EDIT= This is for those of us that didn't disable the proprietary Nvidia drivers before doing the kernel update. See jimbo99's post to see if that works for you.
Doing this is NOT supported by Ubuntu (Canonical) (Nvidia too) and is probably considered an "ugly hack". If anyone else has a better way please post your info.
I run karmic with the proprietary 190.42 Nvidia drivers and did a kernel update yesterday. As usual the update freaked out the Nvidia drivers and left me with a blinking cursor on a black screen. No matter what I did the new kernel refused to boot. After much searching and grub trashing I was able to get the Nvidia drivers re-installed and back to a working system. Here is the procedure that worked for me...
1. Boot to a working (older) kernel.
2. Put the Nvidia driver on the desktop.
The "recovery" kernel line was just as unresponsive on my system as the normal one. To get it to boot I did this-
3. Open nautilus as root-
go to /etc/X11 and make a copy of xorg.conf (I named mine xorg.confbak) so it will still be there for the other kernels later if you need it again.
4. Delete the original xorg.conf. YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST MAKE A BACKUP OF XORG.CONF FIRST! SEE ABOVE.
5. Reboot to the grub boot screen; highlight the new kernel "recovery" mode entry and press the "e" key to edit it.
6. Remove "quiet" from the end of the line and add vga=771 so it will look similar to this...
Code:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-15-generic root=UUID=<snip> ro single splash vga=771
(Ignore the snip, it's just a long uuid. Yours will be different). Doing this (and #4) will allow the new kernel to boot in a low graphics mode. Do NOT hit your "enter" key
7. CTRL+X to boot the new kernel; choose "Drop to command line"; log in.
8. Since we don't have to stop gdm enter-
at the prompt and then-
Code:
sudo sh Nvidia-Linux-x86-190.42-pkg1.run
9. You will get a warning-
Code:
You appear to be running in runlevel 1; this may cause problems. For example: some distributions that use devfs do not run the devfs daemon in runlevel 1, making it difficult for `nvidia-installer` to correctly setup the kernel module configuration files. It is recommended that you quit installation now and switch to runlevel 3 (`telinit 3`) before installing. Quit installation now? (select 'No' to continue installation) Answer:
go ahead and choose "No", then finish the driver install (let it make the kernel module).
10. At the end the installer will ask you if you want it to write (or update) a new xorg.conf. Choose yes as we deleted the old one earlier. This is very important.
11. You will then end up at a prompt (at the bottom of the screen), enter-
The new kernel(s) should now boot. Remember, you WILL have to do this every time you install a new kernel. dkms doesn't seem to be able to handle this anymore.
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