Nouveau - Aug 2007 - Kernel module indispensable?

I don't need 3D acceleration but I'm interested in the nouveau driver
because I hope it'll be able to properly set the mode of my card: currently
nv is unable to make my card display 1600x1200 via DVI (it works OK via VGA
but the quality is bit less stunning).

So I compiled and installed it, but now I encountered a problem: it seems
that (contrary to both the nv and the nvidia drivers) the nouveau driver
does not work at all without the corresponding kernel module.  Is that true?
Is there some hope to drop this requirement?


        Stefan "whose kernel says `-1 Unknown symbol in module' when
trying
                to insert the new drm.ko module"


PS: I see that the avivo guys already have a Debian package (in
experimental), whereas that is still missing for the nouveau driver.

On 8/1/07, Stefan Monnier <monnier at iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:
>
> I don't need 3D acceleration but I'm interested in the nouveau
driver
> because I hope it'll be able to properly set the mode of my card:
currently
> nv is unable to make my card display 1600x1200 via DVI (it works OK via VGA
> but the quality is bit less stunning).
>
> So I compiled and installed it, but now I encountered a problem: it seems
> that (contrary to both the nv and the nvidia drivers) the nouveau driver
> does not work at all without the corresponding kernel module.  Is that
true?
The binary nvidia driver does require a kernel module as well.
> Is there some hope to drop this requirement?
Not really, actually we're moving towards a world where graphics
drivers for X.org depend on a kernel module. Nouvea is just a little
early here (for a change :).
>
>
>         Stefan "whose kernel says `-1 Unknown symbol in module'
when trying
>                 to insert the new drm.ko module"
That should be troubleshoot. Usually dmesg mentions missing symbols
which in turn points at the real issue.

Stephane

On 8/2/07, Stefan Monnier <monnier at iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:
>
...
>
> PS: I see that the avivo guys already have a Debian package (in
> experimental), whereas that is still missing for the nouveau driver.
>
Probably because the nouveau drivers require a (moving) git snapshot
of drm in order to work, which potentially breaks all sorts of
non-nouveau stuff (and you can't really restrict it to just nouveau
users).

I'm currently working on making some nightly snapshot Ubuntu packages
using Launchpad's new PPA infrastructure.  If there's enough demand I
could also build debian packages from the same source.