X fall in failsafe mode after install if nvidia restricted drivers are installed during LiveCD session in intrepid

[Saivann Carignan]

New jockey 0.4+r345-0ubuntu1 can now install and enable restricted drivers directly from the intrepid a4 LiveCD, so people can test nvidia drivers and compiz even before installing ubuntu.

However, when doing this, a more important problem happens. If nvidia drivers are installed during the LiveCD session, once the computer has rebooted to the new intrepid installation, X will fails to start and fall to safe mode. Strangely, almost all changes that has been made inside the LiveCD session seems to have persisted. nvidia-* packages are all marked as installed in synaptic and /etc/X11/xorg.conf is already configured to use proprietary nvidia driver (Driver "nvidia" Option "NoLogo" "True").

This problem will always reproduce, regardless of the number of reboot. It's possible to fix this problem with a simple re-installation of all "nvidia-*" packages in synaptic, after what X really uses nvidia driver.

Steps to reproduce :
1. Have a computer with a nvidia card which needs nvidia restricted drivers.
2. Boot intrepid alpha 4 LiveCD
3. Inside the LiveCD session, install nvidia drivers through Hardware Drivers and reload X with CTRL + ALT + Backspace
4. Install Ubuntu and reboot

Results :
The freshly installed ubuntu intrepid a4 will boot, but X will fail 3 times to load and then fall in failsafe mode.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Might be related to bug 253463

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Two options here:
- Fix the nvidia-glx-* packages to auto-rebuild the drivers on boot; this is already the way it is *supposed* to work, right Alberto?
- Fix the casper hook to also copy the generated .ko files. This is desirable for efficiency reasons, but will also paper of the the auto-rebuild bug.

IMHO we should do both.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Oh, hang on. I bet the DKMS module is not even registered, so it can't be autorebuilt on boot.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Oops, the ubiquity hook is shipped in jockey, not in casper.

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

I would like to see the /var/log/Xorg.0.log (after reproducing the problem) and the output of this command:
locate nvidia.ko

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

I meant:
sudo updatedb
locate nvidia.ko

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The output of "dkms status" would also be helpful.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

On second look this isn't all that clear. apt-install'ing nvidia-glx-* into the target system should cause the dkms tree to be reinitialized and built there.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Some debugging between Colin and Alberto revealed that /usr/lib/ubiquity/target-config/31jockey_pkgs is run and apt-install is run with the correct driver package. It appears in /var/lib/ubiquity/apt-installed, but the package isn't actually installed into /target.

(from IRC):
cjwatson| pitti: so that suggests to me that install_extras is busted, *again*

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

Here's the output of the following command:
ls /target/var/lib/apt/lists/

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

the output of dpkg --list | grep nvidia (from the chroot)

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

/target/etc/apt/sources.list

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

syslog

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Just a comment to say that this bug is still present now that 8.10 is released, I just tested it to be sure.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

not an issue with recent releases and proprietary nvidia drivers.