Nvidia drivers

[sachi]

Busy trying to install latest Nvidia drivers, but it throws an error about the compiler -

Could not complete compile gcc-version-check.c.

Apparently I have to set the "CC" environment variable to the name of the compiler used by my kernel?

I'm a little lost

[antidrugue]

Hum?

What distro are you using exactly?

Never had to do that on Debian...

But you need that have build-essential installed:

apt-get install build-essential

If it still doesn't work, you can specify the cc compiler you want to use by default with:

update-alternatives --config cc

[sachi]

Cool installing the essentials seems to have done something...

Now its throwing an error "unable to find the kernel source tree for the current running kernel"

I need to specify the `--kernel-source-path`, what would I set this to?

[antidrugue]

Nope, you need those 3 things installed before installing NVIDIA drivers:

gcc (build-essential)
make (build-essential as well)
kernel-source (depends on your kernel)

You don't need to spefify the path to kernel source, you just have to install it.

apt-get install kernel-source-$(uname -r)

or if it doesn't work, then the right command for you is

apt-get install linux-source-$(uname -r)

[sachi]

Cool, thanks for the help - makes sense.

[sachi]

apt-get install kernel-source-$(uname -r)

Sorry if this is a retarded question, but surely these aren't the best to install? Surely you would want to get Ubuntu specific kernels only?

[antidrugue]

Check out the output of

uname -r

It will probably be something like "2.6.12-10-386", that is your kernel (for example).

Using Ubuntu, you are connected to the Ubuntu repositories, so typing

apt-get install linux-source-$(uname -r)

will install your kernel specific source, from the Ubuntu repositories.

[sachi]

aaah I understand now thanks antidrugue