testing repo, activated multiarch and finally wanted to have the latest Nvidia driver for my card (NVS 140m) running.

I ended up uninstalling half my system by sudo apt-get -t testing install libc6 and did some more stupid things to end up without X and just a text login.

I fixed everything back to the point that KDE is running but it is laggy now as only some kind of generic graphics driver is loaded now.

Following various tutorials I was not able to install nvidia-glx as dependencies and broken packages blocked my way.

What brought me back to a KDE screen was:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude -r install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') nvidia-kernel-dkms

But what I really want is:

1. root@debian:~$ apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

2. root@debian:~$ apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-glx build-essential nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

3. root@debian:~$ apt-get install nvidia-kernel-legacy-173xx-dkms nvidia-glx-legacy-173xx build-essential nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

4. root@debian:~$ apt-get install nvidia-kernel-legacy-196xx-dkms nvidia-glx-legacy-96xx build-essential nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

5. root@debian:~$ nvidia-xconfig -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Step 1 is working fine.

Step 2 results in:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-glx build-essential nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig
Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut.
Statusinformationen werden eingelesen.... Fertig
Einige Pakete konnten nicht installiert werden. Das kann bedeuten, dass
Sie eine unmögliche Situation angefordert haben oder, wenn Sie die
Unstable-Distribution verwenden, dass einige erforderliche Pakete noch
nicht erstellt wurden oder Incoming noch nicht verlassen haben.
Die folgenden Informationen helfen Ihnen vielleicht, die Situation zu lösen:

Die folgenden Pakete haben unerfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
build-essential : Hängt ab von: g++ (>= 4:4.4.3) soll aber nicht installiert werden
nvidia-glx : Hängt ab von: libgl1-nvidia-glx (= 304.88-1+deb7u1) soll aber nicht installiert werden
Hängt ab von: libxvmcnvidia1 (= 304.88-1+deb7u1) soll aber nicht installiert werden
Hängt ab von: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 304.88-1+deb7u1) soll aber nicht installiert werden
Hängt ab von: nvidia-alternative (= 304.88-1+deb7u1)
Empfiehlt: libgl1-nvidia-glx-i386 ist aber nicht installierbar
E: Probleme können nicht korrigiert werden, Sie haben zurückgehaltene defekte Pakete.

Translation:

sudo apt- get install nvidia -kernel- dkms nvidia- glx build-essential nvidia-settings nvidia- xconfig
Reading package lists ... finished
Dependency tree .
Status information is read .... finished
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that
You have requested an impossible situation or if the
Use unstable distribution that some required packages have not
not have been created or have not left Incoming .
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies :
build-essential : Depends : g+ + but (> = 4:4.4.3 ) should not be installed
nvidia- glx : Depends : libgl1- nvidia- glx ( = 304.88-1 + deb7u1 ) but it is not installable
Depends on : libxvmcnvidia1 ( = 304.88-1 + deb7u1 ) but it is not installable
Depends : xserver- xorg-video- nvidia ( 304.88-1 + = deb7u1 ) but it is not installable
Depends : nvidia- alternative ( = 304.88-1 + deb7u1 )
Recommends : libgl1- nvidia- glx but -i386 is not installable
E : Problems can not be corrected , you have held broken packages back .


My sources.list changed over the period of troubleshooting - currently I have:

# deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositori ... light/Deb$

# ian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
# deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free

# Squeeze Backports
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main contrib$


#Third Parties Repos
#The Opera .deb Repository
# http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free [wanted to get this running with (wget -O - http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo apt-key add -) but it did not work out]

Any suggestions?

Moongate

[sunrat]

I think you broke it by installing libc6 from testing. There are a few threads on this forum where people have done that when "following some guide on the internet". Reinstall is probably the easiest solution.
Show us the output from

Code: Select all

apt-show-versions | grep testing

Next time, do a complete partition backup before doing risky things like this, Clonezilla works well.
A couple other points -
- linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') and linux-headers-`uname -r` will give you the same headers. The first is just a metapackage that will upgrade to a newer one if needed.
- You can't install 3 nvidia drivers as in your list 2,3 and 4. 2 is the one you want which is current version, 304.88.
- Next time you want to install Steam, use Ghost57Steam Installer for Wheezy. There are a few references to it in these forums.

[stevepusser]

Yup, another victim of mixing stable with upstream. You can back up your home folder and restore it after reinstall to get all your settings, etc., back.

Here's the link to sunrat's recommendation, at the moment, it's the only good way to get Steam on Wheezy.

https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-I ... for-Wheezy

READ THE WHOLE PAGE.

Read the wiki linked near the bottom.

The deb is in the Dropbox link near the bottom.

[moongate]

Hello Steve,

thank you very much for your reply.

Yes I'm not a good mixer yet as it seems

Will not try that again.

I reverted to the last running version via Clonezilla today and will follow the infos you provided to install steam that way.

Greetings

Moongate

[korilius]

Don't feel bad, I think everyone has wrecked their system at one point or another (I can definitely say *I* have). Best advice I follow is: If it's not in an official Debian repo somewhere, I don't use it unless I know absolutely what I'm doing and the benefits / consequences involved with proceeding to do it.

[buntunub]

Yup, another victim of mixing stable with upstream. You can back up your home folder and restore it after reinstall to get all your settings, etc., back.

Here's the link to sunrat's recommendation, at the moment, it's the only good way to get Steam on Wheezy.

https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-I ... for-Wheezy

READ THE WHOLE PAGE.

Read the wiki linked near the bottom.

The deb is in the Dropbox link near the bottom.

As always Steve, you are spot-on. I followed the GhostSquad57 install and it worked like a champ in Wheezy x64. Before that, STEAM did run but no games would launch due to GLIBC_2.15 errors.

[stevepusser]

Well, yes, we tested it pretty well before adding it to the meta-installer for MX 14.

[M51]

I think a lot of the "OMG I installed something and now my desktop is gone!" situations would go away if everyone simply knew to first use "-s" on any apt-get command to see what will happen before you trash your system.