Nvidia 173 and kernel 2.6.28 compile failure & nvidia 180 crashes

Question

**please if this the wrong place to post this tell me or transfer so i can know**
Hey , im having troubles with my Nvidia driver for long time now i hope you can help me solve it out so theres the deal :
my computer is : NVidia Geforce 9600 GT , intel E8400 core duo , rest aint important i think
I used ubuntu with this computer on drivers 173 and 177 (nvidia) and its worked just fine. someday ubuntu upgrades it to the 180 series and from then X never started. so i used my Windows XP some where the 180 drivers wasnt so well functional and crashed pretty much alot. then i downloaded opensuse 11 where i hoped my problems will be solved but instead all i got is :
[images]
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9379/dsaf.png
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/9462/dsaa.png
[images]
**this problem occur randomly after X amount of time**
**when this happen on gnome in arch its or im realy lucky to hit the "alt + F2" and execute "metacity --replace" in time so i will have approx 40 seconds before its happen again to save all my things and restart X , if im not lucky X freeze and computer freeze and i must hard reset**
i moved from opensuse because its was very slow boot time and because of the graphic drivers in this stage i got myself Arch x86_64 CD , followed the wiki configured network and xorg and everything also installed the "nvidia" package via packman its worked for some time (1 day ?) and then very same problem of opensuse occur . so i tried every driver after the 180.22 , EVERY of them up to the latest beta 185 . ALL of them result the same thing , (expect 185 which there the GPU wont produce red singals).
for the record : my opensuse was x86_64 , my ubuntu was x86 , and with arch i used x86_64 first and now im using x86. same problem occur in both x86 and x86_64
i wrote all this to give you a better idea of my problem so maybe anyone will have a soulation. and maybe someone else will find it usefull will help anyone in the future.
all i want to do is to downgrage back to 173 drivers where i know its worked with ubuntu without any problems at all but i cant theres the actual problem :
when trying to install from the package itsself (sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0.run ) i get this :
ERROR: If you are using a Linux 2.4 kernel, please make sure
you either have configured kernel sources matching your
kernel or the correct set of kernel headers installed
on your system.
If you are using a Linux 2.6 kernel, please make sure
you have configured kernel sources matching your kernel
installed on your system. If you specified a separate
output directory using either the "KBUILD_OUTPUT" or
the "O" KBUILD parameter, make sure to specify this
directory with the SYSOUT environment variable or with
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.
Depending on where and how the kernel sources (or the
kernel headers) were installed, you may need to specify
their location with the SYSSRC environment variable or
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.
so i went and tried to use the package build i fetch the PKGBUILD and nvidia.install files from here :
http://repos.archlinux.org/viewvc.cgi/n … iew=markup
http://repos.archlinux.org/viewvc.cgi/n … iew=markup
and then i changed the kernel requirement (my kernel : 2.6.28-ARCH)
so both of my files looks like this :
PKGBUILD :
pkgname=nvidia
pkgver=173.14.12
_kernver='2.6.28-ARCH'
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="NVIDIA drivers for kernel26."
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
[ "$CARCH" = "i686" ] && ARCH=x86
[ "$CARCH" = "x86_64" ] && ARCH=x86_64
url="http://www.nvidia.com/"
depends=('kernel26>=2.6.27' 'kernel26<2.6.29' 'nvidia-utils')
conflicts=('nvidia-96xx' 'nvidia-71xx' 'nvidia-legacy')
license=('custom')
install=nvidia.install
source=(http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-$ARCH/${pkgver}/NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}-pkg0.run)
md5sums=('76b8eba1b14fc273a1a4044705b0aa56')
[ "$CARCH" = "x86_64" ] && md5sums=('8675e4ca65033b343c8c77b2ce82e71d')
build()
# Extract
cd $startdir/src/
sh NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}-pkg0.run --extract-only
cd NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}-pkg0
# Any extra patches are applied in here...
cd usr/src/nv/
ln -s Makefile.kbuild Makefile
make SYSSRC=/lib/modules/${_kernver}/build module || return 1
# install kernel module
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/${_kernver}/kernel/drivers/video/
install -m644 nvidia.ko $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/${_kernver}/kernel/drivers/video/
sed -i -e "s/KERNEL_VERSION='.*'/KERNEL_VERSION='${_kernver}'/" $startdir/*.install
nvidia.install
# arg 1: the new package version
post_install() {
KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.28-ARCH'
depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1
# arg 1: the new package version
# arg 2: the old package version
post_upgrade() {
post_install $1
rmmod nvidia || echo 'In order to use the new nvidia module, exit Xserver and unload it manually.'
# arg 1: the old package version
post_remove() {
KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.28-ARCH'
depmod -v $KERNEL_VERSION > /dev/null 2>&1
op=$1
shift
$op $*
installed deps : pacman -S nvidia-utils
and now i built the package hopefully its will work ,
bash-3.2# makepkg -c --asroot
==> Making package: nvidia 173.14.12-1 i686 (Sat Mar 28 11:08:28 IDT 2009)
==> WARNING: Running makepkg as root...
==> Checking Runtime Dependencies...
==> Checking Buildtime Dependencies...
==> Retrieving Sources...
-> Downloading NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0.run...
--2009-03-28 11:08:28-- http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.12/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0.run
Resolving us.download.nvidia.com... 212.199.205.201, 212.199.205.216
Connecting to us.download.nvidia.com|212.199.205.201|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 11587505 (11M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0.run.part'
100%[======================================>] 11,587,505 304K/s in 39s
2009-03-28 11:09:08 (287 KB/s) - `NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0.run.part' saved [11587505/11587505]
==> Validating source files with md5sums...
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0.run ... Passed
==> Extracting Sources...
==> Starting build()...
Creating directory NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.12-pkg0
Verifying archive integrity... OK
Uncompressing NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver for Linux-x86 173.14.12....................................................................................................................................
If you are using a Linux 2.4 kernel, please make sure
you either have configured kernel sources matching your
kernel or the correct set of kernel headers installed
on your system.
If you are using a Linux 2.6 kernel, please make sure
you have configured kernel sources matching your kernel
installed on your system. If you specified a separate
output directory using either the "KBUILD_OUTPUT" or
the "O" KBUILD parameter, make sure to specify this
directory with the SYSOUT environment variable or with
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.
Depending on where and how the kernel sources (or the
kernel headers) were installed, you may need to specify
their location with the SYSSRC environment variable or
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.
*** Unable to determine the target kernel version. ***
make: *** [select_makefile] Error 1
==> ERROR: Build Failed.
Aborting...
bash-3.2#
after a little search on google i understood that my kernel sources are missing (using the -e (expert) on nvidia installer let you set location but its no success on normal /lib/modules/2.6.28-ARCH/build)
so how can i solve this and compile & install the 173 drivers on my i686 , arch , 2.6.28 ?
thanks in advance for reading.

Answer 1

After posting this message to the IRC channel , i was told that i can install the nvidia-173xx drivers , its seems to work but i can assure the problem would not occur again so ill just have to watch out, if you have any other fix for this please post.