Sunday, November 23. 2008
nVidia and current Kernels
My home workplace is slowly and steadily mutating into a never ending story. I do not remember blogging every aspect of it, but after three graphics cards, an even older mainboard and two DVB-S-Cards, my home workplace PC currently does what I expect it to do: Run Debian unstable, drive two 20 inch DVI TFT monitors with 1600x1200 pixels each and receiving DVB-S transmissions. I do not think that these are exaggerated expectations, but it took over three months to find a combination of hardware which will actually do what I want.
The hardest part was finding a AGP graphics card which can drive two DVI monitors with 1600x1200 pixels each. After failing with two different Matrox cards (the G550 not being able to do 1600x1200 pixels if the monitors are connected via DVI), I finally settled on a used GeForce FX 5200. In the beginning, the binary nVidia module didn’t hurt as much as I expected. Unfortunately, this rapidly changed with the 2.6.27 Linux kernel.
Unfortunately, the Linux kernel changed its interface with 2.6.27, which stopped the nvidia-kernel-source 173.14.09 from sid from compiling. Contrary to what is told in #500285, the driver doesn’t compile on my system even when I clean out /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel prior to unpacking the driver .tar.gz.
I already thought that my problem was solved when I noticed nvidia-kernel-source 177.80 in Experimental. The module compiles just fine against kernel 2.6.27, but...
Don’t closed source binary-only drivers just suck? I mean, granted, the FX 5200 is a five year old design, but it does its basic office job just fine. So I currently can choose to stick with a legacy kernel of the 2.6.26 series to be able to run the legacy nVidia driver, or can shell out money for a new graphics card and a new mainboard, a new CPU and new memory (since current graphics cards aren’t available for AGP any more). Just fine. Sucks.Nov 21 17:30:53 weave kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 GPU installed in this system is Nov 21 17:30:53 weave kernel: NVRM: supported through the NVIDIA 173.14.xx Legacy drivers. Please Nov 21 17:30:53 weave kernel: NVRM: visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more Nov 21 17:30:53 weave kernel: NVRM: information. The 177.80 NVIDIA driver will ignore Nov 21 17:30:53 weave kernel: NVRM: this GPU. Continuing probe... Nov 21 17:30:53 weave kernel: NVRM: No NVIDIA graphics adapter found!
If I get around to buying a new box, which graphics card manufacturer is to be trusted these days? nVidia is out of the question after my current experiences, Intel doesn’t make graphics cards as far as I know, and ATI/AMD? I hear that they have recently seen the light, but are their open source drivers mature enough so that ATI/AMD products can already drive high resolution dual DVI setup? I currently do not care about 3D performance, I just want to push around windows on a flat KDE desktop and to some serious work. All I want is screen real estate and a picture of decent quality. I’d appreciate any hints and comments, and surely hope that there will be some kind of upstream support for the 2.6.26 kernels until I have refitted my home workplace hardware.
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Well you don’t need a graphics card, all you need is a graphics chip to drive some dvi connectors... If I were in your position I would go for something with an onboard 4500 series intel graphics card I think. Just add an ADD2 card (PCIe card with DVI connectors for supported hardware, like intel’s chips) and you’re fine. I myself have a geforce 8800 gts/512, that’s still a very decent card and will be supported for the next couple of years, by which I will have moved on to my next computer I think... Another option for you would be to use nouveau. I don’t know how well nouveau has support for your 5200 series card is, but I’m impressed by the functionality of their driver on my geforce 6600 card.
If you want more information on anything I said here and your comment system doesn’t notify commenters on updates, send me an E-mail and I’ll answer whatever more you want to know...
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Additionally, the “notify on new comments” function had to be switched of since blogs have been in the line of legal fire for not being opt-in.
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Thats pretty much the situation anyway.... Noone makes AGP cards anymore or atleast noone supports those legacy cards.
“I’m really reluctant to buy something with on-board graphics..”
Get over it! There’s one company that has graphics cards that “just works” in Linux. They are called Intel.
Is a non-working card better then a working onboard? You choose!
Also, onboard doesn’t mean there’s no slot to put in a replacement graphics card if you one day would need it.
(Friendly advice from someone which refused nvidia many years ago and now have both Intel and ATI graphics.)
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Users wishing to install these drivers should first use module-assistant to build the drm kernel modules (via ``module-assistant auto-install drm’’).
But nv doesn’t require that, and neither nouveau nor drm-modules are proprietary.
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http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606
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It should be pointed out that the GeForce 7xxxx And Quadro FX 4xxxx series can still be found in AGP configurations so you aren’t forced to upgrade, yet.
* - They still support the TNT2, something that can’t be said for ATi’s product that was released at the same time.
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No, just the implementation in Linux that changes all the time.
Seriously, why do Linux API’s change with every minor version?
It smells like bad software engineering to me.
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However, Linux specifically does not claim to provide a stable in-kernel API. As a result, Linux can change to provide new interfaces (functions, data structures, etc), migrate other bits of the kernel to the new interfaces, and then remove the old interfaces. Every part of the Linux kernel remains subject to redesign and improvement without regard to the limitations imposed by unchangeable legacy interfaces. As a result, Linux can achieve an unrivaled development rate, adapt quickly, remain efficient, and avoid unnecessary complexity.
Keeping old kernel functions and kernel data structure around for the sake of binary-only software, and allowing them to hold back the rest of the system, strikes me as “bad software engineering”. Furthermore, keeping bits and pieces of kernel code out of the kernel source tree, and thus preventing the kernel developers from updating it together with the kernel when they make changes, also strikes me as “bad software engineering”.
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Design choices aren’t restricted to having to comply with ancient crufty interfaces.
You’re forgetting that this is why linux works so well for so much hardware. In-tree drivers are what gives you the stability and wide ranging support. You’re just complaining about graphics cards whose specifications are kept secret.
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Internal APIs in the kernel are made to best support current existing hardware as good as possible, and sometimes new hardware comes around or new ways of handling the hardware which works just so much better.
And when a old internal API are not used internal any longer, why “support” the old API any longer only becouse an outside company which coud have fixed their drivers long ago just do not want to spend the money doing it (why does not inline-kernel-modules suck when it comes to API? why do nvidia when they have the same resources to know what is going on i.e. lkml, RCs and so on)?
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the repository to original driver. You can simply install this via envy-ng for example (I think it’s in Debian unstable too), and the best is: you won’t bypass the package system with it, as
envy-ng build .deb packages in the end.
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Get the binary ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.15/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.15-pkg0.run and run it with option -x to extract the source. Then replace the content of /usr/src/modules/nvidia/nv with the /usr/src/nv directory from the unpacked source, modify debian/changelog to the reflect the version 173.14.15 and run make-kpkg kernel_image. Works.
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A few months, I blogged about the pains I had with my nVidia FX 5200 graphics card, Debian and current kernels. I have solved the issue in the mean time and would like to document what I did. Currently, the package nvidia-graphics-drivers has Comment (1)
Tracked: Jan 07, 15:20