Bug#702782: broken glx alternative

[Andreas Beckmann]

Hi Gaudenz,

On 2013-03-12 15:07, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
> You could still manage the alternatives from the nvidia package, but
> instead of doing it with the nvidia alternative just directly add it as
> another option to the glx alternative.

one of the problems was the priority space ... which package gets which
priority?
* mesa
* fglrx
* fglrx-legacy (currently not co-installable with fglrx since it came
last-minute and did not make it into testing)
* nvidia 96xx legacy
* nvidia 173xx legacy
* nvidia 304xx legacy
* nvidia current
(it's even possible to turn every nvidia major version branch into a
co-installable (currently excluding -dkms) set of legacy-ABCxx packages)


>> please try
>>   dpkg-reconfigure glx-alternative-nvidia
>> after manually changing the nvidia alternative
> 
> Yes that works. But with the package from experimental it also updates
> the initramfs. Which takes some time if done during boot and is quite
> useless unless your next boot is on the same hardware.
> 
> To just fix the alternative "update-alternatives --set glx
> /usr/lib/nvidia" is enough. But it's IMHO still a bug that you have to
> fiddle with the glx alternative just to fix the nvidia one.

Well, I haven't done detailed testing of the switching in a life-system
relevant setup involving manual configuration (or 'automatic' manual
setting of the nvidia and glx alternatives). As long as only packages
are installed/removed, the alternatives are correct.

Anyway, it's too late to change anything significant here for wheezy, so
the only thing could be to document this properly. I've added the
dpkg-reconfigure command to README.alternatives that will be in 304.84
... but that is probably not the place where people will look.


Andreas