kmod-nvidia not working in kernel-2.6.17-1.2139_FC5

[Jeff Vian]

On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 10:11 -0400, Scott R. Godin wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Jul 2006 15:12:35 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> 
> > On 7/3/06, Scott R. Godin <scott.g at mhg2.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 3 Jul 2006 18:02:00 +0800, Deepak Shrestha wrote:
> > >
> > > > But I did the nvidia installation as instructed in
> > > > http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc5.html#nvidia
> > > >
> > > > I checked if kmod-nvidia is really installed or not through rpm
> > and it
> > > > says
> > > > it is installed.
> > > > ------------------
> > > > $ rpm -q kmod-nvidia
> > > > kmod-nvidia-1.0.8762-2.2.6.17_1.2139_FC5
> > > > ----------------------
> > > >
> > > > Now I am confused.
> > > >
> > >
> > > what you should be paying attention to is the installation
> > instructions
> > > from the livna repo instead: http://rpm.livna.org/ also note that
> > the
> > > news post from March 29th points out that the steps necessary have
> > > changed. (hopefully they'll get around to updating or appending the
> > > original instructions to reflect the change)
> > >
> > > This having been said, I should warn you that with the current
> > > kmod-nvidia I experienced quite a bit of error WRT memory corruption
> > > that reflected back into swap, which reflected back into what
> > actually
> > > got onto / -- I wound up having to manually fsck /, redo my swap
> > > partition, and uninstall kmod-nvidia, after which my problems went
> > > away.
> > >
> > > Fortunately I was able to get quite a bit of debuginfo that will get
> > > forwarded on to the lovely nvidia folks with a pound of thanks for
> > not
> > > open-sourcing their drivers so things like this could get caught
> > sooner.
> > > =P
> > >
> > > my advice: live without kmod-nvidia for now. It's *not* ready for
> > > prime-time; not because of livna but because of nvidia themselves.
> > >
> > > Many thanks to Mike Harris for straightening me on this, and for
> > > assistance with the recovery process. Cheers dude, where do I send
> > the
> > > beer? :)
> > 
> > What makes you so convinced that the nvidia X driver caused this mess,
> > and not hardware problems, or some other bug?
> > 
> 
> Because the nvidia driver is a steaming pile of poodle feces wrapped in
> a diaper full of stale chili burritos and sun-baked to august sidewalk
> temperatures? If you don't believe me, feel free to ask the lead Red Hat
> guy for all things X, Mike Harris, what his opinion on and experience
> with the nvidia drivers has been, with regards to
> 
>     o stability
>     o general bug-free-ness
>     o reproducability of errors
>     o memory corruption
>     o responsiveness of the Mfr. to bug-reports involving end-users
> 
> and other similarly fun topics. I'm sure he'll be more diplomatic than I
> on print, but you'll easily grok the undertones of what he'd LIKE to put
> in print (let alone say out loud) regarding Nvidia's driver.
> 
> Having been bitten myself and doing FOUR re-installs of FC5 over the
> past few months after the system gradually went completely
> wahooni-shaped unrecoverably (though I tried valiantly to save things
> each time when I started noticing things going subtly weirder and
> weirder), until I finally wised up and eliminated the nvidia driver from
> the equation and watched my problems evaporate, I'm a believer with
> logged kernel panics, a trashed swap partition that had to be remade,
> and a near-totalled glibc-common (along with several other rpms) with
> half its files in /lost+found/ after a massive manual fsck to prove it.
> and NO re-install after removing kmod_nvidia this time. and all is
> stable.
> 
> Fortunately /home is on a separate DRIVE altogether. =)
> 
> But feel free to continue losing sanity, loosening your hair, and
> applying many QWERTY tattoos to your forehead in the meantime, if you
> want to continue with it. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones _now_, but
> you'll get bit eventually.

Just because _you_ happen to have a bad day with a certain package does
not mean everyone does.
I have never had any problems in using the nvidia driver, and I would
wager that I stress it similarly if not more than you do.
Additionally you are the only one I have seen post with this kind of
trouble, so I have to assume you are in the vanishingly small minority
with this type of gripe.

Please keep this list civil and quit berating a manufacturer for
attempting to help.  Yes, it would be nice if their driver were open
source, but that does not mean it does not work for most who use it.