nVidia proprietary driver

Question

I successfully installed NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-290.10.run on my Debian Squeeze desktop but I do not see /var/log/nvidia-installer.log clearly stating which file(s) have been added/replaced. Does anybody know which file(s) it installs or modifies ?

Answer 1

You can install Nvidia drivers as follows.

Install nvidia-glx (metapackage) and the kernel driver source (nvidia-kernel-source), It sounds like you will want to get these from unstable or experimental.

Then you can build the binary kernel module using module-assistant. First, install module-assistant. Then

m-a

gives you interactive mode.

• First run UPDATE and PREPARE
• Go into SELECT, and pick nvidia-kernel.
• Then run BUILD and then INSTALL.

Make sure xorg.conf references nvidiain the device section. I.e.

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7300 GS]"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    BusID          "PCI:02:00:0"

Answer 2

You can find moved files in /var/lib/nvidia/. A log containing touched files can be found at /var/lib/nvidia/log.

For a more detailled list from an installation attempt in VirtualBox, see https://lists.launchpad.net/bumblebee/msg00019.html