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