FreeBSD ports : Where is Nvidia 1.0-9631 LEGACY_GPU_SUPPORT???
If you own an older nvidia graphics card (Probablly Geforce2 MX and below), running FreeBSD and did a portupgrade recently, you probably noticed your X failed to start. /var/log/Xorg.0.log revealed that your nvidia card was not detected.
(II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver 1.0-9746 Tue Jan 23 11:32:45 MYT 2007
(II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
(II) Primary Device is: PCI 01:00:0
(WW) NVIDIA(0): The NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 GPU installed in this system is
(WW) NVIDIA(0): supported through the NVIDIA 1.0-96xx Legacy drivers.
(WW) NVIDIA(0): Please visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for
(WW) NVIDIA(0): more information. The 1.0-9746 NVIDIA driver will ignore
(WW) NVIDIA(0): this GPU. Continuing probe...
(EE) No devices detected.
UPDATE:
/usr/ports/UPDATING states:-
20070209:
AFFECTS: users of x11/nvidia-driver
AUTHOR: danfe@FreeBSD.org
nVidia continues to drop support for old ("legacy") GPUs. To deal with
this fact, the port now allows to specify correct NVVERSION in order to
build driver that supports your graphics card. Currently, supported
"legacy" values are 7184 and 9631. Consult nVidia's README (Appendix A)
to find out whether you need to use legacy driver version, and exactly
which one. Alternatively, you can install one of the corresponding
`x11/nvidia-driver-XXXX' slave ports, where XXXX == needed NVVERSION.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!! STOP RANTING!!!!
/usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver/Makefile states:-
# Starting with version 7667, NVidia has dropped support for numerous
# "legacy" GPUs. One can, however, build the port with -DWITH_LEGACY_GPU_SUPPORT
# to go with version 7184 of the driver.
#
# If you must use WITH_LEGACY_GPU_SUPPORT option, be sure to ``hold'' the
# package by making appropriate entry in your pkgtools.conf, otherwise
# portupgrade(1) will upgrade your port to latest NVidia release on the
# next run, which is probably not what you want.
#
# Please be aware that legacy GPUs support is probably going away in some
# near future (once nVidia itself cancels support of those). Those poor
# souls^W^Wproud owners of RIVA's and Vanta's, frankly, should consider
# buying a modern gfx card.
So do I have to throw away my _GOOD_OLD_ Nvidia Geforce2 MX card because of that? or throw away my old P3 box? Is this a scam? Consumers were forced to make new purchases because of their _NO_SUPPORT_FOR_OBSOLETE_ support? I paid for the piece of shit and I decide when to retire it. However, NVidia made driver 1.0-7184 and 1.0-9631 legacy release whereas in FreeBSD ports, there is only 1 legacy release 1.0-7184 where you need to build with -DWITH_LEGACY_GPU_SUPPORT. FreeBSD nvidia-driver ports maintainer _SEEMS_ to support the idea of _TRHOW_AWAY_YOUR_OLD_NVIDIA_CARD_.
WHAT TO DO?
Just hold the package from being upgraded. Sigh! Add entry to hold upgrade of nvidia-* in
/usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf.
HOLD_PKGS = [
'bsdpan-*',
'x11/nvidia-*',
]
