Public bug reported:
OK, this might be a fairly long post but I will try and get through it
as comprehensively as possible.
Something needs to be done to fix a number of issue with Restricted
Drivers Manager (RDM), I will go through the issues one at a time:
Linux Restricted Manager doesn't give enough information to the user and
enabling the nvidia restricted driver through it can render a system
incapable of booting into Xorg due to an API mismatch. In my
experience, simply clicking on the "enable" option in RDM for an nvidia
restricted driver, it automatically installs NVidia-GLX from the
repository even if a proprietary driver already exists on the system.
If a user has installed the nvidia-glx-new package from the repos and
then clicks the "enable" option in RDM, RDM tries to replace it with
nvidia-glx but does not correctly uninstall nvidia-glx-new. It leaves
an empty, hidden placeholder file in /lib/linux-restricted-modules/
called ".nvidia_new_installed". From what I have been able to figure
out Linux-Restricted-Modules (LRM) checks for this file before loading
the kernel module on boot and if it exists (because it hasn't been
removed cleanly by apt) and you don't have nvidia-glx-new installed (for
example you may have nvidia's beta driver installed with their own
binary installer, or you may have the repo version of nvidia-glx or
nvidia-glx-legacy installed) you cannot start X due to an API mismatch.
This is really bad given that it breaks even with drivers installed from
the official Ubuntu repository. What RDM should do is check if nvidia-
glx-new is installed and cleanly remove that file if the user enables
the Nvidia Restricted Driver in RDM before it installs nvidia-glx.
Also it would be useful if RDM would check for the existance of
"/usr/bin/nvidia-installer" which would indicate that the user currently
has the nvidia binary driver installed using Nvidia's .run installer.
If this file exists, then RDM should run "/usr/bin/nvidia-installer
--uninstall" which cleanly removes the Nvidia binary driver downloaded
from the Nvidia website. Once this has been done, it should be safe to
then install nvidia-glx and prevent API mismatches when Xorg tries to
launch.
It would also be useful if RDM indicated to the user which driver/module
is currently installed/running on the system with full version
information, as then the user could determine if they wanted to roll
back to a repo driver if they have the official binary driver installed.
At the moment RDM is totally non-userfriendly and is misleading to the
user. The user assumes when they click on the "enable" option that they
are enabling features in their currently installed drivers, they do not
realise that doing this actually tries to install different drivers and
will break their system. This issue has existed since Feisty and I have
literally seen hundreds of people suffering issues with Nvidia and Xorg
as a direct result of the problems outlined in this bug report. This
needs to be fixed before Gutsy is released or it is going to be a
support nightmare for all involved.
Finally, RDM (or anything else for that matter) should install any
drivers without first giving the user the option of cancelling.
Currently if you click "Enable" in RDM it automatically installs the
drivers and the user cannot stop it, even if that is not really what
they wanted to do. Result is broken Xorg with an API mismatch on boot.
I hope I have been comprehensive in my explanation but if you have any
questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Paladine
** Affects: Ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
--
Restricted Drivers Manager and NVidia
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/131852
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu.
--
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
