[elrepo] NVIDIA + SL6.3/Xorg issue; was: Re: NVIDIA and RHEL 6.5 issue

[Phil Perry]

On 04/12/13 17:09, Dirk Hoffmann wrote:
>
> Hello Phil,
>
>> Unfortunately, even if we had the knowledge, hacking the existing nvidia
>> driver would not be possible as the license does not permit the code to
>> be modified. Any changes MUST come from nvidia themselves.
>
> I had read that before, but my understanding is that NVIDIA distribute
> their proprietary software as binaries anyway, then provide a wrapper as
> source code, which can be compiled with various kernels. This wrapper
> code, again AFAIU, should be modifiable and redistributable. And if you
> can (are allowed) to distribute the drivers presently, also the
> packaging of the patch should be possible. I understand that you had to
> do such operation anyway for each significantly new kernel since 2.3.
>
> Cheers
>                                      Dirk


No, not quite.

As you say the X11 drivers and libs are distributed in binary form only.

The kernel driver is distributed in source form as it must be compiled 
against each kernel it is to be used with (the exception being RHEL 
kernels with stable kABI).

We do not modify anything NVIDIA provide as that would contravene the 
license agreement.

Irrespective of the license restrictions, updating the drivers to 
support newer versions of X will most certainly require changes to the 
binary only X11 drivers so this is not something we could do, even if 
the license allowed us. As I said above, any changes must come from 
nvidia themselves.

I'm not able to speak with any authority, but I would guess NVIDIA 
considers devices supported by the 96.xx legacy drivers to be at the end 
of their supportable life and would probably rather you upgrade to newer 
hardware. After all, we are talking about hardware that is well over 10 
years old now. I'm not anticipating NVIDIA adding support for Xorg 1.13.

If you must run these older hardware devices with RHEL, then they should 
be supported on RHEL5 until 2017 as it's very unlikely that Xorg in 
RHEL5 will be updated beyond what is currently supported by nvidia. That 
gives you another 3 plus years of support whilst you consider your 
upgrade options.

Phil