Problem Compiling Nvidia Proprietary Driver

I am giving OpenSUSE 11.0 Beta 3 a spin and so far have had a great time. The only problem I am having is getting 3D acceleration on my NVIDIA graphics card. I followed the directions on the wiki but I have been unsuccessful. I installed gcc, make and kernel sources. Upon executing

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run -q

I received a message that kernel.h could not be found. It was looking somewhere in my /usr/lib/modules/... directories. This didn't seem correct, so next I ran the installer with

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run -q --kernel-source-path /usr/src/linux

and received a different error. Now it was telling me that version.h did not exist. I was getting closer. The error told me that my kernel sources were not configured. Here's what I did next:

cd /usr/src/linux
make clean && make cloneconfig

then I ran the installer again. Same error. I am stumped. I searched around but haven't found anybody else talking about this problem. Below is an output of my final installer run. If anybody knows a solution for this, I would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks!

nvidia-installer log file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log'
creation time: Tue May 27 07:24:34 2008

option status:
**license pre-accepted****: false
**update******************: false
**force update************: false
**expert******************: false
**uninstall************** : false
**driver info************ : false
**precompiled interfaces**: true
**no ncurses color********: false
**query latest version****: false
**OpenGL header files**** : true
**no questions************: true
**silent******************: false
**no recursion************: false
**no backup************** : false
**kernel module only******: false
**sanity******************: false
**add this kernel******** : false
**no runlevel check****** : false
**no network**************: false
**no ABI note************ : false
**no RPMs**************** : false
**no kernel module********: false
**force SELinux********** : default
**no X server check****** : false
**no cc version check**** : false
**force tls************** : (not specified)
**X install prefix********: (not specified)
**X library install path**: (not specified)
**X module install path** : (not specified)
**OpenGL install prefix** : (not specified)
**OpenGL install libdir** : (not specified)
**utility install prefix**: (not specified)
**utility install libdir**: (not specified)
**doc install prefix******: (not specified)
**kernel name************ : (not specified)
**kernel include path**** : (not specified)
**kernel source path******: /usr/src/linux
**kernel output path******: (not specified)
**kernel install path**** : (not specified)
**proc mount point********: /proc
**ui**********************: (not specified)
**tmpdir******************: /tmp
**ftp mirror**************: ftp://download.nvidia.com
**RPM file list********** : (not specified)

Using: nvidia-installer ncurses user interface
-> License accepted.
-> No precompiled kernel interface was found to match your kernel; would you li
** ke the installer to attempt to download a kernel interface for your kernel f
** rom the NVIDIA ftp site (ftp://download.nvidia.com)? (Answer: Yes)
-> No matching precompiled kernel interface was found on the NVIDIA ftp site;
** this means that the installer will need to compile a kernel interface for
** your kernel.
-> Performing CC sanity check with CC="cc".
-> Performing CC version check with CC="cc".
-> Using the kernel source path '/usr/src/linux' as specified by the
** '--kernel-source-path' commandline option.
ERROR: The kernel header file '/usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h' does not
****** exist.**The most likely reason for this is that the kernel source files
****** in '/usr/src/linux' have not been configured.
ERROR: Installation has failed.**Please see the file
****** '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for details.**You may find suggestions
****** on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux
****** driver download page at www.nvidia.com.

Update: I noticed that my kernel-source and my installed kernel versions didn't match. After updating the kernel to the same version as my installed kernel-source, I was left without an initrd file and a grub "file not found" error. I tried to rebuild it using my other installed Linux system using chroot and mkinitrd but was having difficulty in part (at least I think) due to the difference in ATA controller drivers. OpenSUSE saw my hard disk as /dev/sda while my other system saw it as /dev/hda. At this point I think I'm back to re-installing openSUSE and taking one more crack at those NVIDIA drivers. If I still can't get it, I'll wait until the final release of 11.0 and the pre-compiled NVIDIA drivers. I am very impressed by OpenSUSE's KDE4 implementation. I was not so impressed by Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4.. although that was last month. KDE4 seems to be moving along at a nice pace.

Update: I noticed that my kernel-source and my installed kernel versions didn't match. After updating the kernel to the same version as my installed kernel-source, I was left without an initrd file and a grub "file not found" error. I tried to rebuild it using my other installed Linux system using chroot and mkinitrd but was having difficulty in part (at least I think) due to the difference in ATA controller drivers. OpenSUSE saw my hard disk as /dev/sda while my other system saw it as /dev/hda. At this point I think I'm back to re-installing openSUSE and taking one more crack at those NVIDIA drivers. If I still can't get it, I'll wait until the final release of 11.0 and the pre-compiled NVIDIA drivers. I am very impressed by OpenSUSE's KDE4 implementation. I was not so impressed by Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4.. although that was last month. KDE4 seems to be moving along at a nice pace.
[/b]

beta3 has a LOT of kernel issues that have been solved since. You could wait for the RC tomorrow, or if you use a beta3 live-cd at least remove the file /.buildenv before upgrading your system or it will not run mkinitrd after updating the kernel.

If you have the latest kernel everything will be OK again and you kan build the nvidia drivers without any problem.

stefan

Thanks Stefan! It's good to know it's not just me that's having the problem. I'll download the RC1 release when it comes out and give it another go. I'm very much looking forward to the "One Click Install" of the NVIDIA driver like they have for the previous releases. They never had that back when I was using the 10.1 release. It's come a long way since then.

http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs:Most_Annoying_...SUSE_11.0_Beta3

NVIDIA driver doesn't compile. Workaround: check here for a patch. No patching required if 173.08 Beta drivers are used. (see the link above)