Building nVidia 173xx legacy kernel with Debian module assistant

I have an ageing nVidia GeForce FX 5600XT. Support for this was recently dropped from the mainstream nVidia driver package, and relegated to legacy 173xx.

This caused one minor problem. I build my own nVidia kernel module using module-assistant, (m-a). Right now this doesn't have an entry in its module list for the 173xx legacy module.

I added one in by adding nvidia-kernel-legacy-173xx-source to /usr/share/modass/compliant.list. The package description in the m-a selection list doesn't say legacy, but the package name does.

Today (28/4/09) I hit a problem. I couldn't rebuild the kernel module using m-a. I hit the problem described in Debian bug 523024. Bafflingly, though, that bug was marked fixed, and I had the source package with the fix.

I eventually found that, although m-a said it was unpacking the new archive, the source being build at /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel-legacy-173xx/ remained the old source. I rm -r /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel-legacy-173xx and tried m-a again. This time the kernel package built properly. Phew!