[solved] Uninstalling non-gentoo nvidia drivers

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1veedo · Post by **1veedo** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:01 pm

At one point in time my motherboard's built in network card was only supported by the git sources. Because I was using git sources, gentoo's built in nvidia-drivers never worked so I always had to get special hacks to get it working (which portage had a tendency to break whenever I did a full system update which is why I'm trying to switch over now).

I'm getting similar error that I used to get and the only reason I can think of is that the old drivers left some stuff broken.

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undefined symbole: _nv000008gl

I've tried removing libGL/libGLcore and re-linking those files but nothing seems to be working. Is there any sure way to completely uninstall or overwrite all openGL and nvidia stuff?

causality · Post by **causality** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:24 pm

With this sort of thing it's hard to determine what is actually causing that error. You didn't specify the source of that error message but I am guessing that it must be coming from the kernel module. What follows is not intended to diagnose that error so much as to remove the nVidia binary driver that you have been using and replace it with the one from the Portage tree.

You should probably close X entirely and do this from the console.

If you install the nVidia binary drivers manually, the installer is in the form of an executable script with a name like NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.42-pkg0.run. If you don't have this, you can download it from nvidia.com. It has its own uninstall command. You can run it with a command like this:

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localhost ~ # ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.42-pkg0.run --uninstall

At this point you may want to make sure the kernel module is not still loaded in memory:

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localhost ~ # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
nvidia               8872171  52
localhost ~ # rmmod nvidia
localhost ~ #

Then you can install the one in Portage:

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localhost ~ # emerge x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers

This will build a new kernel module from source and install the binary GLX driver.

At the end of that installation procedure, Portage itself will execute the command "eselect opengl set nvidia". This will establish several symlinks that tell your system which libGL/libGLcore to use. It'll know where to find those once you are using the nvidia-drivers from the Portage tree. When you run X again, it should automatically load the kernel module Portage just built.

Hopefully that will get everything working for you.

vincent- · Post by **vincent-** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:29 pm

Better if you add VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" to your make.conf and then do:

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emerge -DNua world

That will rebuild automatically x11-base/xorg-drivers with nvidia flag and install x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers dependence.

1veedo · Post by **1veedo** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:54 pm

Well X doesn't wrok so I'm posting from links. That's why I didn't include a very long error message. I'm getting a bunch of version mismatch errors as well but I think those will go away if I can update my system.

--unstall did work though. I tried looking for an option like that using -h but couldn't find anything. Thanks

causality · Post by **causality** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:15 pm

For the upstream nVidia installer (the one you could download from nvidia.com), uninstall only shows up when you use -A for "advanced options".

Just my opinion, but I am glad that you did uninstall it first. It's quite possible that the upstream nVidia installer may have placed some files in different locations than what Portage would have specified. Removing those first is your best bet for a clean reinstallation when you later install the nVidia drivers from Portage. Once the old driver is uninstalled, then either the commands I gave or the suggestion from Peratu will install the drivers from Portage.

Adding VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" to your make.conf is also a good idea, but for other reasons. If you don't specify your video card with a line like that, then building xorg-server will also build all of the Xorg drivers, which will waste time compiling them and space storing them. Adding that to make.conf will just build the one you need.

1veedo · Post by **1veedo** » Sat Dec 12, 2009 5:37 am

I already had VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" in my make.conf. Thanks for the suggestion though. Things work a lot better when you let portage handle everything.