Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Louise Hoffman]

Dear developers

I would like to submit dumps, but I spend ~4 hours last time on
installing the nVidia drivers, and ended up with the livna.org RPM's.

So can I install the Nouveau driver without damaging the nVidia drivers?

I am using Fedora 7 and integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150. That's the C51
core, right?

Hugs,
Louise

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Ioannis Nousias]

I'm not a nouveau developer, but I'm a Fedora user and I've tried this.

Yes you can have the nVidia binary drivers and nouveau at the same time, 
as long as you use the livna packages:

check this post
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=810199&postcount=12


Louise Hoffman wrote:
> Dear developers
>
> I would like to submit dumps, but I spend ~4 hours last time on
> installing the nVidia drivers, and ended up with the livna.org RPM's.
>
> So can I install the Nouveau driver without damaging the nVidia drivers?
>
> I am using Fedora 7 and integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150. That's the C51
> core, right?
>
> Hugs,
> Louise
> _______________________________________________
> Nouveau mailing list
> Nouveau-PD4FTy7X32lNgt0PjOBp9y5qC8QIuHrW@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/nouveau
>
>   

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Richard Hughes]

On Thu, 2007-07-12 at 17:13 +0100, Ioannis Nousias wrote:
> I'm not a nouveau developer, but I'm a Fedora user and I've tried this.
> 
> Yes you can have the nVidia binary drivers and nouveau at the same time, 
> as long as you use the livna packages:

If you want to use the latest ddx (xrg-x11-drv-nouveau) you'll need the
latest DRM, which requires pulling in tons of other stuff due to api
changes. I was playing with nouveau from git on fedora yesterday [1] and
resorted to installing libdrm from git, compiling a custom kernel with a
new drm hacked in, compiling ddx, and then trying to compile mesa.

It works, but it's not something that's particularly easy to test nor
backport. When drm syncs with the kernel (hopefully soon) it will be
very easy to add the nouveau stuff into the fedora rawhide kernel once
again.

Richard.

[1] http://hughsient.livejournal.com/29989.html

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Louise Hoffman]

> Yes you can have the nVidia binary drivers and nouveau at the same time,
> as long as you use the livna packages:
>
> check this post
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=810199&postcount=12

What does he mean by "setting the dri permissions"?

"do the usual changes to xorg.conf file, like changing the driver,
loading glx and dri and setting the dri permissions."

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Ioannis Nousias]

Louise Hoffman wrote:
>> Yes you can have the nVidia binary drivers and nouveau at the same time,
>> as long as you use the livna packages:
>>
>> check this post
>> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=810199&postcount=12
>
> What does he mean by "setting the dri permissions"?
>
> "do the usual changes to xorg.conf file, like changing the driver,
> loading glx and dri and setting the dri permissions."
what I mean is add something like this in your xorg.conf:

Section "DRI"
       mode 666
EndSection

and by 'loading' the glx and dri modules, I mean add these two in the 
'Section "Module"' of your xorg.conf:
Load   "glx"
Load   "dri"


I think the new server loads these by default anyway.

As Richard said, it's a much more daunting task if you need the latest 
nouveau drivers. And frankly, if you want to test anything useful, you 
will need the new ones, since those that come with fedora are pretty old 
and incomplete. They are missing the DRI part (nouveau_dri.so, part of 
Mesa).

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Louise Hoffman]

> Section "DRI"
>        mode 666
> EndSection
>
> and by 'loading' the glx and dri modules, I mean add these two in the
> 'Section "Module"' of your xorg.conf:
> Load   "glx"
> Load   "dri"

Thanks =)

> As Richard said, it's a much more daunting task if you need the latest
> nouveau drivers. And frankly, if you want to test anything useful, you
> will need the new ones, since those that come with fedora are pretty old
> and incomplete. They are missing the DRI part (nouveau_dri.so, part of
> Mesa).

So I can't try send dumps to Nouveau without breaking livna nVidia drivers? =(

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Ioannis Nousias]

Louise Hoffman wrote:
>> Section "DRI"
>>        mode 666
>> EndSection
>>
>> and by 'loading' the glx and dri modules, I mean add these two in the
>> 'Section "Module"' of your xorg.conf:
>> Load   "glx"
>> Load   "dri"
>
> Thanks =)
>
>> As Richard said, it's a much more daunting task if you need the latest
>> nouveau drivers. And frankly, if you want to test anything useful, you
>> will need the new ones, since those that come with fedora are pretty old
>> and incomplete. They are missing the DRI part (nouveau_dri.so, part of
>> Mesa).
>
> So I can't try send dumps to Nouveau without breaking livna nVidia 
> drivers? =(
Probably not. Even though, the livna package keeps the nvidia libGL.so, 
libglx.so (and all other components that the official nvidia installer 
replaces) into separate directories 
('/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia/' and '/usr/lib/nvidia/'), the 
problem is that you need to compile your own kernel (as Richard said). 
That means you can't use livna's package, since the kernel module it 
contains, is compiled against a specific kernel version.

Having said that, by keeping both kernels (always a good choice), in 
theory you could switch between your custom kernel with nouveau and the 
fedora kernel with the livna package. Also keep two copies of your 
xorg.conf for each setup and update the dynamic linker's bindings 
accordingly (as in the forum post). Haven't try this myself. If you have 
the time and don't mind messing around with your OS installation, give 
it a go and tell us if it works :-P

Something tells me I'm leading you to a 'dark place' ;)


-Ioannis

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Louise Hoffman]

> Something tells me I'm leading you to a 'dark place' ;)

I get that very feeling too =)

I guess I better wait to play with the Nouveau driver till it can be
compiled as a kernel module =)

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Pekka Paalanen]

> So I can't try send dumps to Nouveau without breaking livna nVidia
> drivers? =(

Dear Louise,

if you only want to send dumps, I'm afraid everyone has so far only
mislead you.

The dumps (renouveau[1] and kmmio[2]) are for the reverse engineering
effort. They need the proprietary driver up and running. After all, there is
little point in spying the Nouveau driver as it is open source. We want to
know what the proprietary driver does, so we can guess how the card works.

On the other hand, if you want to try the Nouveau driver, you need the
kernel bits (DRM) and Xorg driver bits (DDX), and preferably not the Mesa
bits (DRI) unless you want to try your luck with glxgears (I forget which
card you have, nv4x cards have a chance). All these bits you get from the
respective git repositories [3]. I do not know why people have recommended
building a new kernel, that is usually not needed. The DRM bits are built
out of kernel tree anyway, you just have to make sure the in-kernel drm.ko
module is not used (if it is not a module but is built-in, then you need a
new kernel).

Thanks.


[1] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/REnouveau
[2] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MmioTrace
[3] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/InstallNouveau

-- 
pq from his secondary email client

Re: Does Nouveau break the nVidia drivers?

[Louise Hoffman]

> The dumps (renouveau[1] and kmmio[2]) are for the reverse engineering
> effort. They need the proprietary driver up and running. After all, there is
> little point in spying the Nouveau driver as it is open source. We want to
> know what the proprietary driver does, so we can guess how the card works.

I guess it was me that had it all wrong then =) I thought the dumps
were from the Nouveau drivers, and served as a "gdb" output or a kind
of "talkback", so you could see what went wrong on the different
graphics cards =)

> On the other hand, if you want to try the Nouveau driver, you need the
> kernel bits (DRM) and Xorg driver bits (DDX), and preferably not the Mesa
> bits (DRI) unless you want to try your luck with glxgears (I forget which
> card you have, nv4x cards have a chance). All these bits you get from the
> respective git repositories [3]. I do not know why people have recommended
> building a new kernel, that is usually not needed. The DRM bits are built
> out of kernel tree anyway, you just have to make sure the in-kernel drm.ko
> module is not used (if it is not a module but is built-in, then you need a
> new kernel).

It sounds so easy, but I am sure I will break something if I try now.

I will now try my luck to make a dump from my 6150 (C51 core) =)