Install nvidia-driver – GeForce4 MX 460 and Debian/SID kernel 2.6.25

I was quite surprised as I started my workstation two days ago and it doesn’t boot up as expected. After some moments I remembered that I’ve updated my Debian/SID a day before ..

After a few messages the boot process dropped me to a rescue shell telling me that the root partition can’t be found. That’s an old behaviour and was fixed in a very short time but after continue of booting the X-Server doesn’t start too. We all know it – new kernel so new nvidia-modules must be build.

I’ve installed the nvidia-glx and the nvida-kernel-source packages from debian’s non-free repository and built it as everytime with the help of the well known module-assistent and after rebuilding it I tried to start my X-server.

Oooh – nice try. The new module told me that my old GeForce4 MX 460 is not supported through the 173.08-series nvidia-driver – I’ll have to use version 96xx which can be found at nvidias-support-page.

I’ve downloaded and tried to run the ‘.run’ file from nvidia but building the driver still failed. After reading the nvidia-support-forum I’ve found the note that the driver must be patched to build along with a 2.6.25-kernel. The patch can be downloaded from here. Following the instructions in this post it was quite easy to install and get my X-server rerunning and writing this piece of text.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

su -
cd /usr/src
aptitude reinstall \
linux-headers-2.6.25-2-486 \
linux-headers-2.6.25-2-common \
linux-kbuild-2.6.25
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/96.43.05/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-96.43.05-pkg2.run
wget http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=30770&d=1205875938
mv attachment.php\?attachmentid\=30770 NVIDIA_kernel-96.43.05-2290218.diff
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1.run –apply-patch NVIDIA_kernel-96.43.05-2290218.diff
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1-custom.run

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