kmod-nvidia revisited

[Phil Meyer]

On 08/06/2009 01:11 PM, Michael Hannon wrote:
> Hi, folks.  I just wanted to say a few (more) words about the kmod-nvidia
> issue that I raised yesterday.
>
> First, I apologize for hijacking a previous thread.  I was just trying to grab
> the address of the list.  The deeper ramifications didn't occur to me at the
> time.
>
> Second, as several people have pointed out (thanks), the drivers for the new
> kernel are now available.  In fact, I discovered that they were already
> available at the time I made my original post, but they evidently had not
> propagated to the mirrors at that time.  My version of
> rpmfusion-nonfree-updates.repo has the "baseurl" commented out, thus using
> only the mirrors by default.  When I uncommented the baseurl line, I got the
> update.
>
> Third, I'd like to follow up on a comment made by Matthew Saltzman:
>
>    
>> If you install the akmod-nvidia package, it will rebuild the driver
>> automatically when you boot a new kernel.
>>      
>
> Given that flexibility and convenience, why even bother to have the binary
> updates?  Is this just to save people from having to install gcc (or similar)?
>
> Fourth, I do realize that if the new kernel is inconsistent with the current
> video driver, then booting with the old kernel will fix, or at least work
> around, the video problem.  But in some cases the kernel gets patched for
> security reasons.  Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'd rather put up with having
> inferior video output for a while than to risk having my system get infected.
>
> Thanks for all of your comments.
>    

The akmod is for exactly the purpose you describe, that is:

A new kernel comes out that is important to you.  The kmod-XXX modules 
will normally lag a new kernel for a week in testing, and you don't want 
to wait.  The akmod tools will rebuild the kernel module(s) for you on 
the boot of the new kernel.

The next time you update and there is a newer version of the kmod-XXX 
available, you will get it.

It is highly recommended that all rpmfusion users that get any kmod-XXX 
modules from them use the akmod tools.

Good luck!