At some point a long while ago there was a change in the kernel that required a change in the nvidia-driver for each update to the kernel. For a long time I would just wait to update the kernel until there was an update to nvidia-drivers. Now higher versions of nvidia-drivers no longer support my hardware, and the 340.76 build is not being patched to keep up with new kernels. I've been thinking that it might lag behind the newest kernel, and I keep forgetting about it, but now there is a major version change to the kernel. Please advise. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Emerge any modern kernel, configure and compile 2. Re-emerge nvidia-drivers 3. Actual Results: Build fails with an error message that kernel version >3.17.8 is not supported.
For gentoo-sources-4.0.5 the patch found in https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7754020.html applied fine. Maybe this patch can be shipped and used for kernel 4.x. The current package also works with gentoo-sources-3.18.12 without further patches. Message for package says, that gentoo will not support kernels which are not natively supported by NVIDIA. If the maintainer will retain this, this bugreport won't be resolved :(
we should probably split the versions into SLOTs 304xx, 340xx, 0, so people could put "nvidia-drivers:SLOT" in their world.
(In reply to Alex Xu (Hello71) from comment #2) > we should probably split the versions into SLOTs 304xx, 340xx, 0, so people > could put "nvidia-drivers:SLOT" in their world. So you don't know what SLOTs are for? Anyway, if you want an nvidia-drivers branch for newer kernels, then nag upstream.
(In reply to Jeroen Roovers from comment #3) > (In reply to Alex Xu (Hello71) from comment #2) > > we should probably split the versions into SLOTs 304xx, 340xx, 0, so people > > could put "nvidia-drivers:SLOT" in their world. > > So you don't know what SLOTs are for? > > Anyway, if you want an nvidia-drivers branch for newer kernels, then nag > upstream. I *know* what SLOTs do. I also know that upstream splits their releases into separate streams that support *different hardware*. https://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html Therefore, users of old hardware must manually mask new versions. I believe they should instead be able to put :SLOT in their world, given that <spec is not valid in the world file.
(In reply to Marcel Pennewiß from comment #1) Thanks. The patch worked. I've used user patches before, and this is a good temporary solution. It just seems like it isn't a long term solution for legacy support. The linux community doesn't normally give up on old hardware, sentencing it to never again be updated. Perhaps an overlay or a non-default USE flag would be an appropriate compromise between officially backporting every version and no support?