Monday, November 23, 2009

Ubuntu Karmic: install -pae kernel breaks nvidia driver

Since I have > 3GB of RAM, I installed linux-image-generic-pae so that I could access up to 16GB on my Karmic Koala install. Note that installing a new kernel doesn't choose it as the default in grub (which is actually now grub2). So in /etc/default/grub I set GRUB_DEFAULT=saved so that it'd remember my choice, and then rebooted and hit SHIFT during the (very brief) grub blip to pull up the menu and choose the new kernel, which it then remembers.

Unfortunately, that broke my nvidia driver: when I rebooted into the kernel, the text login screen just flickered as xorg restarted constantly. This is due to 2 bugs:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+source/jockey/+bug/451305

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/454220

Summary: I had to

apt-get remove --purge linux-headers-2.6.31-15

And then, when I did an

apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.31-15-pae

it automatically rebuilt (successfully) the nvidia.ko.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

that worked perfectly for me. i ha previously gone through the whole process of cleaning my machine entirely of all nvidia drivers and traces, and the nvidia kernel still would not build. now it has built succesfully good post will help a lot of nvidia people

Anonymous said...

Thanks, worked for me too, had to install linux-headers-generic-pae
sweet

mdarweash said...

You Are Awesome... it worked for me

Anonymous said...

muchas gracias!

Anonymous said...

Works for Natty Narwall too (updated from Maverick Meerkat).

Anonymous said...

Thank you! It worked like a charm (Ubuntu Lucid) :)