NVidia driver updates

Updating Xubuntu results in freezing at "Checking battery state"

Whenever the Linux core is updated, I can't boot my Xubuntu machine. It gets stuck at "* Checking battery state... [ OK ]".

It is to do with using a manually-installed nVidia driver (chosen as it is less buggy) rather than nvidia-current (old and less good on my hardware). The solution is to re-install the nVidia driver.

I keep a copy in ~/Config/NVidia.

When the PC locks up at the "Checking battery state" I need to do this:

• Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to another window.
• Log in.
• Enter sudo service lightdm stop
• Go to ~/Config/NVidia
• Run the command in there as root, e.g.
• sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40.run

This has to be done after every kernel patch.

If you get the message ERROR: File '/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so' is not a symbolic link., just re-run the script and it will run OK.

Useful commands are:

sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40.run --sanity   … checks the currently installed version
sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40.run --latest   … reports the most recent version
sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40.run --update   … downloads and installs the latest version
sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40.run -f         … forces a re-installation

If the X Server (graphical login) is already running, switch to another screen with Ctrl-Alt-F2, login in as yourself and as root enter:

sudo service lightdm stop

then you can run the NVidia script. To re-start it, just reboot.

The latest driver can probably be found at ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/latest.txt

An example path for the download is ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/310.32/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.32.run Note that higher-numbered directories may exist, but not be the recommended version.