Re: Forgive the rant...but - Some better ideas

[Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch dell com>]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 09:01:24AM -0500, Jeremy Dreese wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 20:35 -0500, taroon-list-request redhat com
> > wrote:
> > > May I please second Nathan's suggestion? How about a concrete example or
> > > 2 - using DKMS, strings, scripts - whatever it takes to put this nVidia
> > > driver to bed? It'd be really nice to have a new kernel update ready to
> > > fly once up2date has finished it's task. I've read the DKMS papers.
> > > Seems like a really slick solution. I'd like a little more tutorial /
> > > examples before venturing off on my own. Frankly, I'm surprised by all
> > > the response I've gotten. Thanks all.
> 
> You can download the Dell NVidia package, which uses DKMS, here:
> 
> http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R84011
> 
> This is how I got started.  I downloaded the source RPM and looked at
> all the pieces to get a better understanding of how DKMS works.

Thanks to Stephen, Ed, and Jeremy for all using the DKMS framework and
your comments thereof.  I'm glad it's working for you.

If you download the NVidia driver tarball, it's already built and
ready for you.

Note: these are available via support.dell.com, so always look there
for the latest versions for your system.  However, they're also
available by direct FTP if you know what you need, so I post those
links here.
# if on an i686 system:
wget ftp://ftp.dell.com/video/nvidia-6105-1-i386.tar.gz
# if on an x86_64 system:
wget ftp://ftp.dell.com/video/nvidia-6105-2-x86_64.tar.gz

unpack the tarball and decend into its directory.

The README file says (s/x86/x86_64 if appropriate):
This driver provides the NVIDIA OpenGL video driver for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 3, for the x86 OS architecture. To install the driver
perform the following steps:
 
1. Install the dkms-1.10 RPM by typing "rpm -Uvh
   dkms-1.10-1.noarch.rpm" at a command prompt
2. Install the video driver by typing
   "rpm -ivh dell-nvidia-6105-1dkms.i386.rpm" at a command prompt.
3. Start or restart the X Window system.

The dkms_autoinstaller service will detect at system boot time if your
NVidia module is built for the kernel you're booting into, and rebuild
it if necessary.  For DKMS to succeed in this, you of course need the
kernel-source package and compiler (Kernel Development group when
installing).  There are ways to have DKMS only do the compile on a
central build server, and then you can distribute RPMs from there out
to compiler-less other workstations too if necessary.

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Sr. Software Engineer, Lead Engineer
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com