This bug is horrible and must die. My base intuition concurs with Brian Norris' prior commentary. Quoted for truth:
"I suspect that there is some sort of race condition in the provided build scripts written by Nvidia, and they are only showing up intermittently or under particular system configurations/states, so package reinstallation tends to work fine the second time. Related: I see this comment in Nvidia's Makefile regarding the "new" build system in Linux >= 2.6: # The new approach currently has its own share of problems, some of which # are architectural difficulties with KBUILD, others minor annoyances. For # this reason, an improved version of the NVIDIA Makefile is available to # those experiencing difficulties. So it sounds like they admit to having architectural difficulties here. I wonder where this "improved version" of the Makefile can be obtained..." The difficulty of reliably reproducing this bug implies (however weakly) an upstream race condition. Given Nvidia's intransigence in addressing this, it remains Canonical's responsibility to supply a temporary downstream fix. This is rapidly becoming a community embarrassment – which, if left unresolved, could metastasize into mainstream media attention. (Of the variety we'd rather not have.) While a genuine solution is probably beyond our purview, the Ubuntu- specific nvidia packages could at least be refactored so as to grep the DKMS build log for the following offending lines and respond by attempting to silently reinstall such packages a second time: echo >&2 " ERROR: Kernel configuration is invalid."; \ echo >&2 " include/generated/autoconf.h or include/config/auto.conf are missing.";\ echo >&2 " Run 'make oldconfig && make prepare' on kernel src to fix it."; \ Given that reinstalling such packages does appear to (mostly) succeed, automating such reinstallation could be of general assistance. Certainly, that's better than nothing – which woefully appears to be the current approach. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to nvidia-graphics-drivers-331 in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1268257 Title: nvidia-331-updates 331.38-0ubuntu3: nvidia-331-updates kernel module failed to build, with only error: "objdump: '... .tmp_nv.o': No such file" Status in nvidia-graphics-drivers-331 package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in nvidia-graphics-drivers-331-updates package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: Nvidia kernel module failed to build on kernel 3.13.0-2 Yesterday when the new kernel was pushed, the dkms process failed. ProblemType: Package DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04 Package: nvidia-331-updates 331.20-0ubuntu9 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.12.0-7.15-generic 3.12.4 Uname: Linux 3.12.0-7-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.13.1-0ubuntu1 Architecture: amd64 DKMSKernelVersion: 3.13.0-2-generic Date: Sun Jan 12 01:28:35 2014 InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-11-03 (69 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1) PackageVersion: 331.20-0ubuntu9 SourcePackage: nvidia-graphics-drivers-331-updates Title: nvidia-331-updates 331.20-0ubuntu9: nvidia-331-updates kernel module failed to build UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2013-12-29 (13 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-331/+bug/1268257/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp