I was watching a dist-upgrade on an Edgy machine with an Nvidia card that uses nvidia-glx, and noticed that it dist-upgraded to the generic 2.6.17-11 kernel, which doesn’t include the nvidia kernel module.
Ordinarily it would pull in linux-386 specifically; I think that error is somehow tied to the kernel issues that occurred over the last few days. Regardless, the proprietary driver won’t run without the kernel module, so I was very suspicious that my next reboot would be the death of X.
Sure enough, on reboot I lost my graphical desktop. I installed linux-386, which pulled in the entire 2.6.17-11 framework with the 386 kernel (and the nvidia kernel module). On a second reboot, I got X back clean as a whistle.
So remember: If you’re working with Edgy and nvidia-glx and you’re performing a dist-upgrade, make sure you’re getting linux-386 and not just linux-generic. Your graphic driver will most likely die without the 386 version.
Motho ke motho ka botho 
I am so glad you posted this! My co-worker’s PC just booted in text-mode because of this. I was able to recover it by running X with the “nv” driver. Have you found any more information on this specific problem?
Perhaps this problem needs greater attention? Ubuntu needs quality assurance, and it needs to know when it is failing in that area.
Tristan
Strange I have not experienced this issue, with my Nvidia and Edgy.
Hi flossgeek. I think it will depend on the upgrade you make, and the kernel and driver you use. I used the nvidia-glx package out of the repositories and the linux-386 kernel package, and the dist-upgrade pushed me to the 2.6.17-11 version of linux-generic.
So if you have a custom kernel or the newest Nvidia driver from their Web site, I’m not sure what will be the results. It might also depend on the difference between an
upgradeand adist-upgrade; again I’m not 100 percent sure.I’ve already run into a few people on the forums who were having the same problems. It’s an inconvenience, but nothing catastrophic. (Easy for me to say, huh?)