Saturday 27 March 2010

Compiling nvidia drivers for my 9500GT on linux Mandriva

Do you end up with things like these:
  • kernel not configured....
  • version.h missing
  • genksyms missing
Then you can do this on Mandriva (tried on 2010 Spring):
  • Copy the config of the running kernel:
    cd /usr/src/linux
    cp /boot/config-`uname -r`

  • Prepare the kernel for building:
    make oldconfig && make prepare && make scripts
  • run the nvidia installer:
    sh /path/to/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-195.36.15-pkg1.run
And let's see how far I get this time!

Blah! This does not work as the compiler that Mandriva uses to compile the stock kernels is not the same as the one installed on my system. So I digged a little further: I started using the dkms-nvidia-current. This worked out rather nicely. (dkms is part of the stuff you get when you use easy-urpmi)

What a mess my system is when I turn on desktop effects. I guess the 190 nvidia driver is not up to it for the 9500GT yet. Let's hope the 2011 release of Madriva will fix this ;-)