Debian Squeeze - NVidia Video Drivers

v 0.3

I've always found installing video drivers in Debian the easiest if I just use the proprietary drivers.  Sorry to the Debian Purists (hangs his head in shame).  Most of my experience is with NVidia drivers, so I'll stick with that.  First, two page links that pretty well cover what I'm talking about.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/how-to-install-nvidia-video-card-drivers-in-debian-lenny/
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/upgrading-nvidia-drivers-in-debian-lenny/

The technique described to install the drivers is the pukka one, however you can also just use Module Assistant as "  m-a prepare " to ensure the appropriate kernel headers and the build environment are available.  If you get a message telling you that the available compiler is the wrong one, then you can download the correct one and use one of the two techniques in my previous post to fix the situation.

What you DO need to understand is that you need to have X .. NOT running.  For Squeeze, you will have to check which version of  "gdm" is running in the directory pointed to in the first post and adjust as necessary.  Why don't I give the exact instructions?  Well, first I'm being lazy right now, and second if you can't figure it out from the links and hints above, then maybe you shouldn't be playing with this.

Updating drivers in Debian Stable is not normally a problem, since it is just a repeat of the original installation instructions, however if you are playing with Debian Testing, then when a new kernel is installed, you will lose X as the wrong driver is pointed to in xorg.conf.  To fix this, just replace the proprietary driver name with " nv " or even " vesa " to get back to the Xorg driver and it will be ok for the moment.  Of course you COULD use the opportunity of being dumped into the command line to re-install the drivers and " startx " again, however ...

That's it for the moment.


Later ......

Update.
Squeeze uses " gdm3 " so in the instructions given in the link use that instead of " gdm "

ie to stop X ...  #  /etc/init.d/gdm3 stop