Which sources ?

[thegoonden]

If I give you guys the following parameters, maybe you can suggest which sources I use?

1. Using 2.4.25 at the min.
2. Using Nvidia 4363 drivers ( all later versions trigger the dreaded VT bug)
3. Like my framebuffer/splash a lot.
4. not planning on doing anything too exotic with my machine, beyond standard desktop slavery.
5 would like to be sitting at an X server pretty soon after starting new kernel, once I'm there, I have google and gentoo.org to hold my hand ( sorry I have lynx blindness )
6. I am neither a noob nor a 6th dan blackbelt hacker.

I've tried the gentoo 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 and nitro2 sources ( supposedly advnaced and unstable, but they have been no worse than gentoo so far) and seem to have exactly the same success or lack thereof. Every time I look on the forums, it seems someone is telling someone else to try a different kernel cos the FBsplash is broken in $VERSION_I_SEARCH_ABOUT.

Also, it seems that building ANY nvidia driver on 2.6 is tricky, what chance have I of making a really old one?...I tried the patch and ebuild here....https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29336
But although it builds it will not load..... ( same behaviour for the newest version too) from memory it's an error pertaining to the module being in the wrong format ( there seems to be some discussion of this on a nearby thread that i am participating in to see if a soloution is out there).

Basically, based on the above, what sources SHOULD I be using.
Is there anyone out there who has recently gone from 2.4 to 2.6 with an nvidia card that had the VT bug, and who used framebuffer/splash.

I need guidance from the wise, or I'm gonna spend the next 2 days compiling kernels and rebooting, and going slowly mad, then give up and assume 2.4 kerns are great and will stay on it forever

I'd like someone to say "I used $SOURCES and the machine came up a treat with FB straight away, and I also built an a bugfree nv driver like this."

I also want world peace and bigger genitals, but i'll settle for one miracle per day :-p

[peterk0]

Hey,

i don't know a lot about nvidia a switched to ATI a year ago (not very satisfied with linux drivers for ati although )
i'm using 2.6.9-nitro2 right now but that mostly because i'm on reiser4.

so the only advice from me is try ck-sources, you may be really happy with them. nothing agressive but solid desktop performance and stability
i also think u will love 2.6, it's so much better than old 2.4 ...

gl

[thegoonden]

I bought a radeon and hated the Linux "drivers" so much I built a 2nd box for it to go live with XP and the games.
It's just I keep reading "framebuffer doesn't work in $VSERSION" and I refused to comile another kernel until someone tells me a version it DOES work in

[peterk0]

and also if you go for the ck-sources than you have to patch for frammebuffer by hand, 'cause con is not including it anymore...

yeah ati sux under linux ....
i'm switching back to nvidia soon hopefully, i really want to get xorg-x11-6.8 going on

[dirtyepic`]

i'm using gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r10. i tried the gentoo and nitro 2.6.9's but i really don't think they're solid yet. i've never had a problem with this kernel, it has vesafb-tng, and i've had no problems building or using the v5536 or v6111 nvidia drivers on it. haven't tried v4363-r3 tho. if you go with a 2.6.9 kernel, you have to use v6111 or patch it.

one thing i know i'm going to have trouble with tho is cd burning, but i'll deal with that when it comes up ;).
_________________
makeshift we are, occurring to each other under the setups of the stars
makeshift we are, we imagine us here and here we are
makeshift we are, through half squinted eyes becoming a mirage
as makeshift as we are, we are.

[thegoonden]

I take it your card does not suffer from the inability to switch back to a VT then, on drivers higher than 4363. This is my big problem.

Also ( tho this is prbably for another thread) i am confused as hell by the fact that genkernel insists the 2.6 kernel MUST load with a root on /dev/ram....meaning I can't put my bootsplash initrd in place. Mind you it didn't seem to mind when I did a menuconfig and made sure it didn't NEED one so i coud load my bootsplash one instead ( not that the splash worked )

I'll try the slightly lower kernel and see what happens.

Cheers for the advice

[MrApples]

i have always been a fan of ck and any performance enhancements, so nitro is my suggestion
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http://www.whatsinyourbox.org -- Technology discussion, news, and more.

[Frodg]

I know this is probably silly thing to say but you can get some really good deals on another video card......
Second hand or new, this would get over the need to keep to lower kernels due to the vt bug..........
_________________
Aerosolo ergo sum - I spray therefore I am

Gentoo - Registered Linux User # 361400

[thegoonden]

I've already built another box cos I bought a radeon that doesn't work in linux very well. And now I have to dump my nvidia?

Not many options left for accelerated cards once you dump ati and nvidia in the bin...matrox?

Beside's the box is hardly a games machine, it's just meant to be a workhorse, with tuxracer/quake capability.Buying some expensive exotic hardware just because Nvidia and/or ( less likely) the kernel/X developers are too lazy to fix a minor bug, seems a bit extreme.

I COULD buy another Nvidia, but where do I get an old one? Is anyone going to let me take a whole box of them home and open them all up and work thru until I find a linux compatible one.
My brother has the "same" card, and he has no problem at all.

I'm sorry for ranting but my perfect penguin has turned into an unholy nightmare in no time at all.
It WAS perfect in every way untill I did -up world, now something is ( pardon the expression) up it's ass. It's slow and stroppy. It doesn't bitch, whine, crash or puke erros, it just seems.....I don;t know...kinda crappy and lazy. I had assumed that some of the more recent packages ( the system was not madly out of date or anything, it had been a few weeks since last -up world), were perhaps optimized for 2.6 kernels, hence my desire to try one, in the hope that things would just snap back into place.
I cannot describe the symptoms well enough to get any help, I'm not even sure what to ask.
I think, I need to get my 2.4 kernel working right again before trying 2.6, or am I just "hiding in the past" if I do that.
As for 2.6
It's not the versioning of the nvidia kernel module that is the problem, later ones will not work either, they fail to load if I leave them as installed. If I link nvidia.o to nvidia.ko, they load but will not initialize with X ( this may be related to an AGPgart problem, I haven't looked into that yet)
To be honest my head's a mess at the moment, need to sit down and do some serious tesing to see what the slowness is, and just keep chipping away at 2.6 in the meantime.


It may come to a new card I suppose, but this one has become family, I hate to ditch friendly hardware

[Frodg]

{Off Topic}
I know I will get many responses when I say :
"NEVER do emerge -up world"

Every time I have it has blown something.....

Gave it up as I like to spend time on real problems, not world update issues

{On Topic}
Have you swapped cards from your brother's machine.?
If it is identical, works with his gentoo but does not with yours then you have eliminated the need to get a new card.... Your issue will be with your software....
_________________
Aerosolo ergo sum - I spray therefore I am

Gentoo - Registered Linux User # 361400

[thegoonden]

LOL....I see you have the same general attitude as me towards -up world. I only did it this time because I had grown an extra box, so I still had a working (well "working" is bit strong, since it runs XP) box for when it all went wrong.
I paid pretty close attention ( close enough attention to stop it wasting half the day updating a couple of games by n.n.01)
Somethng definitely let go during the update that's for sure.

Keep thinking it's devfs, since many device ID's moved about, but devfs is so far beyond me it's in the realm of magic

I could try swapping cards......
But there is one fatal flaw in yer plan.....
it leaves younger sibling with the clapped out card....not sure how he'll take to that
Actually the fact that his works while having the exact same chipset, would suggest this bug is related to the host card, be it logic circuits or something in the actual video output hardware.

It's not gentoo's fault in any way FWIW, same bug on LFS, and as distro's go, they don't come much purer than LFS (I like to think of things the Distro breaks in advance as "original sin"....boy are Mandrake going to hell )

This is the first time in over a year i've been using it that gentoo has made me tear my hair out, bloody good going all things considered.
If I can make 2.4 play ball again I will hold off on 2.6, and work towards getting the nvidia to play nice.
I'm making progress there too.
Got dvd performance back to almost normal by ditching cdrecord-prodvd...I don't know who put it there as nothing seems to need it, but I got it right between the eyes with --unmerge and dvd's are now burning in 18 mins instead of 32. Surely not crippleware on Linux, enforced, overpatching crippleware at that, I must confess I've gone from "I must reward the hard work of the cdrecord foilks by getting a license for that pro-dvd thing" to "scew 'em! ". My temper will improve no doubt Also did some benching with cat-ing /dev/0 and /dev/random in and out of files and found that none of my user processes seem to be allocated any cpu...no idea what that means or how to fix it......that's today's mission ( I'm off work on long-term sick and all there is to do all day is tweak penguins).
Thanks for the advice, I'll let you know what happens if we try a card swap or if I work out how to load the nvidia 4363 onto 2.6.