thinking of use latest nvidia on wheezy

[Luca Boccassi]

On 2 January 2016 at 06:38, Ross Boylan <rossboylan at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
> My screen is now blank, even in the alternate, textual VT's.  The
> problem with the text VT's was happening before I installed the nvidia
> drivers, and so may be separate.
>
> After building a bunch of packages and dpkg -i them, on reboot Xorg.log shows
> [   126.926] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
> [   127.031] Parse error on line 7 of section OutputClass in file
> /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/nvidia\
> -drm-outputclass.conf
>         "OutputClass" is not a valid section name.
> [   127.031] (EE) Problem parsing the config file
> [   127.031] (EE) Error parsing the config file
> [   127.032]
> Fatal server error:
>
> The full text of that conf file is
> # This xorg.conf.d configuration snippet configures the X server to
> # automatically load the nvidia driver when it detects a device driven by the
> # nvidia.ko kernel module.  Please note that this only works on Linux kernels
> # version 3.9 or higher with CONFIG_DRM enabled, and only if the nvidia.ko
> # kernel module is loaded before the X server is started.
>
> Section "OutputClass"
>     Identifier     "nvidia"
>     MatchDriver    "nvidia-drm"
>     Driver         "nvidia"
> EndSection
>
> So it needs a newer X (I guess) and a newer kernel than I'm running.
> I see 3.16 is available from backports, but that still wouldn't take
> care of the X.
>
> Ideas?  Maybe if I took more of the packages from older versions,
> i.e., backports for wheezy, things would work better.

I forgot 3.2 was the kernel version in Wheezy main, sorry. To get the
autoload to work you'll need 3.16 from wheezy-backports, yes.

But it should not need on a newer version of the Xorg packages. Also
the newer version of the driver packages does not need a manually
written xorg.conf anymore, the packages will create a minimal one that
is needed to load the driver at boot automatically.

"Should" being the keyword here - once again, haven't backported to
wheezy before :-)

> Partly because the apt-get source from experimental wasn't working, I
> downloaded the packages directly, did dpkg-source -x to unpack, and
> dpkg-buildpackage to build them.  Then I used dpkg -i to install, and
> iterated as I dicovered dependencies.
>
> I got sources for
> glx-alternatives_0.7.1.dsc  nvidia-graphics-drivers_352.63-1.dsc
> nvidia-support_20151021+1.dsc
> libvdpau_1.1.1-3.dsc        nvidia-settings_346.59-1.dsc
> though nvidia-settings had build dependencies that prevented me from building.
>
> I ended up with
> dpkg -i \
>      nvidia-installer-cleanup_20151021+1_amd64.deb \
>      glx-diversions_0.7.1_amd64.deb \
>      glx-alternative-mesa_0.7.1_amd64.deb \
>      update-glx_0.7.1_amd64.deb \
>      glx-alternative-nvidia_0.7.1_amd64.deb \
>      nvidia-kernel-common_20151021+1_amd64.deb \
>      nvidia-support_20151021+1_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-kernel-support_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-kernel-dkms_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  libnvidia-ml1_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>   libcuda1_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  libegl1-nvidia_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  libnvidia-eglcore_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  libgl1-nvidia-glx_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-driver_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-driver-bin_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  xserver-xorg-video-nvidia_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>      libvdpau1_1.1.1-3_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-vdpau-driver_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-alternative_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  libgles1-nvidia_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  libgles2-nvidia_352.63-1_amd64.deb \
>  nvidia-detect_352.63-1_amd64.deb
>
> Plus a few packages installed via aptitude, generally from backports.

That looks correct. Sorry I forgot about nvidia-support and libvdpau,
as I said I was writing from memory :-)

You shouldn't need a newer nvidia-settings, the one in
wheezy-backports should suffice. If you want a newer one, you can
build the jessie version.

Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi