Debian Configuration :: KDM "failure" On Boot - Squeeze

Hardware at issue is an nVidia GeForce 9600 GT. Issue occurs regardless whether the driver is downloaded and installed from nVidia, or installed via Synaptic courtesy of the new dkms package in the repositories.

It should also be noted that the issue only arose after an update today, as follows:

I do not believe it is related to the last three items in that list. Because everything worked perfectly before todays update, it would appear that one of those other updates is causing KDM and nVidia to not want to co-operate with each other.I also notice that, new to the boot sequence, the system is booting with "concurrency" - never seen that scroll by before - which may have something to do with it too.

OK, what happens. KDM "fails" to start when booting the computer. Symptoms : At the appropriate spot in the boot sequence, the screen goes black (as usual), but then, instead of the cycling cursor followed by the logon screen, the nVidia logo appears, and after about 7 or 8 seconds, the screen goes black for about a second, then drops me back at the console. From there, I can log in as root.

Now, the thing is, KDM is actually running, but using <control> <alt> <F7> only brings me to a blank black screen. By issuing the command /etc/init.d/kdm restart, I come up to a normal logon and can proceed as usual. As well, if I delete xorg.conf, system boots OK.

Looking at the system log, we find :

And then some way past that we get :

Should mention that was using the latest stable driver from nVidia (195.36.24), but in the hope that maybe something in the latest beta may solve the issue, installed that, but the answer is nope And yes, completely uninstalled the nVidia drivers between each test of the nVidia driver, the same driver in the repositories and the latest beta driver, before anyone mentions.