[RFC] Moving Intrepid to 2.6.27 kernel

[Alberto Milone]

On Fri, 2008-08-22 at 06:47 -0600, Tim Gardner wrote:
> Alberto Milone wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 19:33 -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> >> Alberto Milone wrote:
> >>> On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 09:52 -0500, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> >>>> Hi Ben:
> >>>>
> >>>> Not to necessarily be a deterrant from moving to 2.6.27, but do the
> >>>> closed drivers available in Ubuntu, the Broadcom, the NVIDIAs, and the
> >>>> Fglrx compile nicely against 2.6.27, or will some more modifications
> >>>> be needed there too?
> >>>>
> >>>> Regards
> >>>>
> >>> As far as I'm concerned I see no problems here, at least with NVIDIA. I
> >>> haven't tried the new kernel yet however I wrote some patches to ensure
> >>> compatibility of the NVIDIA driver with kernel 2.6.26 and I think I can
> >>> do it for 2.6.27 too.
> >>>
> >> There's rc3 based kernels here with headers:
> >>
> >> http://kernel.ubuntu.com/pub/next/v2.6.27-rc3/
> >>
> >> Give it a try and let me know how well it works out?
> > 
> > As you can see in the attached log, I can't build the kernel module
> > because of this:
> > FATAL: modpost: GPL-incompatible module nvidia.ko uses GPL-only symbol
> > 'pv_lock_ops'
> > 
> > As far as I know this kernel patch should solve the problem:
> > http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/8/20/316
> > 
> > It would be nice if you could include it in the kernel.
> > 
> > P.S. NVIDIA's explanation is here:
> > http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1752253
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > Alberto
> > 
> 
> Alberto - Ingo just posted this patch in a pull request this morning (it
> missed -rc4). We'll get it for free in the next day or so when it
> appears in Linus' tree.
> 
> rtg

I have just added a patch for kernel 2.6.27 to driver 173.14.12. Nothing
fancy, if kernel == 2.6.27 then smp_call_function() and on_each_cpu()
should be passed 3 parameters instead of 4.

As regards the NVIDIA driver 177.70, it works well with 2.6.27 without
any patch.

Both 177.70 and 173.14.12 will be available soon in Intrepid.

As regards the other 2 legacy drivers, well they don't work because of
the new xserver ABI.

Regards,

Alberto