Nvidia GeForce 6600 and Debian AMD64

[pmartin]

So far I have been unsuccessful getting my GeForce 6600 on my AMD64 system. When xserver starts it says in the log that no device was found (the standard 'nv' driver for X doesn't seem to cover this chip) sooo...
How do I build the correct driver? Do I need anything in particular from apt?

Cheers!
p

[djhobo9]

Have you tried the NVIDIA drivers for download on their site?

The AMD64 ones are here... you should only need to download the .run file, run it (you'll need the kernel headers package for your current kernel), and insert the nVidia module... all should work well then.

Let me know if you need more help with this.

[pmartin]

I attempted the install, but it failed saying I don't have the kernel headers...but I do! Do you know what the script is looking for? Do i need to make any path variables to point it to the right place?

[djhobo9]

I've been running custom kernels for awhile now so I always have a full source tree in place to work from, but i seem to remember having this problem back when I ran generic kernels. I think this is how I fixed it:

Try going to /lib/modules/your_kernel_name
If there's a file/folder/link in there called source, move it to a different name like source.backup

Then make a new symlink from source to your installed kernel headers... like so..

ln -s /usr/src/your_headers /lib/modules/your_kernel/source

Obviously also make sure that your headers version exactly matches your kernel image version... I think you've got that covered but just to make sure.

Once you've done this, try the nvidia install again.

I have no idea why this works, or rather why it doesn't do this automatically, but I seem to remember it working for me.

Let us know...

[pmartin]

I tried your recommendation but unfortunately it did not work !
This is my first debian on amd64, so i noticed a /lib64 directory. Does this one matter?
I made sure my symlink in /lib/modules/2.6.8-11-amd64-generic was /usr/src/myKernelHeaders, so i am now unsure what to do. Should I try a custom kernel (eek ) or maybe just download the whole 2.6.8 source?

[pmartin]

I got the nvidia driver compiled. It turns out that I either a) needed to recompile the kernel with gcc 3.3, which was installed or b) switch to gcc 3.4.
Since I did a) first...I wish I did b); but that information was learned after the fact.