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Last week I upgraded the kernel on one of my 5 year old Pentium 4 desktop |
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machines to 2.6.24-gentoo-r3. Kernel compilation went fine as usual but |
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when I tried to emerge the current (x86) binary nVidia driver [96.43.01] |
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for its GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x graphics card it failed with an error |
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message that the it couldn't determine the kernel version. |
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|
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The graphics card is around 5-7 years old and won't run on later 1xx.xx.xx |
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versions of the binary blob, so I'd masked the driver to: |
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|
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/etc/portage/package.mask/nvidia-drivers |
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|
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>=x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-97.00.00 |
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|
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============================== |
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|
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The driver worked fine on the previous kernel 2.6.23-gentoo-r9. The solution |
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was to do what I've always done for binary blobs (nvidia,ati,madwifi-ng |
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etc) and add: |
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|
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/etc/portage/package.keywords |
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|
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x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers ~86 |
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|
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============================== |
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|
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This allowed me to go from 96.43.01 to 96.43.05. |
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|
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Unfortunately, even though the driver compiled fine and started without |
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error this driver proved to be unstable on my machine and graphics |
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hardware. X (1.3.0-r5) failed on KDE logout with: |
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|
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/etc/var/log/Xorg.0.log: |
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|
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Backtrace: |
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0: /usr/bin/X(xf86SigHandler+0x85) [0x80c7c57] |
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1: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//nvidia_drv.so(_nv001216X+0xe5) |
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[0xb71d6711] |
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2: [0x1] |
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|
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Fatal server error: |
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Caught signal 11. Server aborting |
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|
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=============================== |
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|
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Maybe running the uvesafb framebuffer and fbcondecor (livecd-2007.0 theme) |
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has something to do with the sigsegv problems on just this particular |
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driver version but I knew that I couldn't run this driver. |
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|
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I did a bit of research and found an ugly hack to get the 96.43.01 driver |
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working on kernel 2.6.24-gentoo-r3 so I changed the mask to: |
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|
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/etc/portage/package.mask/nvidia-drivers |
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|
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>x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-96.43.01 |
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|
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========================================= |
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|
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I then worked the dark magic: |
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|
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# ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/asm-x86 /usr/src/linux/include/asm-i386 |
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|
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(/usr/src/linux points to the new kernel 2.6.24-gentoo-r3) |
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|
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========================================== |
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|
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I reemerged nvidia-drivers and the hack worked. I got the reliable 96.43.01 |
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driver working again, though with some concerns about future reliability. |
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There might be other changes within the kernel 2.6.24 that driver 96.43.01 |
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doesn't know about that could cause me some grief in the future, but for |
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now it works fine. |
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|
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Now a week later I find that portage has released the nvidia binary driver |
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96.43.05 as stable on x86. I allowed it to emerge, but it still had the X |
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killing problem when logging out of KDE. |
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|
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Some of the things I've read suggest nvidia have been informed of this |
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specific problem but I was wondering if there's any more information around |
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about this issue? I know the card is getting old and perhaps I should use |
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the open nv driver, but the card usually works really well with the binary |
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blob. |
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|
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I would also like to know if these problems were known to the Gentoo devs |
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when they released 96.43.05 as stable on x86. |
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|
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-- |
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Regards, |
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|
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Gregory. |
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-- |
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