Updating Nvidia drivers.....how's it done in Puppy?

[mikewalsh]

Evening, gang. Now then:-

Uncle Mike's doing a bit of head-scratching here. Some "background, first...

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Amongst t'other occupants of the kennels, I've had - for a while - "test" installs of Tahrpup 6.0.6 (32-bit) and UPupBB (32-bit). They've sat there for some time, mainly just so if anyone needs help with anything in these two (and I think I can render assistance!), I can at least boot into them for real.

I got playing around with, and customising Tahrpup the other night. Hardly surprising; I've always had a soft spot for Tahr, since it was the first fully-functional long-term Puppy I ever really used as a 'daily driver'.

Because of the hardware in this new-ish HP Pavilion rig I now have, I've had to upgrade Tahr's kernel. The Realtek chip simply didn't exist at the time of the 3-series kernel, so I needed at least an early 4-series or later to enable audio. I plumped for the k4.1.30 'huge' kernel from over at archive.org, for which I also managed to track down the matching kernel-sources package. This kernel is also doing duty in 32-bit Xenial, and Sailor Enceladus' re-spin of Slacko 5.7.0, 5.7.1.

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For some reason, the 'nouveau' driver in this kernel won't play ball in Tahr; probably some too-old dependencies, somewhere along the line, so I was stuck with xvesa. Which was usable, but looked all weird & 'stretched-out' on a 1920x1080 monitor..! So; just for the hell of it, I thought I'd have a go at installing the Nvidia driver for my GT 710. This same kernel-sources package worked a treat for the driver in 32-bit Xenial, so I thought "What the hell; let's give it a try."

So; I loaded the DevX for 6.0.6. Loaded the kernel-sources for k4.1.30. Put the Nvidia .run file in /mnt/home, and installed the newest version of GetNvidia. Ran everything through, double-checked, dropped-out to the console, and went for it.....

.....and damn me if it didn't work! And THEN I realised that the driver in question was almost 3 years old, and that there's been several updates since. I'd prefer to be using the most recent x86 version if I can, which leads me to my question.

How do we go about updating an existing Nvidia driver..? Do we simply obtain the .run file, and then run through GetNvidia again, letting it re-compile and overwrite the existing nvidia.ko kernel module..?

Is it as simple as I think, as outlined above.....or is there some kinda "black magic" involved here..?

Any 'pitfalls' I need to be aware of?

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If anybody's done this successfully, I'd love to hear about it, guys. Any advice, suggestions, "words of wisdom", etc, would be very much appreciated.....as always.

TIA.

Mike.

[bigpup]

Yes.
Get the newer version Nvidia driver run package and use it.

It should replace older files as it is installed. Key word should!

However, Nvidia does drop support for hardware, with each new driver version.
So, the latest driver may not support the older hardware.

The newer the driver package, can cause compiling problems in older Puppy versions.
The driver package is expecting to use different or newer versions of Linux core programs, to do the compiling.
So, driver will not compile in that older Puppy version.

Best to go to Nvidia web site and see what driver they suggest for the specific hardware.
They will suggest the latest driver, that will still work.
https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

But, I have found, the newer driver may not provide anything new, for the older hardware.
The driver may provide new features, but the older hardware, may not be able to use them.
A bug fix may be in the newer driver, but it is only good to have, if the older hardware was showing to have the bug.

So, unless the driver you now have is not providing some feature, you know the hardware has.
Be happy with the one you are now using.

If it is not broken, do not try to fix it!

What Nvidia driver are you using now?

Warning:
When using the Nvidia X server settings program -> X server display configuration.
Do Not select to save to X configuration file.
For me, that has always messed up the normal Puppy xorg file.

Using Nvidia X server settings program to make setting changes is best.
The Nvidia driver is using it's own configuration file anyway, and it is configured by the Nvidia X server settings program.

[mikewalsh]

@bigpup :-

Easiest way might be to move the save-folder to a safe location. Re-boot a pristine Tahr, create a new save file.

• Run the updates & stuff....then re-boot.

• Load the devX and kernel sources SFS packages.

• Install GetNvidia.

• Run it with my existing 32-bit .run file.

• Then get the newest one that still supports this card.

• Run GetNvidia again, with the newer .run file.

.....and see what happens!

If it all behaves itself, I'll replace the original save-folder, and run GetNvidia again with the newer .run file.... I've run GetNvidia enough times by now to know what to avoid. That'll be a job for tomorrow.

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I found out earlier today that I can only go so far with the 64-bit drivers. The newest version of this - released at the end of December - has already dropped support for the GK208B chip at the heart of the GT 710 (only supporting GTX cards in the 700-series GPUs).....though interestingly, the most recent 32-bit driver - released mid-Feb - STILL supports it.

Maybe they're trying to tell me something. Run more 32-bit Puppies..??

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[bigpup]

Maybe they have a coder that still likes 32bit Linux and older hardware

[mikewalsh]

@bigpup :-

Well, that was a piece of cake.

Driver version 390.138 has now been updated to 390.147. Shinobar made a lovely job of GetNvidia; it detects if an Nvidia driver is already installed, double-checks to see if you want to proceed, and, as you said, it basically removes/overwrites the existing stuff.

I tested the theory first after moving the existing save-file to a safe location. Everything checked-out OK, so I felt happy enough to proceed on the 'normal' install after copying the original 'save' back again.

So simple, I've upgraded Xenialpup 7.5's driver, too.....

Very, very easy to use. Nice one!

Mike.