One of the drawbacks to installing NVIDIA Proprietary drivers in Linux is that when the kernel is updated, you have to reinstall (recompile) the software to match the new kernel. This tutorial explains how to upgrade Proprietary NVIDIA video card drivers after your Debian Lenny Linux system has been upgraded to a new kernel version. The process is pretty much the same as installing Proprietary video card drivers from scratch with the exception that we assume your already at the shell, unable to boot into X windows due to a kernel upgrade.
Reinstalling NVIDIA drivers in Debian Lenny after a kernel upgrade:
Note: This process assumes that your unable to boot into your X Windows environment due to a kernel upgrade and need to recompile NVIDIA drivers
- Open a terminal and type
sudo su - Type
apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) - Type
ln -s linux-headers-$(uname -r) linux - Type
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/100.14.23/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run - Type
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run(to launch the nVidia installer script)
- Accept the license agreement to continue
- Select the appropriate option to continue
- Answer No to the question prompting to download Kernel from nVidia
- Click Ok to compile a new Kernel
- Select No when prompted to abort now
- Let the installer finish the build
- Select Yes to let nVidia-xconfig automatically update your xorg.conf file
- Click Ok
- Once the installer has completed, type startx
That's all. If successful, you should now be booting back into your NVIDIA hardware accelerated environment.