[SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

linux_user · 2019-10-02 18:58:34

Trying to get a little deeper into Linux. Installed Debian netinst bare min with just a prompt. I am building my installation package by package (with Bunsenlabs in mind), understanding each components and how it works. So far so good.

My system has a GeForce 6100 nForce 405 chipset and if I don't install the correct drivers (nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver) it crashes in between usage. An old post of it here (not so important though).

The problem is that this package is not available in buster repo. I tried installing it from stretch repo by adding stretch repo in sources.list, however it gives a lot of unmet dependencies.

toor@debianMSI:~$ sudo apt install nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver : Depends: nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver-libs (= 304.137-5~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed
                              Depends: nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver-bin (= 304.137-5~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed
                              Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-legacy-304xx (= 304.137-5~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed
                              Depends: nvidia-legacy-304xx-vdpau-driver (= 304.137-5~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed
                              Depends: nvidia-legacy-304xx-alternative (= 304.137-5~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed
                              Depends: nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-dkms (= 304.137-5~deb9u1) but it is not going to be installed or
                                       nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-304.137
                              Recommends: nvidia-settings-legacy-304xx but it is not going to be installed
                              Recommends: nvidia-persistenced but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Tried including those dependencies as well, until they have more dependencies which are "not instalable".

toor@debianMSI:~$ sudo apt install nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver-libs nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver-bin xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-legacy-304xx nvidia-legacy-304xx-vdpau-driver nvidia-legacy-304xx-alternative nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-dkms nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-304.137 nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-dkms' instead of 'nvidia-legacy-304xx-kernel-304.137'
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-legacy-304xx-alternative : Depends: glx-alternative-nvidia (>= 0.7) but it is not going to be installed
 xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-legacy-304xx : Depends: xorg-video-abi-23 or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-20 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-19 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-18 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-15 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-14 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-13 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-12 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-11 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-10 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-8 but it is not installable or
                                                   xorg-video-abi-6.0 but it is not installable
                                          Depends: xserver-xorg-core (< 2:1.19.99) but 2:1.20.4-1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

What would be a sensible thing to do now?

Last edited by linux_user (2019-11-14 21:08:39)

brontosaurusrex · 2019-10-02 19:14:44

What does 'nvidia-detect' says?

PackRat · 2019-10-02 19:49:41

Appears to be in backports

https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw … -backports

I've never used backports; enable the repo and install with apt?

hhh · 2019-10-03 00:13:38

PackRat wrote:

Appears to be in backports
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw … -backports
I've never used backports; enable the repo and install with apt?

Instructions...

https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/#index2h2

linux_user · 2019-10-03 03:52:12

brontosaurusrex wrote:

What does 'nvidia-detect' says?

toor@debianMSI:~$ nvidia-detect 
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6100 nForce 405] [10de:03d1] (rev a2)

Checking card:  NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6100 nForce 405] (rev a2)
Your card is only supported by the 304 legacy drivers series, which is only available up to stretch.

PackRat wrote:

Appears to be in backports
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw … -backports

That's stretch backports; shouldn't it be available on buster backports so that other dependent packages are installable?

After adding buster-backports to sources and updating:

toor@debianMSI:~$ sudo apt-get -t buster-backports install nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver' has no installation candidate

Last edited by linux_user (2019-10-03 07:40:30)

johnraff · 2019-10-03 07:35:53

linux_user wrote:

brontosaurusrex wrote:
What does 'nvidia-detect' says?
toor@debianMSI:~$ nvidia-detect
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6100 nForce 405] [10de:03d1] (rev a2)
Checking card: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6100 nForce 405] (rev a2)
Your card is only supported by the 304 legacy drivers series, which is only available up to stretch.

That's the bad news I'm afraid. Your card seems not to be supported in Buster.

Maybe there's some way to forward-port the stretch package...

linux_user · 2019-10-03 08:29:37

johnraff wrote:

That's the bad news I'm afraid. Your card seems not to be supported in Buster.
Maybe there's some way to forward-port the stretch package...

Thought so. Weird as well. One of the good points of linux distros was that they support a wide range of hardware, especially older hardware. Why would they remove an existing compatibility/support of an older hardware while rolling out a new version? Or is it nvidia's fault?

PackRat · 2019-10-03 10:05:05

Sorry, thought I was in the right backports section.

Pretty sure you can get those legacy drivers directly from Nvidia and install them that way. You'll need to install the kernel headers and build-essential files with apt first.

There may be a How To thread for Nvidia drivers in the forum.

Nouveau drivers not working for you?

Last edited by PackRat (2019-10-03 10:06:42)

linux_user · 2019-10-03 13:33:57

^ No apoligies requried and thanks for directing me to try the website for drivers.

I found it here https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverR … 3709/en-us. Downloaded it, went to tty1, stopped lightdm.service and tried installing the driver. Of course, it notified me of Nouveau driver conflict and offered to blacklist them. Two files were created,

toor@debianMSI:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf 
# generated by nvidia-installer
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
toor@debianMSI:~$ cat /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf 
# generated by nvidia-installer
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

Rebooted the system, logged into tty1, stopped lightdm.service and attempted the installation. However Nouveau was still active.

This was notified by nvidia installer earlier in fact, that the blacklist may not work. Modified the blacklist conf as per the second answer on this, rebooted.

This time something changed, the CUI in the boot process had a higher resolution earlier but now, it had a lower resolution (bigger fonts). The blacklist seem to be working. Back in tty1, stopped lightdm.service and did a sudo update-initramfs -u. This was successful.

Tried nVIDIA driver installation. Now, It throws a warning that,

the path to the 'modprobe' utility reported by '/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe', '/sbin/modprobe', differs from the path determined by 'nvidia-installer', '/user/sbin/modprobe'/ Please verify that '/sbin/modprobe' works correctly and correct the path in '/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe'.

Even if the change the path in /proc/sys/kernet/modprobe to the two files created by the installer - /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf - I get the same error as above with this location instead of /sbin/modprobe.

Last edited by linux_user (2019-10-03 14:02:33)

PackRat · 2019-10-03 13:43:24

I have not tried this in a while - still have the old Nvidia, but nouveau is fine for anything I'm doing.

I used this tutorial for blacklisting nouveau and installing nvidia. Except that for step 11 you'll be attempting an install of the nvidia package.

Keep in mind that, unless it's changed, you'll have to re-install the nvidia driver with every kernel upgrade. Not too bad with Debian Stable, but if you upgrade to Sid it's rather annoying.

Edit - that tutorial I linked looks like answer #2 which you tried.

Last edited by PackRat (2019-10-03 13:45:53)

linux_user · 2019-10-03 14:07:28

My previous post was incomplete. I was using the same system to access the forum and was finding it difficult to post tty1 outputs. So thought of using another system. Didn't want to lose whatever I had typed from the first system, so posted it. Thought I'll login from another system and edit it to complete it.

I have edited it since then with some more developments.

PackRat wrote:

I have not tried this in a while - still have the old Nvidia, but nouveau is fine for anything I'm doing.
I used this tutorial for blacklisting nouveau and installing nvidia. Except that for step 11 you'll be attempting an install of the nvidia package.
Keep in mind that, unless it's changed, you'll have to re-install the nvidia driver with every kernel upgrade. Not too bad with Debian Stable, but if you upgrade to Sid it's rather annoying.
Edit - that tutorial I linked looks like answer #2 which you tried.

Nouveau has always been faster but it crashes my system while watching videos or even launching Firefox at times; sometimes while doing some important work. Anyway, thanks for your tutorial link. I will try that and see. The blacklist code seems exactly what I have modified from the answer posted in Ubuntu forum. Let me check the entire steps and processes in your link.

Last edited by linux_user (2019-10-03 14:10:41)

linux_user · 2019-10-03 15:07:52

This should come up when you search on the internet for blacklisting nouveau. Anyway, step 3 and 7 in that tutorial were new. I proceeded as per the tutorial.

The installation did go though it, although with the error "path to modprobe utility..." mentioned in my earlier post. I can't find any nvidia drivers when I do sudo dpkg -l | grep nvidia, I only find the nvidia-detect package.

However when I try to install the downloaded nvidia driver, it warns me that a driver of the same version is already installed.

Trying to complete the driver installation by creating an xorg configuration file.

$ sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
$ sudo -e 'Section "Device"\n\tIdentifier "My GPU"\n\tDriver "nvidia"\nEndSection' > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf

The first command was successful (the folder was created). However when I execute the second command (with sudo), I get the error,

-bash: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf: Permission denied

Very strange.

Update:

I manually created the file using touch command, opened it in nano and entered the following text.

Section "Device"
        Identifier "My GPU"
        Driver "nvidia"

Now I started lightdm.service. No errors are throws. However there is no gui greeter in tty7. I checked the status of lightdm.service and it says

Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2019-10-03 22:20:15 IST; 3s ago

Last edited by linux_user (2019-10-03 16:57:08)

linux_user · 2019-10-08 16:04:19

It was the 20-nvidia.conf file that was stopping lightdm.service from starting up. Not sure why.

After I deleted that file, I could log into GUI. Not sure if the new driver is configured properly as the new desktop only offers a low resolution desktop. So switched back to nouveau.

PackRat · 2019-10-08 19:07:03

Did you archive the 20-nvidia.conf file or just delete it outright? What are the contents of that file if you still have it.

Did you try stopping lightdm.service and logging in with startx?

johnraff · 2019-10-09 03:07:07

EDIT sorry for all the Intel/Nvidia confusion.
The Intel file has also been the source of X crashes recently...

Here's the troublesome 20-nvidia.conf 20-intel.conf:

Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
    Option "AccelMethod"      "sna"
    Option "TearFree"         "true"
EndSection

It's now been removed from bunsen-configs.

Last edited by johnraff (2019-10-10 09:37:00)

manyroads · 2019-10-09 13:43:24

If you are looking for a very stripped down version of Buster for older PCs, you might try antiX19b3. I have just gotten BunsenLabs Lithium- experimental to run on that platform.
For antiX see:
https://antixlinux.com/about/

deleted0 · 2019-10-09 14:57:36

https://antixlinux.com/antix-19-b3-full … available/

8bit

linux_user · 2019-10-09 16:14:47

manyroads wrote:

If you are looking for a very stripped down version of Buster for older PCs, you might try antiX19b3.

Honestly, I am just looking at installing a base system and build it package by package - a good learning experience. I don't mind breaking the OS and reinstalling during the process . I decided to go with Debian sinceI have been using BL all these while which is based on Debian.

PackRat wrote:

Did you archive the 20-nvidia.conf file or just delete it outright? What are the contents of that file if you still have it.

I deleted the file and reinstalled the OS infact; now using nouveau. But thank you for asking - I just realized that I missed a line in the 20-nividia.conf file while I was entering the lines manually. It should be the follows;

Section "Device"
        Identifier "My GPU"
        Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

What I entered is in the above post. I missed the last line (EndSection).

johnraff wrote:

^Here's the troublesome 20-nvidia.conf:
Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
    Option "AccelMethod"      "sna"
    Option "TearFree"         "true"
EndSection
It's now been removed from bunsen-configs.

Since mine is nVidia, I guess I should replace Intel in the above.

PackRat wrote:

Did you try stopping lightdm.service and logging in with startx?

No, I didn't. I wasn't aware of that option to be frank.

====================================================================================================================
Anyway, since I missed a line in the conf file, I will redo it. I'd like to post the steps I'd be following. It would be nice to receive some feedback from you all before I actually execute them.

Download the driver from https://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDo … pe=GeForce
Go to tty1
Stop lightdm and install the driver
Blacklist nouveau and rebuild the kernel as per http://lxle.net/forums/discussion/1457/ … drivers/p1
Create an xorg configuration as per https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 123#p42123
Restart the system

I guess this should do, won't it?

Last edited by linux_user (2019-10-09 16:55:40)

PackRat · 2019-10-09 17:24:19

You're using the minimal net install iso, aren't you?

I suggest you postpone installing lightdm until the very end when everything is up and running. Pretty sure the Debian stable version is all good, but I've had trouble with versions from Testing and Sid.

If nothing else, you will learn how to start your X-session and window manager from the command line - pretty easy to do. There are a couple threads in this forum on setting it up.

Once it's all up and running you can install lightdm if you still want to go that route.

johnraff · 2019-10-10 00:46:34

linux_user wrote:

johnraff wrote:
^Here's the troublesome 20-nvidiaintel.conf:
Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
    Option "AccelMethod"      "sna"
    Option "TearFree"         "true"
EndSection
It's now been removed from bunsen-configs.
Since mine is nVidia, I guess I should replace Intel in the above.

My humble apologies - I just copied/pasted the filename from this thread without checking properly. (Post now edited.) The file we supplied in bunsen-configs was 20-intel.conf, intended to improve display with Intel GPUs. Nvidia users should just ignore it anyway - any "fixes" for nvidia will be completely different, and likely depend on what driver you are using, and quite possibly unnecessary.

The Intel config snippet was causing no problems up until the recent Debian Buster point release, but we haven't had time to try and pin down what the problem was. It could have been the file was using some old syntax which the latest upgrade no longer supports, or...

Anyway, since it was just a tweak intended to slightly improve rendering we decided to drop it from the package and leave it for users to install manually if they wanted.

#1 2019-10-02 18:58:34

[SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#2 2019-10-02 19:14:44

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#3 2019-10-02 19:49:41

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#4 2019-10-03 00:13:38

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#5 2019-10-03 03:52:12

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#6 2019-10-03 07:35:53

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#7 2019-10-03 08:29:37

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#8 2019-10-03 10:05:05

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#9 2019-10-03 13:33:57

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#10 2019-10-03 13:43:24

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#11 2019-10-03 14:07:28

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#12 2019-10-03 15:07:52

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#13 2019-10-08 16:04:19

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#14 2019-10-08 19:07:03

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#15 2019-10-09 03:07:07

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#16 2019-10-09 13:43:24

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#17 2019-10-09 14:57:36

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#18 2019-10-09 16:14:47

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#19 2019-10-09 17:24:19

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

#20 2019-10-10 00:46:34

Re: [SOLVED] nVidia driver installation in Debian Buster Bare Minimum

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