It looks as if the 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 kernel doesn't play nice with nvidia-kernel 1.0.5336-r4. The nvidia module wouldn't install in this kernel and gave the error: nvidia: Unknown symbol __VMALLOC_RESERVE A workable fix, albeit perhaps not the ideal one, is provided by Andreas Klauer on The Linux Forum. ----------------------------- Andreas Klauer Posted: Oct 27 2004, 11:13 PM Quote Post bigbob wrote: QUOTE dmesg is: nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel. nvidia: Unknown symbol __VMALLOC_RESERVE For x86 systems, add the following in arch/i386/mm/init.c in line 44: EXPORT_SYMBOL(__VMALLOC_RESERVE); Then recompile the kernel. Fixed the problem for me. It would probably be better to patch the nvidia kernel glue code instead, but I can't do that. -- * Andreas Klauer | ~'' L@@k at Nerd Boy! ----------------- This fix worked for me. I tried upgrading to (unstable) nvidia-kernel-1.0.6111-r2, which doesn't appear to have the symbol problem, however I get system lockups with it, and haven't been able to work around this. I'm still using xfree rather than xorg-x11 which may account for this problem, but that's not the subject of this report.
This isn't something we are prepared to put in the kernel, since its an nvidia issue. Best bet would be to see if the nvidia ebuild maintainers can provide a workaround...
We can put the same patch into 5336 if necessary, but as todays commits made 1.0.6111-r3 stable and 1.0.6629 unstable and masked all other versions its kinda almost a non-event, but as i said in the commits, if things go terribly wrong we could unmask... Lindsay : Can you try out 6629 for us see how you go.
I'll give it a shot and let you know. 1.0.6111 froze the keyboard and screen on startup and never even gave me the nvidia logo. I note that the warning re. using 4K stack size was missing from 1.0.6111 so I tried kernels with both 4K and 8K stack sizes (the pre-logo lockup was the symptom I got w. 1.0.5336-r4 and a 4K stack). Neither worked.
OK, everything appears to be copesetic, so far. I upgraded from xfree to stable xorg-x11 (since portage was complaining about header file locations) and installed nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629, which works fine. I pulled the patch out of /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/mm/init.c, built and installed a new kernel, and everything came up OK. I get neither a complaint from modprobe about __VMALLOC_RESERVE nor a lock-up when X starts. Mark this bug as fixed if you wish. Thanks!
Thanks :) its nice to see 6629 works
