Bug 19870 - Xorg has xserver-abi higher than supported by legacy NVIDIA drivers
Summary: Xorg has xserver-abi higher than supported by legacy NVIDIA drivers
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Mageia
Classification: Unclassified
Component: RPM Packages (show other bugs)
Version: Cauldron
Hardware: All Linux
Priority: Normal normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Kernel and Drivers maintainers
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: UPSTREAM
: 19905 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2016-11-29 22:12 CET by Daniel Osmari
Modified: 2016-12-14 19:21 CET (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:
Source RPM: x11-driver-video-nvidia340, x11-driver-video-nvidia304
CVE:
Status comment: nVidia has confirmed drivers supporting xorg 1.19 is in progress, no ETA yet


Attachments

Description Daniel Osmari 2016-11-29 22:12:59 CET
Description of problem:

The current Xorg version bumped the ABI, rendering the older NVIDIA drivers (nvidia304 and nvidia340) incompatible.

According to this thread:

 https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/976844/linux/xorg-1-19-support/

They rebuilt the current drivers for the new ABI within 3 days of Xorg 1.19 coming out, but there's no word of rebuilding the legacy drivers.

I appears the options are to roll back to Xorg 1.18, or completely drop support for legacy NVIDIA cards, since nouveau isn't yet usable (on my system, with a GeForce GTS 360M, it corrupts the image and occasionally freezes the system.)
Comment 1 Charles Edwards 2016-11-30 00:38:37 CET
Did the drivers build and work for you the Before upgrade to x11-server-1.19.0?

If they did as a work-around you could try adding
Option "IgnoreABI" "True" to the Section "ServerFlags" in xorg.conf.

Example

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "allowmouseopenfail"
    Option "DontZap" "False" # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
    Option "IgnoreABI" "True"
EndSection

CC: (none) => cae

Comment 2 Daniel Osmari 2016-11-30 01:50:40 CET
Yes, drivers were working fine before 1.19; I didn't check what exactly was the previous version before I tried updating, I'm assuming it was 1.18, and not just a previous minor version of 1.19.

The rpm package is uninstalled by urpmi, so I downloaded the official NVIDIA installer. It doesn't detect any incompatibility during installation, but Xorg complains about the ABI, and suggests "-ignoreABI" to bypass the ABI check. Invoking Xorg with that option just gives me a black screen and the entire system freezes.

I'm in the process of building Xorg 1.18, to confirm that it's what broke.
Comment 3 Daniel Osmari 2016-11-30 02:03:43 CET
Just to confirm, I rebuilt and installed x11-server-xorg-1.18.4-4.mga6.x86_64.rpm (and the associated rpms that would otherwise require the 1.19 version). The NVIDIA drivers install and the Xorg server runs with no problems.
Arne Spiegelhauer 2016-11-30 08:16:47 CET

CC: (none) => gm2.asp

Comment 4 Samuel Verschelde 2016-11-30 09:34:26 CET
Assigning to kernel and drivers maintainer group. 

From what I understood it is a known situation and we are hoping nvidia will release updated drivers for the newer Xorg. I don't know what plan B is.

Assignee: bugsquad => kernel

Samuel Verschelde 2016-11-30 09:34:36 CET

Priority: Normal => release_blocker

Comment 5 Thierry Vignaud 2016-11-30 12:46:05 CET
Nope, that's not a blocker bug.
This has happened in the past ant it'll happen in the future.

If Nvidia doesn't update those drivers, nvidia3xx will join nvidia71xx, 96xx & 173 in the graveyard.
(Preferably on Indian burial grounds so that nvidia devs got haunted until they split some open source glue code for xorg like they do for the kernel)

There's nothing we can besides watching more horror films...

Priority: release_blocker => Normal
CC: (none) => thierry.vignaud
Severity: critical => normal

Comment 6 Samuel Verschelde 2016-11-30 14:27:45 CET
Just because I missed the discussion, can you remind us what brought the decision to upgrade Xorg at this stage of the development for Mageia 6?
Samuel Verschelde 2016-11-30 15:13:16 CET

Keywords: (none) => UPSTREAM
Status comment: (none) => Waiting and hoping for nvidia to catch up, if they do. Otherwise, ERRATA.
Source RPM: x11-server-1.19.0-7.mga6.src.rpm => x11-driver-video-nvidia340, x11-driver-video-nvidia304

Comment 7 papoteur 2016-11-30 17:40:16 CET
Is the upgrade to xorg 1.19 important?
This stays lot of hardware out of the scope of Mageia if nvidia304 and nvidia340 won't work. 
I have hardware which needs nvidia304. Plasma/nouveau doesn't work. I don't consider it is out of date.

CC: (none) => yves.brungard_mageia

Comment 8 Daniel Osmari 2016-11-30 22:00:10 CET
Why isn't "staying on Xorg server 1.18" a valid plan B?
Comment 9 Thierry Vignaud 2016-12-01 09:21:15 CET
Because we want to be on a (really) supported release.
1.18.x is supposed to be supported but in reality, with other distros switching to 1.19.x, we know there won't be that much support.
Also it fixes sluggish cursor with libinput regarding touchpads & the like
Comment 10 Samuel Verschelde 2016-12-01 11:31:30 CET
Thanks Thierry for the explanation. I'm still pondering whether it was a good move because I don't like us making that hardware unsupported so abruptly and really hope nvidia will do something.

This is the kind of hard decision that would have been good to raise on the dev@ mailing list though, especially so close to the release.

When you're saying that other distros are switching to 1.19.x, do you mean for their current stable releases (including LTS ones) or development releases? If the latter only, can't we suppose 1.18.x will still get support to some extent? What exactly would staying on 1.18.x prevent us to do during Mageia 6's lifetime?

CC: (none) => tmb

Helge Hielscher 2016-12-01 15:51:56 CET

CC: (none) => hhielscher

Comment 11 Thomas Backlund 2016-12-01 18:35:19 CET
We also want xorg 1.19 for the improved performance for open source drivers (that is our primary target), better glamor acceleration, better modedsetting driver, PRIME, dobule-buffering and dGPU offloading support to name a few things.

Having said that, I just got a mail from Aaron Plattner (nVidia Linux Graphcis stack maintainer) that xorg 1.19 support is on the way, but no exact ETA yet as it has to pass internal QA before pushing in to the public.
Comment 12 Thomas Backlund 2016-12-01 18:39:02 CET
and to clarify... 
the support will land in both nvidia304 and the nvidia340 branches

And official nVidia EOL status:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142

The Linux 340.* legacy driver series is the last to support the G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs, and motherboard chipsets based on them. Support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 340.* legacy releases through the end of 2019.

The Linux 304.* legacy driver series is the last to support the NV4x and G7x GPUs and motherboard chipsets based on them. Support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 304.* legacy releases through the end of 2017.
Comment 13 Samuel Verschelde 2016-12-01 18:40:09 CET
Thanks for both the explanation and good news from nvidia.
Thomas Backlund 2016-12-01 22:08:34 CET

Status comment: Waiting and hoping for nvidia to catch up, if they do. Otherwise, ERRATA. => nVidia has confirmed drivers supporting xorg 1.19 is in progress, no ETA yet

Stéphane Pontier 2016-12-06 14:28:26 CET

CC: (none) => stephane.pontier

Comment 14 Rémi Verschelde 2016-12-07 08:47:51 CET
*** Bug 19905 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

CC: (none) => saveurlinux

Comment 15 Thomas Backlund 2016-12-14 19:21:10 CET
nvidia340 and nvidia304 xorg 1.19 support added as of:

nvidia340-340.101-1.mga6
nvidia304-304.134-1.mga6
ldetect-lst-0.3.3-1.mga6

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => FIXED


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