Need help with nvidia driver 1.0-8178

[ford460]

Hey guys,
I'm new to both linux and this forum. I have been trying to install the nvidia driver 1.0-8178, I exit X using ctrl,alt,shift,backspace. I then run "sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-8178-pkg2.run" This may be a good time to not i have the 64 bit edition of ubunt, and the nvidia drivers. I get an error to the effect of cannot compile kernel or something. I have no idea what this means, and all of the various fixes I have found on google don't seem to help. My kernel version in 2.6.12-9 -amd64-generic, which is what I get at uname -r. The whole problem is that UT2004 loads, and then the screen goes black and I have to reboot. I had the nvidia-glx installed through the synaptic package manager when this happened, so I tried the nvidia driver above, however I can't install the damn thing. Please help, and let me know if you need any more info.
Steve

Edit:
It seems that all of the sites just tell you to compile your kernel, or make sure your kernel is up to date, or make sure you have :make, kernel-sources, and gcc packages installed. How do I find this out? How do I install them if I don't have them?

[djhobo9]

Synaptic would be an easy way to find out if those packages (or any) are installed... just run a search. For me, the nVidia install required the kernel-headers package for my kernel. It is almost assured that you already have the gcc and make packages.

Try this:

Make sure you've got the full Ubuntu repository available to you, as I'm not sure where the required packages would reside.

Go to a terminal as root and type

apt-get install linux-headers

If you're in luck, it'll say something like "linux-headers refers to more than one package, please specify one" and give a list of some available ones. If there's one on there that is a match to your kernel (like linux-headers-2.6.12-9-amd64-generic), note that package name.

If you didn't find your kernel in that list, try

apt-get install kernel-headers

And do the same, hopefully finding a kernel-headers-2.6.12-9-amd64-generic package or similar.

Once you've found an appropriate linux-headers- or kernel-headers- package, run:

apt-get install [EXACT PACKAGE NAME]

I'd give you the exact package name but I don't know it as I'm Debian... but this way you learn that apt-get is usually nice enough to tell you your choices if you don't give it enough information.

For example, my kernel is 2.6.15-1-686-smp, and I needed a package called linux-headers-2.6.15-1-686-smp.

Try the nVidia install again, and let me know if that helps.