nvidia driver breaks with pretty much every F8 update

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 25 March 2008, Claude Jones wrote:
>On Mon March 24 2008, David Kramer wrote:
>> Also, I got disgusted with the fights between livna and atrpms a long
>> time ago, and now I don't have a single livna package on my system.
>>
>> > The "solution" is to install the nvidia module manually from the nvidia
>> > site download, which is not really a simple option.
>>
>> Ugh.  And then recompile it with every kernel update, right?
>
>there's a real easy solution to this - I use it on many, many, machines
>
>freshrpms bundles a package called dkms with their version of the nVidia
>driver: 'bundles' is not perhaps the correct word, but, dkms is installed as
>well when you install the nVidia driver from freshrpms; freshrpms makes no
>kernel-modules available at all; dkms is a script written by an active
>participant in the Fedora project, who happens to work for Dell; the script,
>after installation, runs at boot time and checks your nVidia kernel-module
>against the kernel that's being booted - if the active kernel module doesn't
>match the kernel that's being booted, it forks into a routine where it
> builds a new kernel module on the fly -- once it's done, normal boot
> resumes and when your machine comes up, it has the correct kernel-module
> built AND loaded for the running kernel -- and that's why freshrpms makes
> no kernel-modules available; with this system, you are completely automated
> - in several years of using it, there was one hiccup where a new nVidia
> driver came out and the script wouldn't run properly, as I recall -- the
> result was, the machines reverted to nv driver that comes with Fedora in
> all cases - I lost some of the features of the nVidia video drivers, but
> the machines kept working, otherwise
>
>using this method, you certainly wouldn't end up with a kernel of one
>architecture and a kernel-module of another, which is causing your present
>issues, and you can forget about worrying about new kernel-modules after
>every kernel update
>
All very well and no doubt true Claude.  But when I installed this dkms thing, 
it came with zero docs, and several questions posted here were ignored.  Now, 
its entirely possible that dkms is smarter than the script I wrote, but 
without any setup insructions its just not worth the storage space.  So I 
wrote my own, called at the end of rc.local:
=================
#!/bin/bash
# this script should install the nvidia module and run a depmod -a `uname -r` 
# IF the module is missing.
# NOTICE! The 'NVIDIA' below is maintained as a softlink to the newest package
# which has been installed ONCE by exec'ing the packed .run file, and also
# has been extracted with the -x option, and the link points to the directory
# as extracted.
if [ -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko ]; then
	echo nvidia driver already installed for this kernel
	exit 0
else
	echo building nvidia driver for this kernel
	cd /usr/src/NVIDIA/usr/src/nv
	make install
	cd ~
fi

if [ -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko ]; then
	echo nvidia.ko driver sucessfully installed 
else
	echo install of nvidia.ko driver failed
fi
sleep 3 #so message can be read before login clears the screen
=============================
 And it works fine, for as long as nvidia is compat with the kernel, but so 
far it is not buildable on any 2.6.25-* kernel.

The nv driver has bit rot from lack of maintenance and won't run my screen at 
anything better than 640x400, whereas the nvidia driver runs it at 1680x1050, 
its native lcd resolution.  So obviously, until nvidia gets off their 
corporate asses, folks like me are stuck at 2.6.24.4.

Its been suggested I try the neauvue(sp?) driver, but if you goto the web 
page, the warnings are enough to scare me away.

Has anyone actually made it work at their lcd screens native resolution, AND 
good enough to watch tv with tvtime on it?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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