nvidia-common package problem

[Giles Orr]

I'm running Debian amd64 testing on a Core 2 system with an Nvidia
GeForce 8400 GS video card.  I'm using the nvidia proprietary driver
(although switching to the nouveau driver is looking like a better and
better idea ... does it do dual head?).  Whenever I try to do a system
upgrade ("aptitude update ; aptitude full-upgrade") it hangs on the
nvidia-common package, as below:

# aptitude install nvidia-common
The following packages will be upgraded:
  nvidia-common
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 352 not upgraded.
Need to get 13.3 kB of archives. After unpacking 12.3 kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
Get:1 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/contrib nvidia-common
amd64 20110426+1 [13.3 kB]
Fetched 13.3 kB in 0s (19.4 kB/s)
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 12505
package 'nvidiabinaryblob':
 error in Version string 'pkg2-1': version number does not start with digit
(Reading database ... 196539 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace nvidia-common 20110213+1 (using
.../nvidia-common_20110426+1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement nvidia-common ...
Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-common


I tried again:


# aptitude install nvidia-common
The following partially installed packages will be configured:
  nvidia-common
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 352 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-common


Since this is failing, any number of other packages are refusing to
install as well because aptitude insists on attempting to install
nvidia-common first.  Also, several packages that require
nvidia-specific drivers ("hugin" and "k3b" at least) are currently
failing to work.  I rely on both these programs, so suggestions would
be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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