Whoops! Looks like there is a problem with the new Debian 2.6.21-2 kernel being updated recently, especially with the NVidia drivers.
Most of you who compile your NVidia drivers will know that everytime you run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, you are also going to have to run through the NVidia installer to compile against the new kernel headers. Of course this is optional and if you use the nv driver everything is OK (that is assuming you don’t want to take advantage of your super duper hardware).
Well the bad news is that the NVidia installer wont compile against the newer kernel headers because this happens:
FATAL: modpost: GPL-incompatible module nvidia.ko uses GPL-only symbol ‘paravirt_ops’
It seems the only way around this is to compile the kernel yourself, and not include the virtualization options, which is bad news if you are trying to use QEMU, and especially more bad news if you are not interested in compiling your own kernel from scratch.
I ask a simple question though about this: Who looses in this battle between GPL and proprietary? Of course the open source camp are going to say that NVidia should release open source drivers for their hardware or at least allow someone else access to the specifications of the hardware so they can write the drivers for them. I understand this argument and perhaps subscribe to it on occasion, but not this time.
I remember the days when using Linux was a royal pain in the proverbial, most hardware out there wouldn’t work out of the box, and for the standard user, running Linux meant that they had to learn everything again and to such a deeper degree than they did when they used Windows. The users had to understand how to edit config files, follow installation procedures (that are completely alien to someone who is used to double clicking on a file called setup.exe and simply crossing their fingers), read man pages and prey to the gods of *NIX that something might work first time (which invariably it didn’t).
I cut my teeth on this Linux, and I remember it was a struggle all of the way, it was painful but undoubtedly worth it in the end, which brings me to today. If I install a distribution of my choice, I can pretty much garuntee that 95% of any hardware or peripheral I purchase and plug into my box will work without me having to do anything special, and the ones that need a bit of tinkering with will install fine in the end after a few searches with OFSE (our favourite search engine) to guide us in the right direction.
Think back again to the time when the hardware manufacturers thought the Linux community was a fad, and we were either going to have to use Windows or Macs or get used to the fact that we couldn’t use their technologies. The community was bashing people like NVidia because they wouldn’t write drivers, our attack was simple, we voted with our wallets and we used our geek powers to persuade others to try other vendors.
One day, NVidia released drivers for Linux, and they worked for most of us, and this made me very happy, of course, the drivers were not GPL compatible, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was that I was able to use my favourite OS with my (very expensive) video card, and nowadays, when I can be bothered, I switch on Beryl and play with my spinning desktop.
So what is wrong with our community? and with debian in particular? why will you not allow me to run with NVidia drivers with your stock kernel? The way I see it is that we battled long and hard for recognition by the very vendors that today we are throwing obstacles at and, as I asked earlier, who looses? I tell you who looses, I do, and so do you!
Well done
*clap*
*clap*
*clap*
that was an upstream decision.
just use latest 2.6.22 that you’ll find in unstable, works much better than 2.6.21 and instead of ranting there are fine folks in #debian-kernel out.
regards
But I shouldn’t have to move to unstable in order to get my graphics driver to work. I just feel like ‘tut’, if you know what I mean?
I understand that I’m having a good ‘ol rant, but every now and again, I’m allowed to.
If you are running a 2.6.21 kernel in “etch” then you are either already compiling your own kernel or using a backport. Otherwise you are running “lenny/testing”. That means you are running a debian pre-release set of packages that are subject to breakage at any time. That means your comment:
But I shouldn’t have to move to unstable in order to get my graphics driver to work.
is ridiculous. If you want your graphics driver to work, don’t run a pre-release version of debian.
I realize you’re ranting, but I wanted the record here to be appropriately clear… you’re running either a custom or not-ready-for-prime-time setup and should expect such breakage from time-to-time. And be patient, 2.6.22 will be in testing soon enough…
And FTR, I find running sid to be much more long-term-reliable than running testing as when stuff breaks in testing it stay broken for a while. This is due to the migration policy for packages moving from sid to testing. In sid, when things break they tend to fix up quickly.
.02
A
Fair enough, but I would like to raise a few points in my defence here.
Debian is great, I accept that with debian I have a choice of which branch I decide to use, and if I was driving with my head firmly screwed on then I would be running stable. Unfortunately, not all the latest versions of packages I need to work with are available on stable. So there it lays, it becomes my fault entirely.
However, I understand that the decision to make the change in the stock kernel has been handed down from upstream, but taken with that, I believe that anything that goes on in testing is eventually dribbled down to debian stable. Therefore, in my mind, I am waiting for the same change to eventually dribble to every next stock kernel. Maybe I am wrong, and I could well be, I mean it’s happened before.
Now I will point out that I am not truly that worried about the problem with the current kernel and the NVidia drivers. I was only posting this information for other people to understand why their NVidia drivers would no longer compile, and offer them a solution to keep going (personally, for the time being I have stuck with 2.6.18-4), but granted, what started off as a post to be helpful and offer information gradually changed to a full on rant.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, and I’ve taken it all on board. What I am worried about though is this constant fighting between the open source community and the proprietary sector. It seems that we (being the open source community) look down on the “bad” guys, and instead of keeping our systems open (which should be our mantra) it seems (or seemed to me this afternoon after thinking about this) that we instead are taking the stance to throw our dolls out of the pram and hinder as much as possible. The only problem with that, as I suggested earlier, is the only people this affects are the end users. My personal problem with this, is that I constantly have to deal with end users in one way or another, and I could do without the problems.
Gareth
Hi,
thanks for the different authors here. I now know what’s going on with my setup. Thank godness, there is nv…
Cheers, Filippo
ditto to what rusconi wrote.
It is surely not acceptable to f**k all the nvidia users just for GPL thingy. The big parts such as kernel and file system for debian and other linux are so great (shame on windows aha), and only the small things push many users away from the great linux system. Those are small things anyway - just make it work - what is the point. Who is that smart pant want to show his stupidity by blocking a stupid driver?