9 ms·

A Nouveau graphics driver update

127 points by chmaynard 3y ago

calvinmorrison 3y ago
There are a number of disadvantages too, though. The firmware provides no stable ABI, and a lot of the calls it provides are not documented. The firmware files themselves are large, in the range of 20-30MB, and two of them are required for any given device. That significantly bloats a system's /boot directory and initramfs image (which must provide every version of the firmware that the kernel might need), and forces the Nouveau developers to be strict and careful about picking up firmware updates. Is 20-30Mb of /boot space really a concern for someone running an nvidia graphics card?
- mike_hock 3y ago
  I don't get why this has to be in the initrd. Just run in legacy text mode until the root partition has been mounted and then load the firmware from there.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    They worked hard to make boot nicer, at least for Intel GPUs: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FlickerFreeBoot https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FlickerFreeBoot Also, the earlier I get the GPU up, the better. My monitor won't display some resolutions used in BIOS screens and text modes.
  - fulafel 3y ago
    You can do better than text too before the driver load, even Grub uses high res and has a background image these days.
- ogurechny 3y ago
  “Every version” probably means 20-30 MB for each GPU series that can potentially appear in the PCI-e slot after power on (if still supported by the driver). Or the user has to juggle the firmware before hardware change (or the driver has to implement the juggling instead).
- gavinsyancey 3y ago
  My /boot partition is 256MB because that was the default in the Ubuntu installer way back when I installed it. I can't easily resize it because my primary partition starts right after it. I am constantly running out of space in /boot because Apt doesn't fully clean up after old kernel versions automatically. An extra 20-30MB (per kernel version, at least) is absolutely a huge deal.
  - jml78 3y ago
    I am in the same boat as you. I still haven’t found a solution for keeping it clean in an automated and safe way.
    - orra 3y ago
      However, you could consider shrinking your main partition using gparted live. Then put a new /boot at the end. Of course, you'd lose the original /boot partition space, however.
      - aidenn0 3y ago
        I don't know if any tools support moving partitions, but you can use "dd" to move a partition backwards if you are very careful. I'm not recommending this on any system that you don't have good backups for, but it is possible.
        simcop2387 3y ago
        gparted supports this and it's relatively easy to do after shrinking the original partition
      - simcop2387 3y ago
        Why not just use gparted to move the partition instead? Just three steps 1. Shrink the main partition 2. Move the main partition to the right, leaving free space between it and /boot 3. Resize /boot to fit into the newly freed space That's what I did at one point to make my /boot 2gb or so, haven't had issues since.
- ianlevesque 3y ago
  These tiny boot partitions are such a self-inflicted wound in linux distributions. I do agree there's a lot of people in the same boat, but maybe the solution is to offer some sort of migration out of that state.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    What would that migration look like? The traditional route, which is being discussed in this thread, involves moving your entire root partition around so you have enough room to grow the boot partition. But that's not exactly a process I would want to run on any system without current backups, to put it lightly. The other thought that occurred while I was reading here was that you could create a new boot partition at the end of the disk, which might work if you synchronize everything perfectly and can shrink the rest of the partitions to give you enough room, but we're still talking about fairly delicate tinkering with the boot process and I'm just not seeing a way to do that that's not dangerous at any significant scale.
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      >What would that migration look like? cp -r /boot /boot2 umount /boot mv /boot2 /boot
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure unless you just forgot to write the part where you fuss with the partition flags and possibly EFI variables, you just rendered the machine unbootable. Also, where did boot2 come from? Because a lot of these machines don't have free space sitting around, and some of them are still using MBR partitions and don't even have the ability to create a new partition. (You might well object that nobody even makes machines with bios boot anymore and surely everybody must be using GPT, at which point I get to gesture at the astonishing number of cloud virtual machines that are somehow not even capable of UEFI booting) Edit: s/on bootable/unbootable/
        3y ago
fny 3y ago
I still don’t understand why it’s so damn hard to use a NVIDIA GPU on Linux vs Windows. The NVIDIA drivers are closed source for both. Once deep learning took off, I expected things to change, but the other day I tried to install drivers for a new card and my Bluetooth and WiFi stopped working.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  The main difference is probably that Linux has a dozen+ desktops and (even ideally) multiple desktop implementations to support. Windows has just one, and they update it continuously (not to say it works perfectly either). In the end, Windows has more users that report bugs on fewer setups. That makes fixing things much easier than Linux.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    I... Don't think either of those is true? Driver support is once for all of Xorg and once for all of Wayland AFAIK; it's not like you have a different driver for each desktop environment. And I was rather given to believe that Linux users were far disproportionately likely to report bugs compared to Windows users, though I suppose there are so many more Windows users that they might still manage a higher absolute number of bug reports.
- tedunangst 3y ago
  The driver API in the windows kernel changes about once a decade. And they're not actively hostile to loading closed source drivers.
  - dietr1ch 3y ago
    Poor multi-trillion company unable to support open source drivers
    - tedunangst 3y ago
      Their business plan seems to be working out for them.
axlee 3y ago
What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They ship the hardware, they ship the driver(s). That's their problem. They probably want people to be able to use their cards. Why fight this battle? If Nvidia wants to lose Linux users by not shipping drivers, let them fall, but I don't see the point in badly replicating drivers and making them "open-source". You still bought the GC from BigCorp, and only Nvidia can make those cards anyway: this "open-source" driver can't exist without Nvidia making cards. Who benefits from all that work?
- dralley 3y ago
  Open source drivers can be shipped in the mainline kernel. Drivers that ship in the mainline kernel, are 1000% less of a pain in the ass.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  If that were the case, we’d have almost no HW support on Linux. The Linux kernel doesn’t have a stable API nor ABI which means the only way to get meaningful HW support is to mainline the driver. DKMS helps a bit in “stabilizing” but it has it’s warts.
- bestouff 3y ago
  What is the issue with a proprietary OS ?
  - greentea23 3y ago
    1. Privacy: mac/windows requires an online user account sign-in and have built-in telemetry that can't be disabled. 1984 is your reality on these OSs, particularly a problem outside of the free world. 2. Hardware lifespan: apple or microsoft get to decide when you buy a new computer instead of you and the community. Annoying, expensive, and not environmentally friendly. 3. Customizability and control: can't fix or improve the OS, and many powerful features just don't exist. 4. Open knowledge and human progress: by sharing knowledge and allowing others to contribute, we collectively advance. Proprietary operating systems discourage progress, and open source ones facilitate it. Nearly all of the great apps you know and love exist because of the culture of sharing. Even the proprietary OSs only exist because of open source OSs and libraries as the foundation and inspiration.
moffkalast 3y ago
Ah yes, Nouveau drivers. The thing that crashes immediately and prevents Linux from booting when you try to set up a fresh install on an Nvidia machine, leading to a short scramble to blacklist it with launch options until the actual drivers can be installed. I sort of don't really know why they even bother. The only reason to have an Nvidia card is to use their CUDA toolkit, which isn't even supported by Nouveau.
- zucker42 3y ago
  I think plenty of people (myself among them), have used Nouveau without issues.
- jmclnx 3y ago
  I admire the Nouveau people, lots of hard work with blocks nvidia is happy to throw in front of them. I have had no issues with Nouveau on the one system I have with an nvidia GPU. With that said, I wish Linux would do what OpenBSD does, do not support nvidia GPUs until it is opened up. Maybe this will make nvidia smarten up.
matmatmatmat 3y ago
Well, I look forward to benefiting from this nice work when the next Debian Stable release comes around.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
PicassoCTs 3y ago
I wonder, given enough recorded data streams, could a GPT trained on abi-documentation, reconstruct or reverse engineer said abi + undocumented calls.
- nesarkvechnep 3y ago
  Don’t wonder, try to do it.
  - PicassoCTs 3y ago
    Well, somebody has been there and done it: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.09122.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.09122.pdf I just wanted a expert to comment on it..

127 points by chmaynard 3y ago

There are a number of disadvantages too, though. The firmware provides no stable ABI, and a lot of the calls it provides are not documented. The firmware files themselves are large, in the range of 20-30MB, and two of them are required for any given device. That significantly bloats a system's /boot directory and initramfs image (which must provide every version of the firmware that the kernel might need), and forces the Nouveau developers to be strict and careful about picking up firmware updates. Is 20-30Mb of /boot space really a concern for someone running an nvidia graphics card?

mike_hock 3y ago
I don't get why this has to be in the initrd. Just run in legacy text mode until the root partition has been mounted and then load the firmware from there.
- doubled112 3y ago
  They worked hard to make boot nicer, at least for Intel GPUs: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FlickerFreeBoot https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FlickerFreeBoot Also, the earlier I get the GPU up, the better. My monitor won't display some resolutions used in BIOS screens and text modes.
- fulafel 3y ago
  You can do better than text too before the driver load, even Grub uses high res and has a background image these days.
ogurechny 3y ago
“Every version” probably means 20-30 MB for each GPU series that can potentially appear in the PCI-e slot after power on (if still supported by the driver). Or the user has to juggle the firmware before hardware change (or the driver has to implement the juggling instead).
gavinsyancey 3y ago
My /boot partition is 256MB because that was the default in the Ubuntu installer way back when I installed it. I can't easily resize it because my primary partition starts right after it. I am constantly running out of space in /boot because Apt doesn't fully clean up after old kernel versions automatically. An extra 20-30MB (per kernel version, at least) is absolutely a huge deal.
- jml78 3y ago
  I am in the same boat as you. I still haven’t found a solution for keeping it clean in an automated and safe way.
  - orra 3y ago
    However, you could consider shrinking your main partition using gparted live. Then put a new /boot at the end. Of course, you'd lose the original /boot partition space, however.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      I don't know if any tools support moving partitions, but you can use "dd" to move a partition backwards if you are very careful. I'm not recommending this on any system that you don't have good backups for, but it is possible.
      - simcop2387 3y ago
        gparted supports this and it's relatively easy to do after shrinking the original partition
    - simcop2387 3y ago
      Why not just use gparted to move the partition instead? Just three steps 1. Shrink the main partition 2. Move the main partition to the right, leaving free space between it and /boot 3. Resize /boot to fit into the newly freed space That's what I did at one point to make my /boot 2gb or so, haven't had issues since.
ianlevesque 3y ago
These tiny boot partitions are such a self-inflicted wound in linux distributions. I do agree there's a lot of people in the same boat, but maybe the solution is to offer some sort of migration out of that state.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  What would that migration look like? The traditional route, which is being discussed in this thread, involves moving your entire root partition around so you have enough room to grow the boot partition. But that's not exactly a process I would want to run on any system without current backups, to put it lightly. The other thought that occurred while I was reading here was that you could create a new boot partition at the end of the disk, which might work if you synchronize everything perfectly and can shrink the rest of the partitions to give you enough room, but we're still talking about fairly delicate tinkering with the boot process and I'm just not seeing a way to do that that's not dangerous at any significant scale.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >What would that migration look like? cp -r /boot /boot2 umount /boot mv /boot2 /boot
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure unless you just forgot to write the part where you fuss with the partition flags and possibly EFI variables, you just rendered the machine unbootable. Also, where did boot2 come from? Because a lot of these machines don't have free space sitting around, and some of them are still using MBR partitions and don't even have the ability to create a new partition. (You might well object that nobody even makes machines with bios boot anymore and surely everybody must be using GPT, at which point I get to gesture at the astonishing number of cloud virtual machines that are somehow not even capable of UEFI booting) Edit: s/on bootable/unbootable/
      - 3y ago

fny 3y ago

I still don’t understand why it’s so damn hard to use a NVIDIA GPU on Linux vs Windows. The NVIDIA drivers are closed source for both. Once deep learning took off, I expected things to change, but the other day I tried to install drivers for a new card and my Bluetooth and WiFi stopped working.

smoldesu 3y ago
The main difference is probably that Linux has a dozen+ desktops and (even ideally) multiple desktop implementations to support. Windows has just one, and they update it continuously (not to say it works perfectly either). In the end, Windows has more users that report bugs on fewer setups. That makes fixing things much easier than Linux.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  I... Don't think either of those is true? Driver support is once for all of Xorg and once for all of Wayland AFAIK; it's not like you have a different driver for each desktop environment. And I was rather given to believe that Linux users were far disproportionately likely to report bugs compared to Windows users, though I suppose there are so many more Windows users that they might still manage a higher absolute number of bug reports.
tedunangst 3y ago
The driver API in the windows kernel changes about once a decade. And they're not actively hostile to loading closed source drivers.
- dietr1ch 3y ago
  Poor multi-trillion company unable to support open source drivers
  - tedunangst 3y ago
    Their business plan seems to be working out for them.

axlee 3y ago

What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They ship the hardware, they ship the driver(s). That's their problem. They probably want people to be able to use their cards. Why fight this battle? If Nvidia wants to lose Linux users by not shipping drivers, let them fall, but I don't see the point in badly replicating drivers and making them "open-source". You still bought the GC from BigCorp, and only Nvidia can make those cards anyway: this "open-source" driver can't exist without Nvidia making cards. Who benefits from all that work?

dralley 3y ago
Open source drivers can be shipped in the mainline kernel. Drivers that ship in the mainline kernel, are 1000% less of a pain in the ass.
vlovich123 3y ago
If that were the case, we’d have almost no HW support on Linux. The Linux kernel doesn’t have a stable API nor ABI which means the only way to get meaningful HW support is to mainline the driver. DKMS helps a bit in “stabilizing” but it has it’s warts.
bestouff 3y ago
What is the issue with a proprietary OS ?
- greentea23 3y ago
  1. Privacy: mac/windows requires an online user account sign-in and have built-in telemetry that can't be disabled. 1984 is your reality on these OSs, particularly a problem outside of the free world. 2. Hardware lifespan: apple or microsoft get to decide when you buy a new computer instead of you and the community. Annoying, expensive, and not environmentally friendly. 3. Customizability and control: can't fix or improve the OS, and many powerful features just don't exist. 4. Open knowledge and human progress: by sharing knowledge and allowing others to contribute, we collectively advance. Proprietary operating systems discourage progress, and open source ones facilitate it. Nearly all of the great apps you know and love exist because of the culture of sharing. Even the proprietary OSs only exist because of open source OSs and libraries as the foundation and inspiration.

moffkalast 3y ago

Ah yes, Nouveau drivers. The thing that crashes immediately and prevents Linux from booting when you try to set up a fresh install on an Nvidia machine, leading to a short scramble to blacklist it with launch options until the actual drivers can be installed. I sort of don't really know why they even bother. The only reason to have an Nvidia card is to use their CUDA toolkit, which isn't even supported by Nouveau.

zucker42 3y ago
I think plenty of people (myself among them), have used Nouveau without issues.
jmclnx 3y ago
I admire the Nouveau people, lots of hard work with blocks nvidia is happy to throw in front of them. I have had no issues with Nouveau on the one system I have with an nvidia GPU. With that said, I wish Linux would do what OpenBSD does, do not support nvidia GPUs until it is opened up. Maybe this will make nvidia smarten up.

matmatmatmat 3y ago

Well, I look forward to benefiting from this nice work when the next Debian Stable release comes around.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

PicassoCTs 3y ago

I wonder, given enough recorded data streams, could a GPT trained on abi-documentation, reconstruct or reverse engineer said abi + undocumented calls.

nesarkvechnep 3y ago
Don’t wonder, try to do it.
- PicassoCTs 3y ago
  Well, somebody has been there and done it: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.09122.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.09122.pdf I just wanted a expert to comment on it..