On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 18:39, dries wrote:
Thanks for the reply, but my main reason to try to use Yast2 anyway is that i don't wanna have my kernel sources installed. Besides, i think it's still a bit weird that kernel sources are needed to just install a graphics driver (and by the way why does that have to be X megabytes ?). So, your mail has changed my mind, i think i will not upgrade and leave the 3D stuff for what it is. . . .
Isn't there a RPM that install's the nVidia driver without all the problems and complexeties ? Or is that illegal with this closed source driver ??
Yes, this is a problem because of the closed source driver. I did some investigating. When you use the downloader script, it doesn't seem to relink the libraries against the 2.6 kernel sources. It takes the relevant module file (nv-kernel.o) and puts it in a special directory under /lib/modules/scripts. There's a script in there called nvidia.sh. The trick buried in there is this: ld $LD_OPTIONS /lib/modules/${kver}/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.$ext \ /lib/modules/scripts/nvidia/${kver}/nv-linux.o-${nver} \ /lib/modules/scripts/nvidia/nv-kernel.o-${nver} Where $ext is "ko", the new extension for 2.6 kernel modules. I don't know how this script is kicked off, but it's obviously NOT relinking against source. This may be a change with the 2.6 kernels. I don't know; I'm just getting started with 2.6 now. The bottom line is that the NVidia installer may NOT need all the build environment and kernel sources installed. You may want to try it out that way. I've got my system working so I don't want to try it now. dk