Ubuntu update messed up my NVidia driver
I did some updates using the auto update feature in Ubuntu a couple of days ago and noticed some xorg updates going through the pipe. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but when I rebooted yesterday, my X Server failed to start. I searched around the Internet (I mean Google) and only found things related to this issue that took place over a year ago. One thing I did notice on a couple of the posts was a thing called vesa. I’m not sure what it really is and cannot find any quick answers, but it appears to be some sort of fallback driver or something. Some ATI users have used it and some NVidia users have implemented it, so it is definitely not card specific. To use it, just replace the Driver value in the Device section of xorg.conf with “vesa” and restart X. This is working for me now, but I don’t like not know what it is or the feeling that I’ve somehow disabled the proper NVidia driver. In June, I’ll be rebuilding my machine using Ubuntu new Dapper release from scratch, so for the time being, I’ll deal with the driver issue and begin backing up my profile data.
UPDATE: vesa is an Xorg driver for generic VESA video cards. It can drive most VESA-compatible video cards, but only makes use of the basic standard VESA core that is common to these cards. The driver supports depths 8, 15, 16, and 24. http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man4/vesa.4.html
One Response to “Ubuntu update messed up my NVidia driver”
Posted by: James Brunskill - 05/11/2006
I’m having the exact same problem. I haven’t found a solution yet but did start a thread on ubuntu forums http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1006932#post1006932
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