[elrepo-devel] about nvidia rpms

[Phil Perry]

Hi,

On 22/03/11 10:00, Farkas Levente wrote:
> hi,
> i try to convert elrpo's nvidia packages to our platform and i've got a
> few questions:
> - why the nvidia-kmod nosrc.rpm while and nvidia is src.rpm? since they
> both contain the same sources.

Because the sources are large and it didn't make sense to ship them 
twice. Plus my adsl upload speeds are really slow!

> - wouldn't be useful to merge the el5 and el6 spec files? since there
> are only a few lines of differences which can be put into ifs.

During our beta testing of RHEL6 we made a conscious decision to 
completely separate the el5 and el6 branches. We did start off down the 
route of shared SPECs so this wasn't a decision we reached without 
looking at the options. Kmodtool is different for each release. Also, 
code backported from kernel.org needs different patch sets to compile on 
el5 versus el6. There may also be occasion where we would want different 
versions of packages in el5 versus el6.

So we decided to go for complete separation. If you want to maintain 
them for your own use in one package then as you say it shouldn't be too 
difficult.


> - these files removed from el6 by design:
>   - libnvidia-tls.so,

It's still there:

/usr/lib64/nvidia/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.260.19.44

but there are two versions on el5:

/usr/lib64/nvidia/libnvidia-tls.so.256.53
/usr/lib64/nvidia/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.256.53

The nvidia docs explain:

The nvidia-tls libraries (/usr/lib/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z and 
/usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z); these files provide thread local 
storage support for the NVIDIA OpenGL libraries (libGL, 
libnvidia-glcore, and libglx). Each nvidia-tls library provides support 
for a particular thread local storage model (such as ELF TLS), and the 
one appropriate for your system will be loaded at run time.

Under el6 I surmised the "correct" version and no longer bothered 
packaging the other unneeded lib.


>   - libnvidia-wfb.so,

No longer needed. Again, from the docs:

An X module for wrapped software rendering 
(/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libnvidia-wfb.so.x.y.z and optionally, 
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libwfb.so); this module is used by the X driver 
to perform software rendering on GeForce 8 series GPUs. If libwfb.so 
already exists, nvidia-installer will not overwrite it. Otherwise, it 
will create a symbolic link from libwfb.so to libnvidia-wfb.so.x.y.z.

     /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libwfb.so (if your X server is new enough), or
     /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libnvidia-wfb.so and
     /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libwfb.so -> libnvidia-wfb.so


On el6 /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/libwfb.so is provided by 
xorg-x11-server-Xorg.

>   - nvidia.(c)sh

Wasn't sure if these were needed or not. They originally came from the 
rpmforge dkms nvidia package. On the basis of less is more I left them 
out. If you can make a case for them to be included/that they are needed 
then I'll happily put them back in, but Works Fine For Me without them.

Additionally, we will also be dropping the VDPAU wrapper libs from the 
nvidia package as of the next driver series release (270.xx series). The 
nvidia package will still provide the vendor-specific libs:

/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.{version}

but libvdpau and libvdpau_trace libraries should now be installed from 
the libvdpau package available in EPEL (and hopefully rpmforge too):

/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1.0.0
/usr/lib/vdpau
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1.0.0

Hope that helps.