91. Downgrading nvidia drivers from 295.20 to 290.10 on debian testing

How to downgrade your nvidia drivers

WARNING -- you must use the terminal during these steps. If you don't know how to use e.g. cd, ls and nano or vim you will want to be careful:
1. Make sure that you have internet access even without a graphical environment
2. Make sure that you have a basic understanding of how to navigate in the terminal
3. Print out or write down these instructions before startintg

I typically test all my instructions on several different computers as a form of proof-reading. For various reasons I can't do that with this blog post, so read through the instructions first to understand what they do and that typos won't throw you off.

If you've been having the gnome-shell crash bug
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/debian-testing-wheezy-64-nvidia-bug.html

[ 7011.967820] gnome-shell[32742]: segfault at 10 ip 00007fa1b6d98c0f sp 00007fa1914a1638 error 6 in libnvidia-tls.so.295.20[7fa1b6d98000+3000]

or the evolution crash bug
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/debian-testing-wheezy-64-no-real.html

[22129.426444] evolution[20435]: segfault at 10 ip 00007f2a05bf8c0f sp 00007f29e5725508 error 6 in libnvidia-tls.so.295.20[7f2a05bf8000+3000]

which are both caused by nvidia driver 295.20, here's how to gracefully downgrade to the previous version of the nvidia driver: 290.10. Be aware that evolution crashes occasionally under 290.10 too, but not nearly as consistently as under 25.20 -- chances are that evolution is a bit buggy on its own.

This will make use of the dkms package, which is what you should use anyway. We'll pull the old stuff from a snapshot archive.

1. Setting up your computer 
I prefer not to be forced to boot into X when I'm mucking about with graphics drivers, so:

Edit your /etc/default/grub
find your

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT

line and add "text" to it e.g.
change

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset nouveau.modeset=0"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text nomodeset nouveau.modeset=0"

Do

sudo update-grub

Now is a good time to do a reboot to see if you have internet in text-only mode. 
sudo shutdown -r now
To start your graphical environment again do 
startx


2. Set up snapshot archive
To your /etc/apt/sources.list add this line:

deb http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20120120T092809Z/ wheezy main contrib non-free

Also, create a
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/60ignore_repo_date_check
file with the following in it:

Acquire
{
Check-Valid-Until "false";
}

Run
sudo apt-get update
Don't install anything yet.

3. Get the nvidia binary driver
Go to e.g. ~/tmp and
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/290.10/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-290.10.run
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-290.10.run

Don't forget where you put it.

4. Remove your existing drivers and packages:
First reboot:
sudo shutdown -r now
You'll now boot into a text-only environment, so you had better printed this out first.

Then
sudo apt-get autoremove nvidia-*

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  diffstat glx-alternative-mesa glx-alternative-nvidia glx-diversions libcublas4 libcuda1 libcudart4 libcufft4
  libcurand4 libcusparse4 libgl1-nvidia-alternatives libgl1-nvidia-glx libglx-nvidia-alternatives libnpp4
  libthrust-dev libvdpau-dev nvidia-alternative nvidia-glx nvidia-installer-cleanup nvidia-kernel-common
  nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-support nvidia-vdpau-driver opencl-headers quilt xserver-xorg-video-nvidia
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 26 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
After this operation, 435 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?Y
[..]

Reboot for good luck:
sudo shutdown -r now

If you do
locate nvidia.ko
chances are you'll find

/lib/modules/3.2.9/updates/dkms/nvidia.ko

where 3.2.9 is the current kernel version.

Do
sudo updatedb
locate nvidia.ko
to make sure that the nvidia.ko is gone from your current kernel.

5. Install your old nvidia driver:
Go to the directory you downloaded the driver in, e.g. ~/tmp
sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-290.10.run
Reboot afterwards:
sudo shutdown -r now

After the reboot do
startx

Did it work? If yes, you're in good shape.
 dmesg | grep nvidia

[    7.540166] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[    8.509525] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    8.509600] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64

6. Setting up the kernel-dkms
You really want to use dkms so that you don't have re-install the graphics driver each time you upgrade your kernel.

First check
apt-cache showpkg nvidia-kernel-dkms

Provides:
295.20-1 - nvidia-kernel-295.20
290.10-1 - nvidia-kernel-290.10
195.36.31-6 - nvidia-kernel-195.36.31

OK, time to get rocking:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms=290.10-1 nvidia-glx=290.10-1 libgl1-nvidia-glx=290.10-1 xserver-xorg-video-nvidia=290.10-1 nvidia-vdpau-driver=290.10-1 nvidia-alternative=290.10-1

You'll be warned about remove nvidia-install etc. That's fine.

Once the installation is done it's time to put holds on the packages so they don't accidentally upgrade

sudo su
echo "nvidia-kernel-dkms hold"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "nvidia-glx hold"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "libgl1-nvidia-glx hold"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "xserver-xorg-video-nvidia hold"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "nvidia-vdpau-driver hold"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "nvidia-alternative hold"| dpkg --set-selections
exit

7. Cleaning up
Things to do:
a. comment out the snapshot in /etc/apt/sources.list
b. move the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/60ignore_repo_date_check file out of the way
c. sudo apt-get upgrade

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree    
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  libgl1-nvidia-glx nvidia-alternative nvidia-glx
  nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-vdpau-driver xserver-xorg-video-nvidia

d. edit your /etc/default/grub and remove the "text" item you added.
e. Run sudo update-grub
f. You can now reboot and your computer will be back to normal, sans nvidia 295.20

DONE

---

8. In the future
Once it is safe to upgrade, all you need to do is

sudo su
echo "nvidia-kernel-dkms install"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "nvidia-glx install"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "libgl1-nvidia-glx install"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "xserver-xorg-video-nvidia install"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "nvidia-vdpau-driver install"| dpkg --set-selections
echo "nvidia-alternative install"| dpkg --set-selections
exit
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

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Links to this post:
http://www.pro-chip.de/linux-mint/161-linux-mint-debian-geforce-gtx-560-ti-treiberproblem.html