Fedora Core 2 won't recompile to run AGP, NVIDIA

[John Burns]

This is a re-post. I didn't see my original post on the list, or any 
responses...

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Many people have had problems with NVIDIA drivers and Fedora.
I haven't seen a solution to my problem.

Right now, I post from a working install of Fedora 2, running a 
2.6.9-1.6_FC2 prebuilt kernel. After many hours of researching why 
xorg.conf setting nvAGP failed under "1" (NVIDIA internal AGP) but 
succeeded under "3" (agpgart) I determined that Fedora developers 
compiled agpgart into the kernel, for whatever reason. Going monolithic 
seems to defeat the purpose of modules, and they should know that people 
might want to use NVIDIA's AGP, to compare the feel and performance.

Somewhat angry, I spent many hours trying to compile both this kernel 
and 2.6.5-1.358. My primary goal was to be able to use NVIDIA's internal 
AGP, instead of the kernel.. My secondary goal was to see how a stripped 
down kernel would perform. There are many things compiled into those 
kernels that I don't need for a modest system: AMD XP 1800, 384 MB RAM, 
cheap legacy GeForce2 MX/MX 400

Bottom line: all attempts to build a kernel with running AGP support 
failed. The modules seem to build. The NVIDIA drivers build (6629, 6610) 
But AGP won't initialize!! When AGP support is built as module, it 
fails. I get X, but no proc/status list of success. It also fails, to my 
horror,  with agpgart built-into the custom kernel. Supposedly like the 
pre-made kernels avaliable at the Fedora web site.

This is extremely frustrating. I've seen plenty of heated discussion on 
the message boards across the internet. But nothing that addresses this. 
There is a serious crediblity issue if you can't recompile a kernel 
(given all the pre-req compilers and standard instructions for compiling 
kernels) The custom kernels I made were blazingly fast, and small. I 
left out things that I didn't need. Linux installs are supposed to have 
that flexiblity.

I have to tools and instructions to build a kernel. I used the .config 
from the pre-made Fedora kernels that have "working" AGP (never using 
NVIDIA's internal system, but kernel agpgart) Asside from leaving out 
totally irrelevant modules and features, my only deviation from those 
configs was to config for AMD K-6 (instead of "Pentium Pro" under 
xconfig) I don't have a Pentium. This should have been safe.

Does anyone know why the sources seem broken with respect to AGP?

I'm willing to forgive being forced to use agpgart if I could run a 
stripped down Fedora kernel. All the other features worked, the boot 
speed was FAST, and the RAM imprint was 30-40 MB less (a huge decrease)

Were the released, prebuilt kernels rigged in undocumented ways to get 
NVIDIA AGP support working?
Why would home builds (using similar tools and the *included* .config) 
fail to reproduce what I'm running now?

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.
It's a shame to be stuck using bloated kernels after using those speedy, 
lightweight builds.