auto install of nvidia driver

[Claude Jones]

On Monday July 9 2007 5:56:45 pm Claude Jones wrote:
> All I do is have freshrpms repo enabled. I install the nvidia
> driver and the dkms package from there. They just work. I've
> done this on multiple machines. You also have to have the
> kernel-headers package installed for your kernel -
> once you've done that one time, regular updates take care of
> themselves. If a new kernel is installed by an update (it will
> also pull in the new kernel-header package), it's detected on
> boot-up, and dkms runs its script to build the new
> kernel-module. When the machine comes up, the nvidia driver is
> active with the new kernel - it's just really that simple - at
> least in my experience. I've got two FC6 boxes and two Blag
> boxes (Fedora derivative), and this is the process I've followed
> on all of them. I'm hoping someone with greater scripting skills
> than I will write a similar routine for the vmware player/server
> modules - the only thing remaining that I have to rebuild after
> a kernel update.
>
> http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2007-March/msg00819.html
>
> ************************
> you just chose to ignore my suggestion ;-)

by the way....
shortly after I sent that off, I finished up a fresh install of F7 on a 
machine I'm building for someone else
first thing I did was enable the freshrpms repo by installing their release 
package
I then configured freshrpms for Smart, another package I first installed 
I then asked Smart to download the dkms package and the Nvidia driver for my 
card, which is an older card so I picked the .96 version which was 
appropriate
Smart then decides that I need a new kernel, the xen kernel, and the regular 
kernel-devel  but the i586 arch - I let this go ahead, and needless to say it 
didn't work after a reboot
I next removed the xen kernel and the i586-devel and installed the correct 
i686-devel for my installed kernel - If I remember right, that uninstalled 
the nvidia driver and dkms and I permitted that
Then I reinstalled dkms and the nvidia driver
Then I rebooted again, and the nvidia driver got detected and dkms built the 
kernel module, and when the machine came up, the nvidia driver was running
Then I ran a general update which pulled in tons of packages, over 400 mb's 
worth including a new kernel
When finished, I rebooted to get the new kernel, and again, on boot-up, dkms 
detected the new kernel and built the kernel-module for it on-the-fly, and 
when the machine came fully up, the nvidia driver was running

It really does work

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD