nvidia-graphics-drivers for Debian
----------------------------------


INTRODUCTION:
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Welcome to the Debian NVIDIA packages. This document has notes on the
X Server and GL libraries of the NVIDIA driver offering.

For any news on this package check
https://bugs.debian.org/nvidia-driver


NOTES ABOUT GLX DRIVER AND OPENGL:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The NVIDIA driver packages now configure the system s.t. Xorg automatically
detects and uses the NVIDIA driver. Therefore it is no longer necessary to
manually create an xorg.conf.

If you still want to manually create an xorg.conf, e.g. to change some other
driver settings, the following minimal one can serve as a starting point:

	Section "Device"
	    Identifier     "My GPU"
	    Driver         "nvidia"
	EndSection

This minimal xorg.conf often also helps with some issues encountered with
xfce4/lightdm/light-locker etc.

There are many more settings that can be tuned in xorg.conf.  For file
format description and general options please see the xorg.conf(5) manpage.
See /usr/share/doc/nvidia-driver/README.txt.gz
for descriptions of all supported NVIDIA driver specific options.


NOTES ABOUT SUPPORTED ARCHITECTURES:
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The drivers for architectures other than amd64 cannot be tested by the
maintainers due to lack of access to supported hardware. The packages are
provided nonetheless in the hope that they will be useful to people using
such platforms.


NOTES ABOUT REPORTING BUGS TO NVIDIA:
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The NVIDIA graphics driver is a non-free closed-source product.
Therefore the package maintainers are limited to fixing bugs in the
packaging.
Bugs in the 'graphics functionality' like graphical distortions,
performance regressions, hardware support, ... can only be fixed
upstream and should be reported directly to NVIDIA because this includes
collecting system information (with the nvidia-bug-report.sh script that
is included in the nvidia-driver package) on the affected
system.
NVIDIA's bug reporting instructions can be found here:
  https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/if-you-have-a-problem-please-read-this-first/27131
You may additionally report the problem in the distribution's bug
tracker, but please include a link the related thread(s) in the NVIDIA
forum.


NOTES ABOUT 'EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you see this error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log, please ensure that the versions
of linux-image-* and the corresponding linux-headers-* are identical up to
the last digit.  Rebuild the module for this exactly matching kernel+header
pair and reboot.  See https://bugs.debian.org/642497 for details.


NOTES ABOUT XEN:
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The non-free NVIDIA graphics driver does not work in a Xen kernel (e.g.
linux-image-*-xen-*) running under the Xen hypervisor (xen-hypervisor-*).
It does work however if this kernel is running standalone.
Xen is currently not supported by NVIDIA.  For more information, please
see https://bugs.debian.org/570365

If you manage to get the NVIDIA driver to function properly when running
under the Xen hypervisor (e.g. by using a custom kernel configuration or
patching the module source), we would like to hear about it.


NOTES ABOUT WARNINGS emitted during installation/upgrade:
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You might see these warnings while upgrading the nvidia driver package from a
release before squeeze:

    WARNING: Renaming conflicting file '<filename>' to '<filename>.dpkg-old'.

    WARNING: The file '<filename>' found on your system may interfere with accelerated OpenGL.

This usually means some file was found on your system that is not under the
control of the package manager, i.e. not owned by any package currently
installed.  The file may be remaining from an ancient buggy package
(pre-dating the lenny release) that has been upgraded/removed in the meantime
or from having used NVIDIA's installer in the past.

These files most likely can be safely moved away from the library directories
so that they may not cause harm, e.g. being preferred over the current driver
etc.  Reinstallation of the nvidia-alternative package is recommended
after (re-)moving these files.  This will correct missing/incorrect symbolic
links.


SWITCHING FROM NVIDIA WAY TO DEBIAN WAY:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you had previously installed the NVIDIA driver directly (by executing the
NVIDIA-Linux-*.run file) and want to switch to the Debian packages (which is
recommended), please follow these upgrade instructions:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=53144#p306438

In short:
- remove all Debian *nvidia* packages
- reinstall the NVIDIA driver by executing NVIDIA-Linux-*.run again
  (otherwise removal will fail), ignore errors
- remove the driver installed from the *.run file: nvidia-installer --uninstall
- remove all nvidia.ko still found under /lib/modules
- reinstall the Debian nvidia-driver package

In some cases it may be necessary to reinstall the xserver-xorg-core package
to restore some files that have been replaced by the nvidia-installer:
  apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core

 -- Andreas Beckmann <debian@abeckmann.de>  Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:19:36 +0100
