A Weird Imagination

Nvidia GLX not working

The problem#

I recently replaced my old Nvidia graphics card with a newer one. Upon booting up, I ran glxgears to test that 3D graphics were working properly and got an error like

X Error of failed request:  BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
 Major opcode of failed request:  155 (NV-GLX)
 Minor opcode of failed request:  4 ()
 Resource id in failed request:  0x1200003
 Serial number of failed request:  34
 Current serial number in output stream:  34

The solution#

Either delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf or edit it and remove (or comment out) the "Files" section; that is, the lines

Section "Files"
    ...
EndSection

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Fixing broken alternatives

The problem#

Trying to install the python-numpy package in Debian Unstable ("Sid") I got the following error on the liblapack3 package (seen also in this bug):

$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 36 not upgraded.
4 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up liblapack3 (3.5.0-4) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative liblapack.so.3gf can't be slave of liblapack.so.3: it is a master alternative
dpkg: error processing package liblapack3 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-numpy:
 python-numpy depends on liblapack3 | liblapack.so.3; however:
  Package liblapack3 is not configured yet.
  Package liblapack.so.3 is not installed.
  Package lapack3 which provides liblapack.so.3 is not installed.
  Package atlas3-base which provides liblapack.so.3 is not installed.
  Package liblapack3 which provides liblapack.so.3 is not configured yet.
  Package libatlas3-base which provides liblapack.so.3 is not installed.

The solution#

Run the following command to fix the error:

$ sudo update-alternatives --remove-all liblapack.so.3gf

And then rerun the install:

$ sudo apt-get install -f

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