[PlanetCCRMA] [PlanetCCRMANews] nvidia driver needs kernel-source

[Peter Kirn]

Nope, I think this is still incorrect.

You shouldn't be creating an xorg.conf file with NVIDIA drivers,
because the NVIDIA configuration file will try to create one for you.

You shouldn't need full kernel source, because... well, you don't.

And you should NOT have to rebuild with each new kernel, because
that's the point of the akmod.

Here are my own notes on the topic.

These are the best instructions I found for working with the akmods:
http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia#head-e1b34e02488009b6a78740380ab3108e2e6b8251

1. Add the rpmfusion repository so you can pull the akmod's and
proprietary drivers.

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

2. yum update

3. yum install akmod-nvidia-PAE for new NVIDIA drivers

4. Disable Noveau for the default initrd (boot space) -- this is the
critical step, because if you don't do it, Fedora tries to load open
source drivers to display its pretty, graphical boot (which I think is
a complete waste, but I won't start on that rant)

Two methods.

Method 1 blacklists the open source driver:
/etc/grub.conf
rdblacklist=nouveau

Method 2 is supposed to maintain the graphical boot for you, but this
didn't really work for me and I don't care what the boot looks like.
;)
su -
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

5. Change SElinux security permissions (as su)

setsebool -P allow_execstack on

I've installed a half dozen kernel updates with this system without
incident, minus - oddly - one of the RT kernels. In that case, it
built but I think it may be somehow still trying to load Noveau even
with the blacklist. It's only the case with the latest RT kernel, and
I'm investigating. (The other likely problem is that the akmod didn't
build, but I was able to verify that it had.)

Incidentally, PAE is now installed by default on Fedora. It's very
cool; it gives you access to greater than 4G RAM on x86 systems that
support it, on a 32-bit system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Peter


On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 8:56 AM, stuff <stuff at johnadon.com> wrote:
> I hope I'm not repeating anything that's already appeared in this
> thread, but I was able to install the NVIDIA drivers pretty easily using
> just the driver from the NVIDIA site and the kernel-rt-devel rpm from
> CCRMA. You will need to create an xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 (it's not
> there any more by default) to point toward the NVIDIA driver, rather
> than the driver that comes with Fedora. I think when you run the
> ./NVIDIA-Linux-xxx-xxx-blahblah.run file as root, it will offer to
> create an xorg.conf file for you at the end of the routine. I don't ever
> do this because I've got a bunch of junk in my xorg.conf file already,
> but I do recall that it creates an appropriate configuration file if you
> let it do it's thing. Sometimes the driver install package will generate
> an error or two, but the installation still creates the kernel module
> successfully. Takes just minutes once you've got the hang of it. You'll
> have to compile it again if a new kernel comes down through the CCRMA
> pipeline though.
>
>
> 2010-03-08 07:30, Roy Vestal skrev:
>> Usually it's the kernel-devel pkg.
>>
>> If you want the full source, you need to "build" the source ( I know it
>> sounds weird). You can follow the "howto" from fedoraproject to get it:
>>
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Building_a_custom_kernel
>>
>>
>> On Mar 1, 2010, at 12:19 AM, Ryan wrote:
>>
>>> Hey everyone, just got CCRMA running on Fedora 12.
>>>
>>> I'm trying to get proprietary NVIDIA drivers installed now.
>>>
>>> I've installed the necessary kmod-nvidia drivers but it needs kernel
>>> source.
>>>
>>> Here is my kernel, running the CCRMA rt kernel
>>>
>>> $ uname -a
>>> Linux fedora 2.6.31.12-1.rt21.1.fc12.ccrma.x86_64.rt #1 SMP PREEMPT RT
>>> Tue Feb 23 18:16:58 EST 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>>>
>>> How do I install the kernel source package?
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> PlanetCCRMANews mailing list
>>> PlanetCCRMANews at ccrma.stanford.edu
>>> http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/planetccrmanews
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>> Roy Vestal
>> http://rpp.linuxmaniac.net
>> .-.
>> /v\ L I N U X
>> // \\ >Phear the Penguin<
>> /( )\
>> ^^-^^
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
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>> http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/planetccrma
>
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