NVIDIA dkms srpms

Keith G keithishere2004 at gmail.com
Wed Oct 4 11:05:20 UTC 2006


This sounds like a very useful tool.  I'm not sure of the legality of it,
but there is a precedent for allowing such questionable packages (EasyUbuntu
- a similarly questionable package for Ubuntu) providing it is hosted by a
third party on a separate server.


On 03/10/06, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My home media server uses a NVIDIA geforce 4 video card. Usually, using
> the 2D driver is good enough, but sometimes I need to do something
> graphical and 3D - and so require the NVIDIA closed source driver. I've
> got pretty sick installing the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-xxxx-pkg1.run file
> every time I upgrade my kernel, and watching it copy "stuff" all over my
> filesystem and muck up my rpmdb.
>
> I *know* closed source drivers are bad, and illegal if they link to the
> kernel. That's not in debate. I understand why Fedora doesn't ship them,
> and I can also understand why the people who run the repo beginning with
> l have stopped updating the kmod's. I can really understand the kernel
> guys flatly refusing to debug any tainted kernel. But then I need my 3D
> openGL application to run at more than 2 fps.
>
> So, I began to think. And then I read the LICENCE file for the NVIDIA
> linux drivers a couple of times. Now, IANAL, but I think it boils down
> to:
>
> * We can't legally ship compiled nvidia code (so no kmods)
> * We can't legally ship a broken apart xxxx-pkgx.run file
> * We probably shouldn't be shipping the .run file as part of an SRPM
>
> So, my brain got thinking. I've used DKMS in the past, and it's been
> very stable and well thought out. So, I've had a play and created a
> 7.4kb SRPM that does the following:
>
> * displays a warning that closed source drivers are bad and makes the
> user acknowledge.
> * downloads the correct .run file from ftp.nvidia.com
> * displays the nvidia LICENCE and makes user acknowledge
> * installs the x11 bits and bobs in standard places (I've taken most of
> this from the l.org package) so that it does not conflict with mesa etc.
> * installs the useful nvidia helper tools
> * installs the kernel stuff (manually) as a dkms package so that the
> kernel part gets rebuilt every time you change your kernel.
>
> And the best bit: you don't muck up your rpmdb *and* you can install the
> resulting build rpm's on all your *home* PC's automatically (without
> prompts). Single time pain.
>
> Now, I'm aware I've broken two big packaging rules, that SRPMs shouldn't
> download files, and that SRPMs shouldn't be interactive. I seem to
> remember jpackage doing something similar with java a few years ago,
> where there was only a SRPM available and you had to download a large
> tar.gz file.
>
> So, advice required from you guys: is this legal (assuming the binary
> rpm's are never distributed, only the SRPM) and is this sane? I can
> upload the SRPM to my private webspace (as long as I'm not doing
> anything illegal in doing so) if people want.
>
> Richard.
>
> p.s. I am an engineer, not a lawyer.
>
> --
> fedora-devel-list mailing list
> fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>
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