Newest upgrade of Debian testing breaks Nvidia & Xorg

[shmerl]

I actually tried to install the driver from the nvidia site, but their installer was halting with a SIGTERM right after accepting the license.

[wayne128]

I actually tried to install the driver from the nvidia site, but their installer was halting with a SIGTERM right after accepting the license.

Try to learn and use smxi/sgfxi to install and manage nVidia driver.
works for Debian and all Debian based distros I tried.

[bommi]

I actually tried to install the driver from the nvidia site, but their installer was halting with a SIGTERM right after accepting the license.

remove nvidia-installer-cleanup, then it should go.

[gouch]

I've got fglrx & narrowly avoided uninstalling it from my wheezy system. It wanted to install a new xserver-xorg-core & libgl1-mesa dri&glx. I'm careful now - I used to do indiscriminate updates, but with testing that's not a good idea. Most of the time you're OK - then a kernel or X-related update comes along & boom! I think 11.6 is in unstable, I assume that's what's needed in wheezy

[gonzalocasas]

In case it helps anyone, I had the exact same problem (on amd64) and instead of reverting the mesa driver, I fixed it installing the newer nvidia drivers from unstable:

1. Added 'unstable' to /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Update & install from unstable

Code: Select all

# apt-get update
# apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms/unstable nvidia-glx/unstable

3. Remove 'unstable' from /etc/apt/sources.list

Reboot and you're done!

[shmerl]

So when this bug would be eventually fixed, dist-upgrade won't try to remove Nvidia drivers anymore? So far they are still targeted for removal.

[bugsbunny]

So when this bug would be eventually fixed, dist-upgrade won't try to remove Nvidia drivers anymore? So far they are still targeted for removal.

Why are you running dist-upgrade? When running testing you should be running safe-upgrade (in aptitude) or just plain upgrade (apt-get).

After running those, if there are still packages that where help back you might consider running a full/dist upgrade, after understanding what packages didn't safe upgrade and why. Otherwise just wait and eventually the held back packages will upgrade once everything in testing synchs up again correctly.

[g1annos]

I'm not proceeding to the update in order not to brake my system. Everyday I scan the repositories for new updates and I make the first step in order to update the packages, but unfortunately everyday it says that it will remove nvidia driver.

So, when the fix is released it will no more prompt me to remove nvidia driver, right? I have to wait until that day eh? How log you think it will take?

[shmerl]

Why are you running dist-upgrade? When running testing you should be running safe-upgrade (in aptitude) or just plain upgrade (apt-get).

After running those, if there are still packages that where help back you might consider running a full/dist upgrade, after understanding what packages didn't safe upgrade and why. Otherwise just wait and eventually the held back packages will upgrade once everything in testing synchs up again correctly.

I see what you mean. As far as I understand, apt-get upgrade tries to upgrade existing packages, and avoids touching those which changed dependencies, dist-upgrade on the other hand updates all dependencies and packages to the latest condition. But why does dist-upgrade potentially allow inconsistencies? I.e. should be stuff like removing nvidia drivers avoided in the first place? Or the nature of testing allows that? (I've heard something about plans to create a "rolling" slice of Debian, which would avoid these kind of problems, but I'm just trying to figure out whether such disappearing packages are a bug even for testing, or it's an normal situation).

[odinbaal]

Well, this bug/breakage was the thing which convinced me, after a year or so of using testing only (wheezy), to go back to stable (now 6.02).

I can't afford to spend so much time fixing problems (and downloading so many updates), and I'm aware that it was a risk I took when using testing.

Now back to stable and quite happy with the decision.

[julian516]

Yup, Stable is Stable for a reason. Fun to run closer to the edge but having Stable on the drive is a very nice thing.

BTW smxi users will see h2 strongly advising against any upgrades. I used to do the "sidux tango", which is to say "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" but after a number of explosions I have found smxi much better. At this point is smxi says "don't" I don't.

[mousomer]

I had a similar problem. Using unstable on my laptop, because stable drivers don't work for me (dell XPS 701L).
I upgraded via synaptic, and it killed my xserver.
Solution (as superuser):

Code: Select all

aptitude purge ~nvidia
cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
dpkg -i DRIVERS

for all old Nvidia packages
and then

Code: Select all

apt-get install nvidia-xconfig

solved it.

[g1annos]

Isn't it fixed yet?

I haven't do any update till now, there are several updates waiting, and whenever I mark to do the updates it prompts to remove nvidia-xlg and some relatives.

Is there something going to happen?

[_Alex_]

Isn't it fixed yet?

I haven't do any update till now, there are several updates waiting, and whenever I mark to do the updates it prompts to remove nvidia-xlg and some relatives.

Is there something going to happen?

No, it is not fixed yet and removing nvidia-glx will make X stop starting (just did that one hour ago).

I used the solution by gonzales; installing from unstable works for me :

I fixed it installing the newer nvidia drivers from unstable:

1. Added 'unstable' to /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Update & install from unstable

Code: Select all

# apt-get update
# apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms/unstable nvidia-glx/unstable

3. Remove 'unstable' from /etc/apt/sources.list
Reboot and you're done!

[odinbaal]

Still broken...

Yesterday put my remastersys dvd, installed wheezy again (before the suspicious updates), fired up synaptic, updated fully (more than 200 Mbs), restarted, back to black screen. Even running smxi from cli with the fetching of newest nvidia driver didn't help, complained of conflict with old nvidia. Go figure...

So back to squeeze!

[sej7278]

Isn't it fixed yet?

I haven't do any update till now, there are several updates waiting, and whenever I mark to do the updates it prompts to remove nvidia-xlg and some relatives.

Is there something going to happen?

its pretty crazy its taking this long - i thought all they had to do was blacklist some part of it?

what i've been doing is using synaptic's gui and picking all the non-nvidia or X11 packages to be updated.

[roseway]

As far as I know, the problem is with nvidia-glx. If you uninstall this before running sgfxi, it ought to be OK. I've got the nVidia driver installed via sgfxi and the current problem hasn't touched me.

[h2]

You don't need to change to stable, that's silly.

If you see a complaint about a conflict, it means that sgfxi was unable to remove the nvidia dkms garbage, which is a bug in the dkms packaging. I can't have sgfxi purge dkms itself because other modules might also be under its control, sad to say, though I may have to add a feature that allows that if the user selects that choice, I'm not really sure how to handle these package breaks to be honest, to me, a debian package should be cleanly installable and cleanly removable, but that is simply not happening, and why, I cannot say.

The solution is to get rid of dkms, then everything will work fine.

I have no idea why the nvidia dkms packages are being allowed into the debian pool at this point,. because a simple: apt-get remove nvidia-current-dkms should remove the package, but it fails due to packaging errors and conflicts.

That's what sgfxi attempts to do, prior to driver install, but I can't track the various inconsistencies and packing errors that have long been a hallmark of those packaged drivers month to month, so I years ago permanently solved that problem by never using them. they are fine in stable pool releases, they are not fine in rolling releases. sgfxi tries to remove all nvidia/fglrx packages, and that removal should be clean and final, but something changed recently that makes dkms puke and die on removal, and then fail, which makes the nvidia package removal fail, which makes the direct nvidia installer run fail. There's very little I can do more than sgfxi already does to handle this, I suggest filing bug reports on the dkms package removal failure, I guess, but I suppose I could insert a user interactive option that would allow them to purge everything, including dkms, which tends to solve the problem.

Ubuntu has the same problem by the way, which suggests to me that the debian package is just the ubuntu package slightly reworked, and this problem just started appearing in the last few months, that's all I know for certain, something changed, for ubuntu users, the only solution is to purge dkms, then proceed, then everything is fine.

Remember, all the debian nvidia packages do is put a wrapper over the nvidia binary blob, there's nothing magical or special about them, and dkms from what I can see has been broken by design ever since its introduction, except for stable pools, which is what Dell originally coded it to handle. In other words, the packaged debian drivers add one layer of failure, and dkms adds another, and 3 layers of possible failure is in my opinion too many for my taste. Dkms itself is a huge mess, and doesn't even have simple clean ways to remove modules, that's why I avoid it always.

If there is some new procedure required now to remove nvidia dkms, please post the exact coded steps required so I can update sgfxi again to handle yet another dkms issue, why anything beyond dpkg --purge <nvidia packages> should be required however is totally incomprehensible, that's not how debian is supposed to work.

[julian516]

h2 says:

I years ago permanently solved that problem by never using them. they are fine in stable pool releases, they are not fine in rolling releases.

So should I infer that if we have nVidia graphics and we choose to run either wheezy or sid, that use of the nouveau driver is where we ought to be?

[shmerl]

There is no way out now, if you want accelerated OpenGL support with Nvidia hardware - you need their drivers. So having this mess is very unpleasant. For now I just do apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and nvidia relevant packages are shown as held back.