NVIDIA Debian Mini-HOWTO
By David Morse
mailto:dm-web@bomberlan.net
June 17, 2001
Scope of this document
This document assumes you run a stock debian kernel and want to use a hardware accellerated OpenGL with an NVIDIA graphics card. If your situtation does not exactly match this, a longer, more general document might suit you better. Perhaps Nvidia OpenGL Configuration mini-HOWTO.
Prepare the system
You need to have XFree86 4.0.something. At time of writing, the default woody debs for 4.0.3 worked fine.
You should configure your XFree86Config-4 file the usual way, using the unaccellerated "nv" driver. I've had success using xf86config to configure the card. Make sure your configuration works before proceeding.
You're going to need the kernel headers for whatever kernel you're using:
apt-get install kernel-headers-2.X.Y-Z
Reboot the machine with no X before proceeding. Simply shutting down X is not enough, I find that if the "nv" and accellerated "nvidia" drivers are used during the same boot, the "nvidia" drivers will fatally lock up the computer.
Get the NVIDIA tarballs
Go to
http://www.nvidia.com/ and find their linux driver download section. At time of writing, they have lots of .rpms, but no .debs. Therefore, follow their instructions for getting the two .tar.gz files.
Install the NVIDIA tarballs
Unpack the archives someplace. Cd into the kernel directory. Teach the Makefile to see the kernel headers by changing the line
INCLUDES=-I.
to something appropriate for your kernel, e.g.:
INCLUDES=-I. -I/usr/src/kernel-headers-2.2.18pre21/include/
From here on out, just follow the NVIDIA instructions, basically
make install
cd ../NVIDIA_GLX-1.*
make install.
Then make the final changes to the XFree86Config file as described in the NVIDIA instructions.
Sacrifice 3 karma to Bill, the god of propritary software. Fire up X, and have fun.