[john.cord]

Hi

I am currently using Ubuntu 10.10 with stable Eden and latest Nvidia Driver for Ubuntu 10.10. I want to use the newer Nvidia Driver because of xrandr 1.3 support and to do this i must upgrade my ubuntu release.

Is it safe to just do a "do-release-upgrade"?

I have done some changes to ubuntu (removed unneeded terminals, balcklisted remote service because of double recognised commands). Will these changes be preserved or will they get lost? How about autostart of XBMC? And what about the database?

Must xbmc be reinstalled after a release upgrade of ubuntu?

[Prof Yaffle]

Can you not just upgrade the driver? You'll get stuck in kernel-upgrade-purgatory, in that you'll need to reinstall every time you upgrade the kernel, but it's not the end of the world...

[john.cord]

Nope, the latest stable driver for maverick is 295.52 and support for xrandr 1.3 was introduces with the 302.xx

[pumkinut]

Dist upgrades tend to break a lot of things or make things worse in the long run. Usually it's better to back up the data you need to and perform a fresh install.

[Prof Yaffle]

I meant download the Nvidia driver directly and install it (for example) - I did this many times in the past, though haven't have need to for a while. Yes, you drop out of the normal PPA installation (which is why you need to re-install if you upgrade the kernel) but I can't see why it wouldn't work - and you can always re-install nvidia-current if needed.

I'm personally very wary of in-situ distribution upgrades - they take forever and you inevitably end up with something awry. Last time I switch release I did a whole rebuild (which cleaned out some of the cruft, although you do need to redo all the personal tinkerings, as you know).

[pumkinut]

Prof Yaffle, I was answering the OP's question about performing a dist-upgrade (do-release-upgrade).

Downloading and installing the driver from nVidia is the surest way of getting the driver to work correctly. The new script will actually recompile the driver if it detects a kernel change, at least that's what it stated last time I installed it from the nVidia script.

john.cord, what makes you think later driver revs won't work under Maverick. I just did a driver search on nVidia's website and plugged in 32b Linux as the OS along with a 200 series nVidia GPU chipset, and the 304.43 driver was chosen as the primary candidate. GPU support for the 304 driver goes all the way back to the 6000 series cards.

You can always try downloading the 304 driver shell script and running it. If it doesn't work, the script usually tells you.

If you do opt for a reinstall of a later version of Ubuntu, for XBMC all you need to do to preserve all you settings and addons is copy the .xbmc folder to another location before you reinstall. Then perform the OS installation, do an apt-get install of XBMC and any other applications that you want, and then copy the contents of the saved .xbmc directory over the newly created one.

[cowfodder]

It's not that the newer drivers won't work, it's just that they aren't in the repo for maverick. Installing from the Nvidia binary should work. For safety OP should probably remove any other versions already installed though.

[john.cord]

For safety OP should probably remove any other versions already installed though.

ok. i installed the drivers over the ppa so i dont know how to remove the old ones. can you tell me?

[pumkinut]

sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-current

[john.cord]

thank you. i found it out for myselfe and updated the driver manually. Everything is working fine now !!!

Both of you got a + from me !!!

[Csimbi]

Care to share how to install a specific driver version? (I am shopping for 302.11.)
Thanks.

[pumkinut]

Download it from nVidia.com, and read up on how to install it.

[Csimbi]

How convenient - silly me thought I'd need apt-get magic :-)
Thank you!

Just to double-check before I get to it; it's this one, right?
I am asking because there's no specific distribution listed (or, I did not find it yet).

[john.cord]

Just downloaded it, did chmod and then executed it with sh command.

[Csimbi]

@John
Did it work?

I did this:

Code:

mkdir nv
cd nv
wget ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/302.11/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-302.11.run
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-302.11.run
sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm stop
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-302.11.run

Accept agreement, say yes to disabling Nouveau.
As a reminder, here's the note:

The modprobe configuration file to disable Nouveau, /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf, has been written.
For some distributions, this may be sufficient to disable Nouveau; other distributions may require modification of the initial ramdisk.
Please reboot your system and attempt NVIDIA driver installation again.
Note if you later wish to reenable Nouveau, you will need to delete the file /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf.

Continuing with:

Code:

sudo reboot
cd nv
sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm stop
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-302.11.run
sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf
sudo reboot

And now I get an error:

XBMC needs hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering.
Install an appropriate graphics driver.

Please consult XBMC Wiki for supported hardware
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Supported_hardware

This is the last entry in /var/log/nvidia-installer.log

-> Your X configuration file has been successfully updated. Installation of the NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver for Linux-x86 (version: 302.11) is now complete.

Did I just screw my system?