nvidia driver breaks with pretty much every F8 update

[Robin Laing]

Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 10:51:56PM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
>> Axel Thimm wrote:
>>>> Does that mean it will prevent a kernel from getting installed if the 
>>>> matching kmdls are not available?
>>> No, I didn't want a security update to be ladt off if it missed a
>>> kmdl. But if you install a kernel the moment it gets released (and
>>> therefore there are no kmdls yet available) once the kmdls are there
>>> yum-plugin-kmdl will make yum update get them for you.
>> .. but this is a Bad Thing when it comes to nvdia, because the next time  
>> you reboot, X won't start for a few days.  In fact, most kmdls are pretty 
>> important for day-to-day operations.  Clearly I can see how someone else 
>> would want it to work the way you designed it, but that SO doesn't work for 
>> me.
> 
> Well, one can change the plugin to behave as you want, but indeed most
> users wanted to be asyncronous and not be held back by any third party
> in getting their vendor updates.
> 
> If you want to experiment: In the loop where it checks whether a kmdl
> exists or not just add in the case of a failure for a lookup to unmark
> the kernel for installation. Or to add UPDATEDEFAULT=no to
> /etc/sysconfig/kernel before installing it.
> 

What you are discussing is exactly what dkms is supposed to correct.

dkms(8) - Linux man page
http://linux.die.net/man/8/dkms

dkms is a framework which allows kernel modules to be dynamically built 
for each kernel on your system in a simplified and organized fashion.


Since I moved to dkms, I have not had any issues with nvidia drivers on 
any machine.  :)


-- 
Robin Laing