I'd like to thank Nvidia for wasting another hour of my life this
morning ! I am pretty sure that if it wasn't for Nvidia and their
stupid, idiotic driver system that I could have saved enough time in the
last 2 years to go on a week's vacation !
Yesterday I absentmindedly ran "yum update". Stupid me, I didn't watch
it and apparently a new kernel got installed (2835).
When I rebooted this morning, startx wouldn't run without a bunch of
errors ! Hmmm... uname -a tells me, surprise, we are now running kernel
2835 ! Yippee !
No problem I think, I'll just reboot with 2798 and get to work. So I do
reboot, but something is messed up with X, startx gives me a bunch of
errors. The Nvidia driver is broken for 2798 too.
So, I decide to rebuild the driver for kernel 2798. After all, I built
the Nvidia driver for 2798 only a couple weeks ago.
So I cd to my Nvidia installer directory, which one HAS to have if one
is running an Nvidia card ! I do the ./NIDIA*8776.run thing and, of
course the driver won't build ! What else is new ! Then I remember
that I had to give it a kernel path last time. So it takes me 10
minutes to figure out that.
The driver still won't build ! Complaining about the stupid config.h
problem again ! I go into the source and put in a dummy config.h file
and it still won't build. UGGGHHH (At his point I need to point out
the total stupidity of a Linux user needing to edit source code to get a
driver to build let alone RUN !)
I notice in the directory that I also have the 9625 version of the
Nvidia installer. I try that and it fails too.
About this time I'm thinking that the Nvidia build should work for
kernel 2835. So I reboot with that kernel and try both installers
again, with no success !
And at this point I should point out that for some reason the Nvidia
install script stalls on my computer from time to time. So I have to
ctrl C it and rerun it once in a while.
So, then I decide that I am being silly trying to build the driver in
the first place as I've heard great things about livna and they have a
driver prebuilt. So I do a "yum install nvidia" and "yum install
module-nvidia" of course if fails. I've got the wrong package name. So
I shut down Linux and boot XP and go searching on the web to find that
the package name is "kmod-nvidia". BTW: I consider it a complete
failure that I have to boot Windows to get my Linux box running !
So, I boot Linux with kernel 2798 and run "yum install kmod-nvidia". It
tells me one of the dependencies is kernel 2798, the one I am running !
I tell it to go ahead and install anyway. It fails because it finds the
2798 boot files already installed !
But I do notice that the file tag on the kmod-nvidia file reads "9629".
Because I had to fool around with Nvidia crap two weeks ago when I
upgraded to FC6, I know that the last available (beta) installer version
was 9625. (Lucky me !) So there must be a newer installer available.
So, I fire up lynx. Yeah lynx. I have no X running, remember ! Back
before I got smart about fooling around with nvidia stuff, I used to
fire up Windows, download the new installer, burn it to CDROM, reboot
Linux, copy the installer to my working directory, CHANGE THE
PERMISSIONS !, and run it. Now I run lynx. I'm so much smarter now,
thanks to Nvidia.
BTW: google doesn't work with lynx, nor does surfing some helpful
websites.
So, with lynx I navigate the nvidia site (a feat in itself) and find lo
and behold installer 9629 has been released. It takes 2 attempts to
download it because for some reason once in a while downloads from
nvidia don't work right with lynx. The first download is proceeding at
1KB/sec. I ctrl C that and navigate to the download again and the
second time it runs at 400KB/sec.
I get the installer downloaded, but decide I want to build for kernel
2835. So I reboot.
I run the installer. It complains about wanting the X.org SDK
installed. Then it complains about prior versions of nvidia drivers
being installed, possibly not from the installer. I OK those messages
and finally I have a driver that builds correctly. I reboot and I get a
graphical login screen. Success.
Total time wasted, over an hour. And this sort of game happens EVERY
time one upgrades a kernel !
Its funny, we have people in the Linux community debating about whether
Linux is ready for the desktop for the average user. With this sort of
issue still alive and well in Linux, the answer to that question is
absolutely NO !
In summary, I am totally frustrated with Nvidia with this driver
situation. I will never, ever buy a piece of Nvidia hardware again
unless this situation is rectified. I'd replace the Nvidia video driver
I have but its built into the laptop that I otherwise love.
Nvidia, its time to realease some code to the open source community or
suffer the consequences. The present situation is totally
unacceptable.
