[Fedora] Re: Nvidia sucks, sucks, sucks !

[Jonathan Berry]

On 11/9/06, Kim Lux <lux at diesel-research.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-11-09 at 17:07 -0600, Jonathan Berry wrote:
> > > First of all, thanks once again for introducing the red herring concept
> > > of me running a test kernel.  If you keep repeating a red herring,
> > > sooner or later some people might get confused, but not really.
> >
> > No, the fact you were running a testing kernel is very relevant to
> > this.  Things break in testing kernels.
>
> Well, contrary to your argument, the Nvidia drive built under kernel
> 2835.  The problem was that installing the new kernel killed nvidia from
> working under kernel 2798.  As far as I am concerned that is a no no.
> The second issue in all of this is that we have to BUILD drivers in the
> first place.

At what point was the old driver "killed"?

> >   If you are running a testing
> > kernel, it is assumed that you know what you are doing.
>
> Well, I've built a few kernels in my day.

Then why are you complaining, if you know what you are doing?

> > If you do
> > not, you will likely run into problems.  Also (this will make more
> > sense later in the email) Livna does not build nvidia kernel modules
> > for testing kernels.  Things change too quickly and they cannot keep
> > up.
>
> I understand that, but the real issue is that we should need to depend
> on a single website to provide nvidia drivers !

I think you left out a "not"...  What alternative do you propose?
We've already established that the nvidia driver cannot exist in the
kernel and you should know that it won't be officially endorsed by
Fedora because of Fedora's commitment to only ship OSS.

> > > If you read my original post, you'll note that I had problems building a
> > > driver for kernel 2798.  As far as I know that kernel is considered
> > > stable.  After all, it is running on most fc6 boxes.
> >
> > That doesn't seem to be what you were claiming here.  It seems like
> > you were fine until you upgraded to the testing kernel...
>
> Yes, installing the new kernel disabled the nvidia driver for the old
> kernel.  As far as I know, that happens for ever kernel or at least it
> has for ever kernel that I have installed for the last two years !

Installing the new kernel should do nothing to the nvidia driver for
the old kernel.  Now, if you go installing the nvidia driver for the
new kernel, that might do something.

> > > And the fact that the build failed is also irrelevant.
> > >
> > > THE RELEVANT POINT IN THIS WHOLE DISCUSSION IS THAT USERS HAVE TO
> > > *BUILD* A DRIVER IN ORDER TO RUN THE NVIDIA HARDWARE, unless they can
> > > live with what the non proprietary driver does.  (Caps for emphasis, not
> > > shouting !)
> >
> > The problem with this argument is that users do *not* have to build a
> > driver if they use the Livna driver.  It's very easy, install an RPM
> > to add the repo, run a command to install the driver.
>
> First of all, to use a livna driver, you have to know that livna exists
> and then you have to be able to set livna up as a repository.  Now, take
> your average computer user and tell me that that it is a reasonable
> expectation that they are able to to do that.  It isn't.

Do you think Window's driver model is reasonable?  For nVidia cards,
you have to go to nvidia.com and download a driver to install.  I
don't see that as being unreasonable, and is about what you have to do
with Livna.  And it doesn't take long on this list to find out about
Livna.  If you look a little bit, you can find these things out.  Is
it ideal?  Probably not.  But that's where we are.  Don't like it?
Don't use Fedora.  Find a distro that ships the nvidia driver.

> Secondly, livna is not always up and its drivers have not always worked.
> Then what ?

You wait and don't update your system.  Or I think there is a way to
make it not update the kernel if the module is not ready.  Do you
think your "average computer user" will be doing updates anyway?

> > The driver then
> > upgrades itself with the kernel if the packages are available (which
> > may take a couple days for Livna to build).
>
> In the mean time, make sure you set yum up to ignore the kernel
> updates.
>
> > > >  But once again, you fail to
> > > > comprehend that.  You want to run test kernels, that's fine.  But don't
> > > > expect everything to work, otherwise it wouldn't be a test kernel.
> > >
> > > This has NOTHING to do with being a test kernel.  Are you dense ?  The
> > > nvidia driver has to be built for EVERY kernel and for me the failure
> > > rate on that build is probably 50%.
> >
> > During the time I used the package from nVidia, it worked most of the
> > time.
>
> Yeah, most of the time.  Great.

This is Fedora.  It's cutting edge.  Sometimes things break, and those
things may not be the nvidia driver.  If you are running Fedora, you
are already taking that chance.  Deal with it.

> >   The times it did not, I usually found a fix fairly quickly.
>
> Just like I did this morning.  How how about my mom, could she find a
> fix quickly ?

Are we talking about your mom?

> > Then I switched to the Livna package and have had even fewer issues.
>
> Even fewer means some ?

Fewer means probably none, but just in case I don't remember.
Certainly I've had to hold off updating my kernel.  I've also rebuild
the src.rpm for the driver.  Sometimes that didn't work the first
time.

> > The problem, especially when you throw in test kernels, is that the
> > kernel changes quickly (and Fedora updates to those changes quickly)
> > and nVidia cannot keep up with those changes.
>
> Even test kernels aside, you are telling us you had issues.

No, I was talking about using nVidia's binary package.  It's not
always up to date.  But even then, there are usually patches on the
nvnews.net forum.

> > > Funny, I run ntfs on our server and I don't know a darn thing about how
> > > it ties into the kernel !  I run yum update on the server, it does its
> > > thing and I'm done.  ntfs has never failed to run when I've rebooted.
> > > That is the way software is supposed to work.
> >
> > That's really funny, 'cause if you are doing this, then you can do
> > this with the nvidia driver as well.
>
> I've gotten the nvidia driver working every single time !  And I was one
> of the first ones to get it running on the zd7000 laptops and I wrote a
> HOWTO about it and educated lots of other people.

You missed my point.  I was talking about Livna.  Why are you singling
out the nvidia driver when you have happily delt with the NTFS driver?
 It suffers the same issues with Livna that the nvidia driver does
that you are complaining about.

> > > Here is the thing... as far as I know, one can only build an Nvidia
> > > driver for the kernel that they are running.  Maybe the wizards know a
> > > way around this, but, like I said before, I have a life outside of
> > > Linux !  So what happens is you boot with the Nvidia driver and then you
> > > build it and that is when you find out if it works or not.
> >
> > You most certainly can build the drivers before updating your kernel.
> > Check the command options that the nvidia script gives you.  That is,
> > you can at least build them before you reboot into the new kernel once
> > the update has been installed.  And you can always boot into the old
> > kernel if you need to work on things.  And yes, I have rebuild the
> > nvidia driver many times
>
> I have never been able to boot into a previous kernel.   As a matter of
> fact, the installer script goes like this for me:
>
> "-> There appears to already be a driver installed on your system
> (version: 1.0-
>    8776).  As part of installing this driver (version: 1.0-9629), the
> existing
>    driver will be uninstalled.  Are you sure you want to continue? ('no'
> will a
>    bort installation) (Answer: Yes)"

Notice the version numbers.  You cannot have two different versions
installed.  There is a way to install the same version on multple
kernels.  Try running the nvidia script with the --help option.  Lots
of info there.

> That is straight from /var/log/nvidia-installer.log from this mornings
> install.  So how do you get it to keep the driver installed so you could
> reboot with a previous kernel ?

For one, you can not install a driver for the new kernel and just use
the old one.  Then deal with the new one when you can.

> >  Especially
> > when the things you are complaining about are a non-issue.
>
> Now that there is very indicative of an issue in the Linux community.
> Who is the Nvidia driver situation a non issue for ?  Its an issue for
> me.  It wastes my time and it pisses me off.  It has for 2 years.  YOU
> judge this as a non issue.  To you it probably is a non issue.  If you
> put yourself in other peoples shoes, people who don't even know this
> forum exists and know little about Linux, stuff like this is definitely
> an issue.

And you have been offered several solutions to this issue.  An issue
is a non-issue when it is solvable with a known solution.  Ask for
help, nicely, and you will likely get it.  If you've gotten Fedora
installed, you know at least something about Linux.  Do you have a
better solution than asking for help or trying to find the solution on
the Internet somewhere?  What about Windows?  When people who don't
know enough run into trouble, they usually ask someone for help.  It
would be great if Linux just worked for everyone and noone had an
issue with it ever.  But be realistic.

Jonathan