[Mageia-dev] Changes for dkms, dracut, drakx, drivers, initscripts, kms, mkinitrd, module-init-tools, udev

Sat Apr 16 20:19:41 CEST 2011

Hi all!
+
+I've now completed the implementation of the points from my earlier "KMS
++ plymouth + DKMS + harddrake + speedboot + XFdrake + initrd stuff" RFC
+at http://lists.mandriva.com/cooker/2011-01/msg00107.php. The only
+notable difference is that instead of regenerating initrds a new
+"nokmsboot" boot option flag is used instead.
+
+I'll do some final cleanups and testing before I start committing this
+work; this message is mostly a heads-up in case someone spots something
+that's not ok.
+
+The changes per package follow, feel free to comment:
+
+DKMS:
+- use display_driver_helper for loading display modules - no functional
+  change, just needed due to the other changes
+
+Dracut:
+- fix find commandline to find gzip compressed KMS kernel modules
+
+Drakx-kbd-mouse-x11:
+- Added display_driver_helper script.
+- Add/Remove "nokmsboot" boot option depending on selected driver.
+  display_driver_helper is used to detect if that is the case.
+- Ask for reboot instead of X restart in the usual case, as this is
+  commonly required nowadays. Some checks could be added to allow
+  only to restart X when that is enough, but those are for later.
+
+Drakxtools (harddrake-service):
+- Adapt splash handling for plymouth (i.e. hide splash when querying
+  user).
+- Call drakx-kbd-mouse-x11 to add/remove nokmsboot boot option if
+  needed. Detection is done using display_driver_helper and by
+  checking for /dev/.late_kms which is created by display_driver_helper
+  when it is called from udev and the kms driver wasn't yet loaded by
+  initrd.
+- If a reboot is needed due to a driver switch (i.e. boot was done
+  without nokmsboot but it is needed for the current driver), ask for
+  it (user is given 30 sec to abort). display_driver_helper is used to
+  detect this.
+- On driver switch, load the new driver by calling udevadm.
+- If X.org is already running when a driver change is initiated,
+  defer change to next boot and disable speedboot for the next boot
+  (note: irrelevant with systemd).
+- Generalize the harddrake_confirm code a bit.
+
+Drakxtools (installer):
+- When configuring bootloader after X is already configured (like One),
+  use display_driver_helper to determine if "nokmsboot" should be used.
+
+Initscripts (rc.sysinit / speedboot, not relevant with systemd):
+- In very early boot, call display_driver_helper to check if there is a
+  pending dkms build (that may cause a wrong older binary dkms driver
+  to be loaded by X server) or a conflicting driver loaded by initrd
+  (which may cause graphical corruption / freeze when starting server)
+  and disable speedboot in those cases.
+- Load display drivers before X when in speedboot.
+- In speedboot mode, reopen file descriptors after X should've started.
+  This ensures that harddrake_service (and other sysinit output) is
+  shown to the user if the X startup failed. (plymouth grabs the output,
+  and when it shuts down the output is lost until descriptors are
+  reopened).
+
+Mkinitrd:
+- Allow putting nouveau/radeon in initrd (currently only i915 is
+  allowed)
+- Do not load display drivers if booted with nokmsboot.
+
+Module-init-tools:
+- Remove now unneeded patch affecting blacklist behaviour.
+- Remove now unwanted blacklist entries for DKMS and KMS drivers.
+
+Proprietary drivers:
+- Remove modprobe.preload.d, udev now loads the drivers selectively
+  using display_driver_helper. This also fixes a wrong version of a
+  driver being loaded when during early boot there is an old binary
+  dkms driver present and a newer source dkms driver is not yet built.
+
+Proprietary NVIDIA drivers:
+- Replace "alias" entry with "install" entry, to allow removal of a
+  patch in module-init-tools.
+
+Udev:
+- Use display_driver_helper to load display drivers. It checks the
+  drivers it knows so that the X.org configuration is appropriate for
+  the driver before loading it. I.e. if "vesa" is enabled, no display
+  drivers are loaded, and if "fglrx" is enabled "radeon" is not loaded,
+  and vice versa, etc. Also, no wrong version dkms binary driver is
+  loaded if the correct dkms source driver is going to be built later
+  during this boot.
+- When in initrd, instead of using display_driver_helper, instead check
+  for the nokmsboot boot parameter, and load drivers if that is not set
+  (note: initrds do not contain proprietary drivers).
+
+-- 
+Anssi Hannula
+