On Wed, Nov 05, 2014 at 10:51:14PM -0500, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > A few days ago an updated linux kernel and updated xorg packages were
> > pushed into the SL6 updates. These updates are automatically installed
> > by the default yum configuration of SL6.5.
> >
> > Unfortunately these updates are incompatible with pre-installed X11 video
> > drivers for NVIDIA (GeForce 210) and AMD/ATI (AMD E-350/E-450 and socket AM1
> > on-board video) from ELREPO.
> 
> Then you really need to talk to ELREPO, not Scientific Linux which is
> doing rebuilds from RHEL which are aimed at production servers.
> Support of non-frreware and non-opensource drivers for NVidia.
> 

Yes, the usual pass-the-buck game. SL point the finger at ELREPO, ELREPO point the finger at Red Hat.

But my finger is firmly pointed at people who push rpms into my computers.

There is also people who think (and even say) that it is good
to maximize the pain for people who choose to use vendor-supported
drivers instead of "free" drivers.

None of *those* people are on this list, though. (but you know where they hang out).

>
> If what you need is the latest graphics drives, you need to hop to SL
> 7 or consider a non-server-based OS.
> 

For experiment data acquisition stations, we have the user sit in front of the same computer
as we use to handle the data. We could provide a second Ubuntu computer just for the user
to sit in front of. (and we have done this in several places). This will double
the coomputer purchase budget, double the repair budget, double the number of outage (2 computers
to break instead of 1), double the system administraction costs.

>
> > So all computers with these video cards promptly broke.
> 
> This seems unlikely. I can easily believe that sophisticated graphics
> drivers broke, but services such as SSH, httpd, and NFS are probably
> rock stable even with ELREPO enabled.
> 

The user has to see the data. Instead, the user sees the black screen, my phone rings. Me wake up in the middle of the night. Me unhappy. User unhappy. Continue?

> > This incompatibility seems to be well known to the perpetrators (X.org API change, leading to crash of Xorg).
> 
> That gets difficult.

Nothing difficult. Today, there is NVIDIA, ATI/AMD and Intel. Grand total of 3 driver packages to keep track of. Does not sound so hard.

Perhaps "compatible" "hardware-vendor-supported" graphics drivers should be distributed by SL, just to get ELREPO out of the picture.

-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada