NVIDIA – New Driver With 4.11 Workaround, Not a Fix…
NVIDIA have released driver 375.66, and the details are here: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/118290/en-us
The details include the following:
“Installation of the nvidia-drm kernel module is now optional. The new ‘- -no-drm’ option can be used to prevent nvidia-installer from building and installing nvidia-drm, on systems where this kernel module fails to build and/or load.”
This does not mention Kernel 4.11 and GPL issues specifically, but this is what this ‘new feature’ is actually designed for.. This is a workaround, but not a solution..
Using the new option – -no-drm when executing NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66.run, the nvidia-drm modules are simply ignored..
To use this feature when just compiling the kernel modules themselves, from ~/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel, do the following:
# export NV_EXCLUDE_KERNEL_MODULES=nvidia-drm # make
– and the compile will ignore the troublesome nvidia-drm modules, and complete successfully, without them:
............. Building modules, stage 2. MODPOST 3 modules CC /home/rgadsdon/kernel/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel/nvidia-modeset.mod.o LD [M] /home/rgadsdon/kernel/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel/nvidia-modeset.ko CC /home/rgadsdon/kernel/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel/nvidia-uvm.mod.o LD [M] /home/rgadsdon/kernel/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel/nvidia-uvm.ko CC /home/rgadsdon/kernel/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel/nvidia.mod.o LD [M] /home/rgadsdon/kernel/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66/kernel/nvidia.ko make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-4.11' make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-4.11'
I have tested this on 4.11, and it all seems to work as advertised…
It would seem that NVIDIA is having difficulty in re-writing the offending code in nvidia-drm to embrace the changes to licensing enforcement, and it may be – from initial correspondence on the kernel mailing list – that they were counting on the Kernel code changes being reverted, which they were not..
Robert Gadsdon. May 5, 2017. (reformatted to show two-dashes correctly..)
it’s –no-drm . pls fix your valuable article or other surfers would have an headache figuring out how to properly install the driver.
also, in my case – ubuntu 4.11 mainline – i had do disable DKMS, whereas installation normally works with DKMS. YMMV 🙂
Typed correctly, but the WordPress formatting messes it up.. Thanks for spotting this – I have changed the font to ‘correctly’ show it..
RG.
381.22 was just released and it actually works without patches with current linux 4.12 staging tree including patches that broke patched the old driver just few days ago. I wish we could expect nvidia to keep this up, but I have a feeling this is a one-off rather than a rule.
Sadly but 381.22 just hang my system with 4.11, and on Gentoo, there is no 4.12 yet, and exclusion of nvidia-drm is no option with optimus…
Oh, and with 4.11, 381.22 still need “Dual MIT/GPL” patch to compile.