On 06/20/17 14:29, Dave Pawson wrote:
Thanks Ed, some parts understood (but I ask why!)... Others raise
more questions
On 19 June 2017 at 18:06, Ed Greshko <ed.greshko(a)greshko.com> wrote:
> On 06/19/17 20:16, Dave Pawson wrote:
>
> I've done the song and dance previously - I kept getting caught out
> when the akmod-nvidia was a day or two behind kernel updates!
>
>
> I think you are thinking of kmod.
Would you explain the difference please? And what is the sequence
to change to akmod?
Sure.... The kmod-nvidia packages on your system contain the actual kernel modules
for the nvidia cards. With 3 kernels installed on my system I see...
[egreshko@meimei ~]$ rpm -qa | grep ^kmod-nvidia
kmod-nvidia-4.11.4-200.fc25.x86_64-375.66-3.fc25.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-4.11.3-202.fc25.x86_64-375.66-3.fc25.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64-375.66-3.fc25.x86_64
If you don't have akmod-nvidia installed on your system and you get a kernel update
from the fedora repo but the rpmfusion doesn't have the corresponding kmod-nvidia you
will have to wait until they do....as you know.
But, if you install the akmod-nvidia package with supports your HW you won't have to
wait as it will build and install the needed kmod-nvidia when the kernel is updated.
akmod-nvidia-375.66-3 supports the latest nvidia hardware but there are also
other versions to support earlier HW. My older laptop has
akmod-nvidia-340xx-340.102-3 due to the older HW.
All you need do is install the appropriate akmod-nvidia package and the required
dependencies will be installed.
> If you run with akmod it will automatically rebuild the kmods for you so you
> won't be caught. The only "downside" is that now with dnf you have to
> remember that the rebuild process runs after, and silently, the dnf updates
> are completed. If you reboot too quickly the process wouldn't have enough
> time to finish and when your reboot you'll have a blank screen for a few
> minutes while it is rebuilding again....silently. So, if you forget that
> you may be inclined to think you've got a hung system....but you don't.
It's the 'silent' that bugs me and makes me ask WHY :-)
I think it has to do with the difficulty in putting out messages in the asynchronous
environment in which the packages are built/installed. However, it is easy to check
if all is well by just doing a "tailf" on /var/cache/akmods/akmods.log during
or
after the kernel update and wait for "success" such as this....
2017/06/16 08:01:15 akmods: Building and installing nvidia-kmod
2017/06/16 08:01:15 akmods: Building RPM using the command '/sbin/akmodsbuild
--target x86_64 --kernels 4.11.5-200.fc25.x86_64 /usr/src/akmods/nvidia-kmod.latest'
2017/06/16 08:01:49 akmods: Installing newly built rpms
2017/06/16 08:01:49 akmods: DNF detected
2017/06/16 08:01:57 akmods: Successful.