[fedora-arm] New Packages and Policy Questions

[Gordan Bobic]

Peter Robinson wrote:

>> Thus, the only kernel module for the Tegra driver that can be used is also
>> the same one.
>>
>> The Nvidia Tegra driver that is old enough to have a compatible interface
>> with the kernel driver only has Xorg ABI 5, which means it won't work on
>> Fedora versions later than F11.
> 
> hmm.
> 
>> So, I have to have Xorg and associated drivers from F11 in order to get
>> accelerated graphics working on this machine.
> 
> What X driver do you use for accel X?

The one bundled with the oldest downloadable L4T distribution from 
nvidia. I think this is the same as what is bundled in a rootfs tarball 
one of he other guys on the IRC channel cooled up (look for 
Ubuntu5.tar.lzma, IIRC). This is the only known version to work on the 
AC100. Note that you will also need nvrm_daemon, the kernel module, and 
a few dependencies for those.

>> Xorg binary links against libssl.so.8/libcrypto.so.8, which means it
>> requires openssl 0.9.8k, so the simplest solution is binaries from F11 for
>> Xorg with the openssl098k compatibility package.
> 
> Yea, I don't think you'll get that into Fedora mainline primarily
> because openssl inherently has security issues.

AFAIK, security issues get patches while remaining major version 
compatibility and APIs.

>> While I'm sure the old Xorg could be compiled up for F13, building it would
>> probably lead to dependency hell on a Fedora 2 versions newer. Using the old
>> binaries seems a lot less intrusive at a glance.
> 
> Can you link to where you get the X drivers etc from. I'm going to be
> looking at this more closely.

Have a look here:
http://gitorious.org/ac100/pages/Installation
The Ubuntu5 tar ball has everything you will need in it.

> With luck the problem of older kernels
> should disappear for most of the issues before long as the CE industry
> is moving towards standardising on 2.6.35.x for their kernel so nvidia
> I suspect will be already in process of upgrading to this as its
> what's needed for Honeycomb tablets and the like. As to when the
> source is released though is anyones guess.

The problem isn't with the nvidia L4T, the problem is that Toshiba chose 
to use a really obscure interface for the keyboard and mouse in this 
machine.

This also isn't the full extent of the obscure sabotages/boobytraps that 
Toshiba have performed on this model. I recently tried upgrading the TFT 
panel in it, and it looks like they implemented an intercept and 
override of EDID coming from the panel to always report 1024x600, but 
even if you override the modeline in xorg.conf (note: this only makes 
sense when using the accelerated tegra driver, not fbdev, as fbdev isn't 
actually a fully implemented mode switch-capable driver on the AC100), 
instead of using the mode as provided. Worse, something will intercept 
the mode provided when ignoring EDID, and scale the image down to 
1024x600, rather than using the full screen. If you put in a higher-res 
panel, it will never use more than the 1024x600 area in the top left of 
the panel. Whether the sabotage in question is out of lazyness, 
incompetencec or malice I don't know, but so far I'm pretty convinced 
that getting anything except 1024x600 to work is going to be 
sufficiently difficult to not be worth the effort without detailed 
explanation and specifications of this "feature" from Toshiba. Needless 
to say, the input from nvidia forums on non-trivial issues like this has 
been predictably non-existant.

Gordan