My system was working perfectly and I upgraded my system with apt. The next time I started up my computer, X complained that it failed to load the module nvidia. I switched my xorg.conf file to load the open source nv drivers so I could browse the Internet for help. I found Debian Bug #420354, which says the package nvidia-glx version 1.0.8776-4 does not provide the file nvidia_drv.so.
I looked all over my system and the file no longer existed. The bug report states that you can copy the file from the source package. I downloaded the official NVidia drivers (version ia32-1.0-8776), extracted the contents, and copied the file where it needed to be by running the following:
$ chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1.run
$ ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1.run -x
# cp NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
Everything then worked for me just like before. I hope this helps!
Thank you so much for this info. I have just net installed lenny, and was running into the bizarre situation that is “nvidia’s driver could not be found”. I was dead set on installing the drivers the “Debian way”.
Thanks again, you have saved me much aggravation.
thanks!