Steven Altermatt <steveal...@gmail.com> writes: >> nvidia-kernel-dkms
>> Recommends kernel headers -- so you hopefully have the headers for >> your running kernel installed and the module can be built automatically > Only if one wants this done automatically, shouldn't be forced upon the > user. Which happened because the legacy changelog did not have the > necessary info in it so the user could decide whether to use dkms or > not. So, let me explain what happened and why this all worked the way that it did to provide a bit of background. This will hopefully also explain why we thought there was enough information in the legacy changelogs. This was an unexpected side effect. Historically, the primary method of getting a kernel module was to install the pre-built kernel module maintained by the NVIDIA packagers. This was the case for a lot of out-of-tree kernel modules. The problem with this approach is that it's a huge headache from the Debian archive maintenance perspective and requires tons of coordination. Each time the kernel ABI changes, every kernel module of this type must be uploaded again, and all those new packages will have new names and will have to go through NEW processing. Because of that, all out-of-tree kernel modules in Debian are generally converging on DKMS. The huge advantage of DKMS for the average user is that if they have the kernel metapackage and the headers metapackage installed, they can then just merrily upgrade their system without giving out-of-tree modules a second thought and everything just works. It does, indeed, not work well if you have a custom-built kernel, but this is an unusual case for Debian users. One of the changes in all of the latest uploads of NVIDIA packages was therefore to add DKMS support and recommend it by default. This is of particular interest for the legacy packages, since the legacy packages have no pre-built kernel modules in Debian. That's what: - add dkms support (closes: #547535) in the changelog was about. In retrospect, it probably should have also said "and recommend it as the default." Now, for a user such as yourself who is happy with the -source package and isn't interested in DKMS, the chain of Recommends that Andreas pointed out earlier end up causing you problems, since they pull in nvidia-glx before you have had a chance to build the new kernel module and then, from there, pull in DKMS to try to satisfy the dependency on a kernel module. I think the solution for your particular problem would be to downgrade the Recommends of nvidia-glx from nvidia-kernel-source to a Suggests. I'm not sure if that would cause any other problems. At first glance, my guess is that anyone installing nvidia-kernel-source probably knows enough about what they're doing that the extra weight of Recommends isn't necessary for them, so I'm inclined to say that's a good change. But I'd also like to see what Andreas thinks. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org