[elrepo] yum-plugin-nvidia

[Phil Perry]

On 08/07/15 15:22, Tony Schreiner wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 7:06 AM, Phil Perry <phil at elrepo.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This email is to let you all know about a new yum plugin for nvidia we
>> have released.
>>
>>
> Phil
> Thanks for that.
> 
> I am using nvidia-304xx, and installed the plugin with --nodeps as you
> describe.
> 
> yum now is excluding the new packages 352.21-3 but not saying anything
> about the incompatible packages already in elrepo. Is that expected?
> 
> 

Hi Tony,

Thanks for having a play :-)

Yes, that is expected. The plugin only works with nvidia package
versions >= 352.21-3. It ignores all previous versions (it doesn't even
process them).

All packages previous to that do not have the blacklist() Provides that
the plugin uses so the plugin knows nothing about them and thus can't
exclude them. I could go back and rebuild all those packages adding the
extra blacklist() 'Provides' but I don't see the point (lots of work for
no gain). Equally I could just remove all older packages not supported
by the plugin from the repo, but I don't really think it's an issue...

Going forward, the plugin will serve it's purpose. Lets look at an
imaginary scenario:

Bob has a GeForce GT 440 (10DE:0DC0) that is supported by the current
driver (352.21).

As new driver versions are released, Bob continues to update through yum
(and I'm making up the numbers here) to drivers 356.xx, 359.xx and 362.xx.

Then NVIDIA releases the 365.xx driver series and drops support for GT
4xx and GT 5xx devices so Bob's GeForce GT 440 is now no longer supported.

When we release these new 365.xx driver packages, we will add
blacklist() provides for the devices that are now no longer supported,
specifically:

blacklist(pci:v000010DEd00000DC0sv*sd*bc03sc*i*) = 365

for Bob's GeForce GT 440 device above.

Because it is now blacklisted by the new driver package, the yum plugin
knows it does not support Bob's hardware and it would be excluded so
when Bob does a 'yum update', he would not see the update (or any
subsequent updates) on that system. Without the yum plugin, Bob could
update to the new 365.xx driver and be the owner of a broken system.

Hope that helps clarify.