Bug#650861: [Solved]: opengl crashes with nvidia driver after upgrade on wheezy

[JS]

I submitted 2 bugs after an upgrade of installed nvidia driver 275.05.07 on wheezy caused the X server to freeze:
    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=642497
    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=650861

After an apt-get upgrade the nvidia driver never worked properly again, causing the X server to lock up
("EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop"), although generally the PC was
accessible via ssh.

This happened with several OpenGL applications (/usr/lib/xscreensaver/endgame, googleearth) but was
most noticeable with fgfs from flightgear; then it would take only a few seconds to reproduce the problem.

After many tries reinstalling debian and the driver, I was able to make the 290.10 driver work perfectly
and believe the problems were caused by the upgrade, not the upstream software. I followed the instructions
in  http://tinyplanet.ca/~lsorense/debian/debian-nvidia-dri-howto.html (debian nvidia driver howto), which
can be summarized as:
    1. apt-get install linux-image-686-pae linux-headers-686-pae
       - check that the versions for image and headers are exactly the same
       - if the image differs from the one currently running, REBOOT

    2. apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms
       - will require a REBOOT if nouveau driver is present

    3. apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-xconfig xserver-xorg libgl1-nvdia-glx
       - REBOOT

This worked on two different computers and in both cases the nouveau driver was still installed.

However, the usual debian approaches to installing a package did not work:
	 - apt-get install nvidia-glx
	 - dpkg --set-selections < <selections from working PC> ; apt-get dselect-upgrade

During one of the attempts to reinstall I found the following situation:
    root at berkeley:/home/jack# cat /proc/version
    Linux version 3.1.0-1-686-pae (Debian 3.1.6-1) (waldi at debian.org) (gcc version 4.6.2 (Debian 4.6.2-4) ) #1 SMP Fri Dec 23 19:59:41 UTC 2011
                                        
    ii  linux-headers-3.1.0-1-686-pae 3.1.8-2   <<                  Header files for Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae
    ii  linux-headers-3.1.0-1-common  3.1.8-2   <<                  Common header files for Linux 3.1.0-1

Although the apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms succeeded without printing any warnings, note that the
linux-headers version does NOT match the kernel image. It is hard to see how dkms could build a valid
kernel module in such a case.

nvidia-kernel-dkms does not have a pre-install script but I think it would be useful to have one
that exits with an error if the linux-headers don't match exactly the version of the kernel, as
this would alert the user to the source of the error.

Also, the debian forums thread http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=65738  claims the nvidia driver wiki
is out of date. It would be very helpful to include the nvidia driver howto above, as it was updated
in May, 2011. It worked for my installs without a problem.

I recommend closing out these two bugs as being caused only by an incorrect install procedure on my part.

thanks,
--jack