X (NVidia) fails after apt-get upgrade

[voidnecron]

Hi,

First of all, I couldn't find anything usefull in the search, but if I've overlooked something, please point it out.

For some stupid reason I ran apt-get update && apt-get upgrade in a terminal in X.
Obviously the upgrade couldnt upgrade the nvidia drivers, so I figured it would skip those. Apparently it didn't, and now my driverset seems out of sync with the kernel or something.

The exact error when X tries to start is:
FATAL: Module nvidia not found.
(EE) NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module. Please check you system's kernel log for additional error messages.
(EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module-specific error, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

I've tried to run apt-get update and upgrade again, but it states there are no new packages.
What do I need to do to reinstall the nvidia drivers?

Thanks.

UPDATE: I've just uninstalled the Nvidia package via aptitude, afterwards apt-get dist-upgrade installed some nvidia driver part again. However, the NVidia package isn't listed in aptitude (under BackTrack-GPU).

X still doesnt start. Different error though:
(EE) No devices detected.
Fatal server error:
no screens found.

[voidnecron]

@MODS: Could this thread be moved to bugs?
I've just complete reinstalled backtrack from CD, did apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (both in console, not X).
Afterwards rebooted just to be very sure everything was working, started X, killed X, rebooted again and did (like the CUDA manual of purehate says) apt-get install nvidia-driver.
After the driver is installed I'm getting the Fatal server error: no screens found.
I can't imagine I'm the only one with this, especially since I just did a clean install.

I did a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and my X works again, but no NVidia splash screen, so what could this be?
I have the old config in case anyone wants to take a peek.

PS: Sorry for replying to my own post, but I didn't know an other way to get your attention.

[purehate]

The nvidia-script is calls Xorg -configure to configure its X screen. Sometimes this does not work and you must use the nvidia-xconfig tool to get X going. This is not really a bug unless more people than just you are having the problem.

[voidnecron]

Well, the thing is that this 'bug' only is with the latest nvidia package, I had it running before with the (iirc) 185.** version.
And it seems to fail every single time, not just once or twice.
Maybe the 195.** package isnt working too great with my specific graphics card.
It's a NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M in a HP Elitebook 8530w.
Does anyone else has this configuration and willing to test?

[Archangel-Amael]

First I am all for you getting your setup going, but this really is not a BT bug. It may be a bug for Nvidia, or kernel.org.
You might want to look at ubuntu forums as see if this has been a problem in 8.10.
Why don't you just revert to a older more stable driver, if it works?

[voidnecron]

No you're right, it's not a BT bug. I thought since you packaged it you managed it, but all you guys do is use the source and precompile it... Sorry for that.
I would love to revert to the 185 version of the driver, but I don't know how. I cant see old packages in the aptitude, can I?
And won't it get updated automaticly whenever I run apt-get update/upgrade ?

[Archangel-Amael]

You can see if there are different versions available by doing

# apt-cache showpkg packagenamehere

Then if there is more than one version use:

apt-get install packagename-packageversion

to get the one you want.

EDIT again: If that fails then just delete the current driver and start over with it.
As for packages some are self maintained and some are not. It depends on various factors really.

[voidnecron]

Unfortunately there is no old version available in the cache /:

# apt-cache showpkg nvidia-driver
Package: nvidia-driver
Versions:
195.36.15-bt1 (/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.offensive-security.com_dists_pwnsauce_microverse_binary-i386_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
 Description Language:
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.offensive-security.com_dists_pwnsauce_microverse_binary-i386_Packages
                  MD5: 9581c12c2028ed561c43c3f9d19f86fb


Reverse Depends:
  cuda-gdb,nvidia-driver
  cuda-toolkit,nvidia-driver
  cuda-toolkit,nvidia-driver
  cuda-toolkit,nvidia-driver
  cuda-toolkit,nvidia-driver
  cuda-toolkit,nvidia-driver
Dependencies:
195.36.15-bt1 - mesa-common-dev (0 (null))
Provides:
195.36.15-bt1 -
Reverse Provides:

Thx for the help though.. Guess I won't be using CUDA for a while on this machine.
If there is any way I could assist in helping you guys for this, let me know.

[ColForbin]

I was experiencing the same issue described in this thread. I saw a couple of similar threads around the forums.

Prior to my failed nvidia-driver upgrade, the installed driver was nvidia-driver-195.36.15-bt1. The upgrade attempted to install nvidia-driver-256.40-bt0.

Attempting Archangel-Amael's fix didn't work for me. I kept receiving an error to the effect of - the package does not exist.

After some googling, reading, and not finding a fix, I decided to try the official Linux driver from NVidia's web site.

I am happy to report that after removing nvidia-driver with apt, and installing the driver available on NVidia's site, things are back to normal.

I've installed bt4-r1 on a Dell XPS M1330, which has an NVidia 8400M GS (just in case this applies to anyone else).

[airfr8dog]

Hi,

X still doesnt start. Different error though:
(EE) No devices detected.
Fatal server error:
no screens found.

Greets:

This is a long shot but I did get an identical error on "startx" on my laptop. In my case it was because it uses two identical video cards and I think the xorg was "lost".

"fix-vesa" simply wrote a default xorg.conf (no solution)
dkpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" (did not work for me)

However this worked:

"lspci | grep VGA" gave a list of installed video devices
for me, the output was:
"02:00:0 VGA compatible controller .....nvidia corporation"
"03:00:0 VGA compatible controller .....nvidia corporation"

A look at the xorg logfile showed under "devices section": "configured video device missing"

It may be the same for you.

In any event, the fix for me was to manually edit xorg.conf, "device" section, specifying the device BusID (from lspci output):

section "device"
identifier "device0"
Driver "Nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce 285M GTX"
BusID "PCI:02:00:0
Screen "0"

Obviously these fields will be different for you but my suggestion is to check the BusID for the corrrect entries.

Let me know if this works for you