Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The NVIDIA/Kernel fiasco -- is it safe to sync yet?

[Mick]

On Sunday 25 Aug 2013 17:18:09 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 25/08/2013 02:45, »Q« wrote:
> > On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 09:49:43 +0200
> >
> > Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
> >> On 24/08/2013 06:26, Chris Stankevitz wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:12 PM, »Q« <boxcars@×××.net> wrote:
> >>>> It looks like maybe the best way to tell which ebuilds support
> >>>> which kernels is to read the conditional for the ewarn message in
> >>>> each ebuild.
> >>>
> >>> If this sort of problem spreads it might be good to build into
> >>> portage some kind of blocker/keyword mechanism so that users need
> >>> not deal with this.... not that I have any appreciation for the
> >>> work involved.
> >>
> >> Those tools already exist.
> >>
> >> Blockers, which do not really apply here;
> >
> > In a comment on the bug (which is full of bugspam), someone suggested
> > blocking kernels which are incompatible with the currently-installed
> > nvidia-drivers.  I'm glad that idea was dismissed.
> >
> >> elog messages
> >
> > Those elog messages are presented after compiling a new kernel and then
> > trying and failing to compile nvidia-drivers.  So now I grep the
> > nvidia-drivers ebuilds for the messages before I compile a new kernel.
> >
> > A wiki page with info about which nvidia-drivers will build against
> > which kernels would be a nice thing to have.
>
> Your reply demonstrates nicely the true nature of the problem:
>
> With nvidia-drivers, sometimes things break and there's nothing sane
> that portage and the devs can do to help you. You can't check the
> configured kernels as they may not be running. You can't check the
> installed sources as they may not be in use. You can't even try identify
> the sources symlinked by /usr/src/linux as they may have been patched,
> tweaked or modified and nvidia-drivers may well build whereas against
> stock sources they don't.
>
> The entire problem is completely due to how nVidia chose to do things,
> it's their business decision. Now, if they were to get their shim code
> into mainline, most of this nonsense would not happen anymore.
>
> The only thing left for Portage and the devs to do is to provide the
> ebuild and ask you to run it. If it doesn't compile, then don't run that
> kernel.
>
> I doubt your wiki page idea will work, it will be just accurate enough
> to look like it might work and just inaccurate enough to be useless.
> Which brings you back to the previous paragraph - try emerge
> nvidia-drivers and if it fails then don't use that kernel.

I've been always running ATI Radeon cards, by accident rather than design.  I 
was thinking of moving to NVidia on a new box to be built soon, because of the 
many accolades that I have read on the Internet, but reports of problems like 
this make me pause for thought.  Sure it's not major borkage, but it is an 
inconvenience.  How do NVidia users manage such problems?  Trial and error?

-- 
Regards,
Mick