I updated the kernel on the Mandrake 9.1 workstation at work today, and then I realized I also had to update the NVIDIA drivers to have a display. 
However finding updated NVIDIA packages for Mandrake, and figuring out the correct way to install and configure them took a bit of googling, so I figured I would archive what I did here to help others, and possibly my future self if I have to do it again (and when I forget how to do it…).
- Surf to: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/mandrake/9.1/rpms/
and download: NVIDIA_GLX-2.4.21.0.25.2tex-4496.i586.rpm and NVIDIA_kernel-2.4.21.0.25.2tex-4496.i586.rpm - Install NVIDIA_kernel and then NVIDIA_GLX. NVIDIA_GLX gave me some conflicts, but a little –force fixed that right up.
- Edit /etc/modules: comment out the “NVdriver” line, and add a line that says “nvidia”. This will cause the NVIDIA driver to load on boot; which is a good thing.
That is all.
UPDATE: 2003-12-31.
I just did this on the new Mandrake 9.2 kernel upgrade that I upgraded and the above links don’t work. I’ll keep them just for historical reference. The way that worked for me with 9.2 was the following:
You’ll need the kernel source for the kernel you want to build the nvidia module for.
Surf to ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-4496/
(or which ever version it is you want).
Download NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run or the largest pkg#
Reboot to new kernel.
Exit out of X (if needed) run the *.pkg#.run as root.
This will build the nvidia driver for you using the kernel headers from your running kernel source, and install it in:
/lib/modules/[kernel_version]/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o
You’ll still need the nvidia line in /etc/modules to have the driver loaded on start up.
BONUS LINK:
A great How-To for doing this with the 2.6 kernel can be found here:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1804 .
The only things extra that I had to do to get it to work with the pre-compiled 2.6 kernel binaries from Mandrake were:
Use this command to extract the tar-ball from minion.de :
tar xjvf NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg#.tar.bz2.gz
And set an environment variable before running nvidia-installer :
export IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1