I'm running Debian Wheezy on a computer with ATI / AMD graphics and no Nvidia hardware. A week ago, with no obvious cause, apt
decided that it needs to configure Nvidia graphics any time it runs, causing erratic behavior and failures during updates.
The apt log (relevant portion shown below), lists various failures revolving around an Nvidia kernel (nvidia-kernel-amd64
and its dependency, nvidia-kernel-3.2.0-4-amd64
). It looks like it thinks the Linux kernel isn't configured, so it is unable to configure the Nvidia kernel. Note that this is on a system that's been running for over a year on Debian and no hardware has been changed.
The system runs normally, despite these reported errors.
- Even stranger, it thinks it needs to configure something that isn't even there. Neither of those is listed in Apper as being installed.
- Though not installed, there are some artifacts in various folders on the drive. The Nvidia kernel is non-free, so it is not a standard part of the base Debian distribution and should not contain anything required for Debian to work. My Debian installation is actually a Wheezy spin that came bundled with an array of free and non-free drivers and software, so that may well have been the source of the artifacts.
- Checking the system (via
lspci
) verifies that the system correctly recognizes the ATI graphics and doesn't see any Nvidia hardware, and the correct (radeon) driver is being used. There is no apparent reason why any action should occur involving Nvidia. - As an experiment, I attempted to see if I could install and then uninstall
nvidia-kernel-amd64
andnvidia-kernel-3.2.0-4-amd64
on the chance that the process might clean up some potentially corrupted or incomplete prior installation. Apper went through the download, prepare, and install steps for both, then added installation oflinux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64
to the list, which failed (same issue as shown here). When I reopened Apper, the two Nvidia packages were still showing as uninstalled, and the problem persists.