How to fix Debian install mising nvidia driver

[HughKelley]

After installing Debian 9 on an Asus n56jn, at boot I run into two error messages:

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GNU/Linux 9 localhost tty1
localhost login [] nuoveau 0000:03:00.0: DRM: Pointer to TMDS table invalid
[ ] nouveau 0000:03:00.0: DRM: Pointer to flat panel table invalid.

Reading online, it looks pretty likely that this is caused by a missing driver for the laptop's nvidia graphics card.

When I was going through the GUI set up process, I wasn't able to set up a network connection either ethernet or wifi and skipped it thinking I could go back. I'm guessing that this prevented Debian from automatically installing the required driver from the internet.

My basic question is: should I remove the debian installation and redo everything, hopefully working out whatever connection problem I ran into and thereby solving the issue, or try to fix the existing install?

Sub question, what is the black and white screen where I'm seeing the above error messages? Is that just debian without a GUI or something else?

Thanks!

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Reading online, it looks pretty likely that this is caused by a missing driver for the laptop's nvidia graphics card.

The message is from the nouveau driver so it seems to be installed.

Have you seen this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=199578

Are you suffering from any other problems apart from the error messages?

what is the black and white screen where I'm seeing the above error messages? Is that just debian without a GUI

Yes.

The program is agetty(8) and it serves as a TTY.

[HughKelley]

ok, good point about the source of the error.

I saw a ton of stuff after googling, just wasn't sure how aggressive I should be able using solutions from other distros.

I'm not aware of other issues but I'm really taking them one at a time so not really sure what I'll run into once this is fixed.

Once I get these errors figured out, if everything else is good I should expect it to continue loading all the way into the gui I saw when I was setting up?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

should expect it to continue loading all the way into the gui I saw when I was setting up?

Is the GUI actually installed?

If you used the netinstall ISO and were unable to get a connection then that seems unlikely.

You can install a desktop with

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tasksel

Not sure if it will load with kernel mode setting disabled though (it won't for my Intel hardware).

[HughKelley]

yeah it looks like there's no GUI available. When I ask to start gdm3 or to install it it isn't found.

Seems weird though because when I booted off a usb initially there was a GUI available for the setup process. Not sure why it wouldn't continue to be available.

it's all good I have a ton of stuff to learn/figure out.

e.g. I spent 10 minutes thinking I'd forgotten how to correctly type my root p/w until I learned that I can't just use those credentials to log in the way I would the non super user credentials.

Thanks for the help.

[stevepusser]

Usually you just need a firmware package from the non-free part of the Debian repos to get wi-fi and maybe wired NICs running. They aren't on the regular install ISO for Debian free software policy reasons, but there are Debian ISOs that contain the firmware.

You have an Optimus laptop where the Intel GPU will be controlling the display, so the nouveau warning is probably a red herring for any display problems.