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I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a system with an
MSI Video card with the Nvidia MX4000 chip.

I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from
the Nvidia website without a problem.

When I upgrade the kernel via up2date I have to
reinstall the Nvidea drivers, which is not a problem
in itself. However Xorg appears to store the
driver module in only one place, regardless of the
kernel version. So if I reboot with an older kernel
the driver for the newer kernel won't work, and if
I then reinstall the driver for the older kernel, then
it overwrites the driver for the newer kernel.

Is there any relatively clean way to get around this
problem, i.e., to have the appropriate video driver
linked to each kernel version as are the other kernel
modules?

Note: My usual practice is to boot into runlevel 3
and start the X server manually (with 'startx') from
there.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan

Charles Sullivan wrote:

> I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a system with an
> MSI Video card with the Nvidia MX4000 chip.
>
> I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from
> the Nvidia website without a problem.
>
> When I upgrade the kernel via up2date I have to
> reinstall the Nvidea drivers, which is not a problem
> in itself.**However*Xorg*appears*to*store*the
> driver module in only one place, regardless of the
> kernel version.**So*if*I*reboot*with*an*older*kernel
> the driver for the newer kernel won't work, and if
> I then reinstall the driver for the older kernel, then
> it overwrites the driver for the newer kernel.
>
> Is there any relatively clean way to get around this
> problem, i.e., to have the appropriate video driver
> linked to each kernel version as are the other kernel
> modules?

Use a symlink to one of the various versions of the driver instead of
placing the actual driver in the single location. As you change kernels,
change the symlink.

Don't cross-post.

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:49:00 -0700, Paul Lutus wrote:

> Charles Sullivan wrote:
>
>> I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a system with an
>> MSI Video card with the Nvidia MX4000 chip.
>>
>> I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from
>> the Nvidia website without a problem.
>>
>> When I upgrade the kernel via up2date I have to
>> reinstall the Nvidea drivers, which is not a problem
>> in itself.**However*Xorg*appears*to*store*the
>> driver module in only one place, regardless of the
>> kernel version.**So*if*I*reboot*with*an*older*kernel
>> the driver for the newer kernel won't work, and if
>> I then reinstall the driver for the older kernel, then
>> it overwrites the driver for the newer kernel.
>>
>> Is there any relatively clean way to get around this
>> problem, i.e., to have the appropriate video driver
>> linked to each kernel version as are the other kernel
>> modules?
>
> Use a symlink to one of the various versions of the driver instead of
> placing the actual driver in the single location. As you change kernels,
> change the symlink.

Thanks for the response Paul.

I'm trying to figure out a clean way of doing this - maybe a
link in xorg.conf to another link in a central location which
points to a copy of the version-specific driver placed in
/lib/modules/<version>/. Then one of the init scripts updates
the link in the central location at boot time.

> Don't cross-post.

The only reason I've heard for not (moderate) cross-posting
is the persistence of some antique news-server and/or client
software than doesn't efficiently handle cross-posts.
If you have a more compelling reason I'd appreciate
hearing it.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan

Charles Sullivan wrote:

/ ...
[ Paul ]

>> Don't cross-post.
>
> The only reason I've heard for not (moderate) cross-posting
> is the persistence of some antique news-server and/or client
> software than doesn't efficiently handle cross-posts.
> If you have a more compelling reason I'd appreciate
> hearing it.

I tried to reply, but the newsgroup you set for follow-up does not exist on
my news service. This may seem like a purely personal complaint, but what
it means in practice is that cross-posters miss a lot of replies, because
some newsreaders don't alert the user that the post failed.

The only reason you saw my reply is after the post failure I hand-edited
your message header to delete the non-group and replace it with a real one.

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com

On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:15:46 -0700, Paul Lutus wrote:

> Charles Sullivan wrote:
>
> / ...
> [ Paul ]
>
>>> Don't cross-post.
>>
>> The only reason I've heard for not (moderate) cross-posting
>> is the persistence of some antique news-server and/or client
>> software than doesn't efficiently handle cross-posts.
>> If you have a more compelling reason I'd appreciate
>> hearing it.
>
> I tried to reply, but the newsgroup you set for follow-up does not exist on
> my news service. This may seem like a purely personal complaint, but what
> it means in practice is that cross-posters miss a lot of replies, because
> some newsreaders don't alert the user that the post failed.
>
> The only reason you saw my reply is after the post failure I hand-edited
> your message header to delete the non-group and replace it with a real one.

Hmmm... I hadn't set a 'followup-to' header. The original query
was cross-posted to comp.os.linux.redhat and comp.os.linux.setup,
in that order (both of which I monitor for replies). Does your
newsreader (KNode???) perhaps automatically set 'followup-to' to
the first in the list?

My newsreader, PAN, asks whether I want to 'send anyway?' if one or
more newsgroups in a cross-posted list do not exist on the
(RoadRunner) news server.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan

Charles Sullivan wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:15:46 -0700, Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> Charles Sullivan wrote:
>>
>> / ...
>> [ Paul ]
>>
>>>> Don't cross-post.
>>>
>>> The only reason I've heard for not (moderate) cross-posting
>>> is the persistence of some antique news-server and/or client
>>> software than doesn't efficiently handle cross-posts.
>>> If you have a more compelling reason I'd appreciate
>>> hearing it.
>>
>> I tried to reply, but the newsgroup you set for follow-up does not exist
>> on my news service. This may seem like a purely personal complaint, but
>> what it means in practice is that cross-posters miss a lot of replies,
>> because some newsreaders don't alert the user that the post failed.
>>
>> The only reason you saw my reply is after the post failure I hand-edited
>> your message header to delete the non-group and replace it with a real
>> one.
>
> Hmmm... I hadn't set a 'followup-to' header. The original query
> was cross-posted to comp.os.linux.redhat and comp.os.linux.setup,
> in that order (both of which I monitor for replies). Does your
> newsreader (KNode???) perhaps automatically set 'followup-to' to
> the first in the list?

In the event that no follow-up is set, KNode cross-posts its reply rather
than making a choice, so somehow a follow-up was set outside KNode.

> My newsreader, PAN, asks whether I want to 'send anyway?' if one or
> more newsgroups in a cross-posted list do not exist on the
> (RoadRunner) news server.

All this argues against cross-posting, along with the more conventional idea
that one should choose the best newsgroup for the post.

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com

In comp.os.linux.setup, Paul Lutus uttered these immortal words:

>> Hmmm... I hadn't set a 'followup-to' header. The original query
>> was cross-posted to comp.os.linux.redhat and comp.os.linux.setup,
>> in that order (both of which I monitor for replies). Does your
>> newsreader (KNode???) perhaps automatically set 'followup-to' to
>> the first in the list?
>
> In the event that no follow-up is set, KNode cross-posts its reply rather
> than making a choice, so somehow a follow-up was set outside KNode.

Actually, KNode crossposts the reply and sets the Followup-To header to the
first group in the list and has done so for as long as I can remember. I
just right-clicked the OP's post and selected "Followup to Newsgroup..." to
double check.

--
Andy.

On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 09:21:15 -0700, Paul Lutus wrote:

> Charles Sullivan wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:15:46 -0700, Paul Lutus wrote:
>>
>>> Charles Sullivan wrote:
>>>
>>> / ...
>>> [ Paul ]
>>>
>>>>> Don't cross-post.
>>>>
>>>> The only reason I've heard for not (moderate) cross-posting
>>>> is the persistence of some antique news-server and/or client
>>>> software than doesn't efficiently handle cross-posts.
>>>> If you have a more compelling reason I'd appreciate
>>>> hearing it.
>>>
>>> I tried to reply, but the newsgroup you set for follow-up does not exist
>>> on my news service. This may seem like a purely personal complaint, but
>>> what it means in practice is that cross-posters miss a lot of replies,
>>> because some newsreaders don't alert the user that the post failed.
>>>
>>> The only reason you saw my reply is after the post failure I hand-edited
>>> your message header to delete the non-group and replace it with a real
>>> one.
>>
>> Hmmm... I hadn't set a 'followup-to' header. The original query
>> was cross-posted to comp.os.linux.redhat and comp.os.linux.setup,
>> in that order (both of which I monitor for replies). Does your
>> newsreader (KNode???) perhaps automatically set 'followup-to' to
>> the first in the list?
>
> In the event that no follow-up is set, KNode cross-posts its reply rather
> than making a choice, so somehow a follow-up was set outside KNode.
>
>> My newsreader, PAN, asks whether I want to 'send anyway?' if one or
>> more newsgroups in a cross-posted list do not exist on the
>> (RoadRunner) news server.
>
> All this argues against cross-posting, along with the more conventional idea
> that one should choose the best newsgroup for the post.

I'm sorry Paul, I can't see how _any_ of this argues against
cross-posting. As far as I can judge, PAN does exactly the right
thing - asking whether the "invalid" newsgroup is a possible
typo before sending but not presuming to make decisions behind
my back. I would argue that the difficulty you experienced in
replying is a deficiency of KNode. (I thank you for persisting.)

Insofar as choosing the "best" newsgroup is concerned, my
original query involved a setup issue on FC2 which uses Xorg
rather than the XFree86 common on many other distros. So a
crosspost to both comp.os.linux.redhat and comp.os.linux.setup
seemed perfectly reasonable to me. (If I had posted only to
comp.os.linux.redhat, I would not have had the benefit of
your reply.) Had I posted first to one newsgroup and then
(having received no response) several days later to another,
I would have annoyed a large number of readers who monitor
both newsgroups and see it as a multi-post (as opposed
to a cross-post).

(I would agree that cross-posting to every possible Linux
newsgroup carried by my news server is inappropriate, but mainly
because of the waste of resources for those "antique" servers
and newsreaders that don't properly handle cross-posts.)

Regards,
Charles Sullivan

Charles Sullivan <cwsulliv@triad.rr.com> wrote:
> I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a system with an
> MSI Video card with the Nvidia MX4000 chip.

> I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from
> the Nvidia website without a problem.

> When I upgrade the kernel via up2date I have to
> reinstall the Nvidea drivers, which is not a problem
> in itself. However Xorg appears to store the
> driver module in only one place, regardless of the
> kernel version.

I've read the thread and... well...
The actual DRIVER module used by X should be totally independent of the
kernel, the kernel module goes in the appropriate place in
/lib/modules/<version> of course, but the one loaded by X by the "load
"nvidia"" line is irrelevant as far as the kernel's concerned...

Isn't it?

On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 13:38:36 +0100, spike1 wrote:

> Charles Sullivan <cwsulliv@triad.rr.com> wrote:
>> I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a system with an
>> MSI Video card with the Nvidia MX4000 chip.
>
>> I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from
>> the Nvidia website without a problem.
>
>> When I upgrade the kernel via up2date I have to
>> reinstall the Nvidea drivers, which is not a problem
>> in itself. However Xorg appears to store the
>> driver module in only one place, regardless of the
>> kernel version.
>
> I've read the thread and... well...
> The actual DRIVER module used by X should be totally independent of the
> kernel, the kernel module goes in the appropriate place in
> /lib/modules/<version> of course, but the one loaded by X by the "load
> "nvidia"" line is irrelevant as far as the kernel's concerned...
>
> Isn't it?

What I've since determined is that there's a kernel-specific
driver module stored under /lib/modules/<version>/... as well as
the other stuff stored in the common X11 location.

For whatever reason, Nvidia's driver installer program deletes
the kernel-specific driver modules for kernel versions other than
the one currently booted. What I've done is saved a copy of the
kernel-specific driver modules for each version before installing
for a new kernel and then restored the deleted driver modules.
So far it seems to be working OK, at least with the last two
kernel releases installed by up2date for FC2.