Ubuntu Graphics Session Fix after botched Kernel Upgrade

Overview
This post is about restoring graphics to your Linux Desktop session if you install some kernel updates that don't go so well. Particularly, ones that fail with your graphics drivers.

Quick Steps
If you get error message (when trying to upgrade kernel packages or kernel drivers): "Skipping (driver build) at this time because kernel-source is missing." Try the following steps:

Note: `uname -r` is a commandline option which will auto-substitute your kernel version and architecture into the install command. If installing via a GUI, just use the info output from running the console command `uname -r`.

sudo apt-get install linux-source-`uname -r` linux-headers-`uname -r`

If this does not automatically cause your nvidia drivers to compile, cause a manual install with:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

If that still doesn't work, try uninstalling and reinstalling nvidia-current.


Background
Today I noticed there were some kernel updates in Ubuntu, but they had been kept back. So I decided to manually install them, since they did not appear to be causing any package conflicts. I do updates from command line with 'apt-get' (because I'm awesome that way *wink*). While installing the held-back packages, being kernel updates, it tried to accommodate my Nvidia graphics drivers.

Apparently, this failed. I noticed the error on the console, and immediately downgraded my kernel back to the previous versions. But alas, it did no good. I rebooted and was confronted with a text-only machine. Now, I'm fine with this, since I spend a lot of time on console. (Screen, vim, ssh, and elinks are usually all I need for most rescue operations. Sometimes rtorrent, wget, and curl are handy too.)

After trying to get the packages to jive well together, I gave up trying to juggle the kernel packages and instead focused on the Nvidia drivers. I tried installing the nvidia-current package provided by the Ubuntu repositories. (I was running a later version from a PPA.). This failed, but triggered the same error.

"Skipping (driver build) at this time because kernel-source is missing." Now, I've seen this error before. So I quickly installed the linux-source-`uname -r` package. This did not quite do the trick, and I have been around long enough to know that the source-packages often require the header packages as well. So I install linux-headers-`uname -r` package.

Once installed that, I didn't even have to do anything. The system automatically compiled the missing nvidia drivers and installed them for me. A quick reboot later, and now I am blogging about this simple solution.

MPlayer / SMPlayer problems in Ubuntu 10.10

I'm current having some small problems with SMPlayer in Ubuntu 10.10. I'm not sure what the cause is but I'm fairly certain it relates to the recent switch to Kernel Direct-Rendering-Management (DRM) and Nvidia drivers. I say this partly because I am noticing other small video glitches but for the most part they are not worth even mentioning.

However specifically there seems to be problems with trying to use VDPAU. (If you don't know what that is, in a nutshell it is letting your videocard's CPU, often called a GPU, do video playback/decoding for you, which is faster than using your main CPU as well as leaving the system CPU free for other tasks.)

While the problems with VDPAU are hard to pin down (I'm having trouble finding an exact bug report to list here), I have found a small fix to help with my other SMPlayer problems.

I have started using daily compiled MPlayer packages from this PPA.

https://launchpad.net/~motumedia/+archive/mplayer-daily

It seems to have helped with smoothing playback in other areas where I might get lockups when I would use some more exotic SMPlayer/MPlayer feature.

Yet more support for Linux from NVidia and ATI

This was news to me. It makes me very happy to see this. Long story short, Nvidia and ATI/AMD are providing programming API's to allow software in the *nix world (Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc) to utilize GPUs on their hardware. Specifically,VDPAU from Nvidia and XvBA from ATI/AMD are the systems for the X Windows System. They are equivalent of the Microsoft's DirectX Video Acceleration (DxVA) API for Windows^.

Those links will give you more information if you are interested. There are several other programs I personally know of, most notable Avidemux's latest development branches, which are working to make use of this new programming API and technology. It makes me pleased to see these systems coming into place in the *nix world, breaking down yet another barrier between competing Operating Systems.

Even though the protocols from Nvidia and ATI are still limited in what they can do, I have little doubt the capabilities will be extended and based on stirrings in the Windows world, I am sure of it.