Re: [gentoo-user] Re: nvidia update problems

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 17:54 on Wednesday 05 January 2011, Peter 
Humphrey did opine thusly:

> On Wednesday 05 January 2011 15:32:29 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Now we need to figure out *why* it was causing your problems
>
> I could just hand it over to the devs via a bug report, but I ought to
> do some detective work first, if only to decide which subsystem to log it
> against.

I think the system worked by design and the bug is in your config i.e you had 
a not particularly valid one by any reasonable definition of valid:

# rc_hotplug is a list of services that we allow to be hotplugged.
# By default we do not allow hotplugging.
# A hotplugged service is one started by a dynamic dev manager when a matching
# hardware device is found.
# This service is intrinsically included in the boot runlevel.
# To disable services, prefix with a !
# Example - rc_hotplug="net.wlan !net.*"
# This allows net.wlan and any service not matching net.* to be plugged.
# Example - rc_hotplug="*"
# This allows all services to be hotplugged
#rc_hotplug="*"

Setting it to "!*" implies that the dev manager will do nothing. I imagine 
that if you have nvidia hardware and drivers, then you *do* want the kernel to 
find it and do the right thing for that hardware. This is a case where you 
must be pedantic about letting the kernel create only those things it needs to 
create, nothing more and nothing less. You cannot possibly improve on the 
kernel's own knowledge of the hardware :-)

>
> The trouble with that idea is that it implies that I must think. Not
> altogether a good idea.  ;-(

Ooh dear.

Sleeping dogs lying and all that, hey?

;-)


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com