Strange issues with nvidia.ko

[frase]

Upgraded to 185.18.36 (from ports) today. Rebooted the system but nvidia.ko wasn't loaded
(thus, errors like "Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module..." in Xorg log).

Here's where it gets strange. The module does not show up in kldstat output, but kldload
produces:

KLD nvidia.ko: depends on kernel - not available
kldload: can't loadnvidia.ko: File exists

...and `kldunload nvidia.ko` also fails with "kldunload: can't find file nvidia"

I downgraded to 185.18.29, and the problem remained!

My kernel has not changed, nor have I made any significant configuration changes recently.

Any ideas?

[edit] I should mention that there's no unusual output in dmesg except the error above when attempting to load the module manually. nothing about nvidia.ko appears during the boot sequence

[Harvey Pooka]

What do you see in /boot/modules (ls -l /boot/modules)? Is nvidia.ko there?

Do you have 'nvidia_load="YES"' or something else in /boot/loader.conf? loadnvidia.ko looks a bit odd to me.

Just in case run 'kldxref /boot/modules'. It will do no harm. It will just regenerate the kernel hints in /boot/modules so the nvidia module may be found.

[adamk75]

Are you sure the kernel module was built against the same kernel source that the kernel was built from?

Adam

[frase]

Are you sure the kernel module was built against the same kernel source that the kernel was built from?

Adam

D'oh! That'll be it. I csup'd to RELENG_8 to expedite my upgrade to FreeBSD 8 upon its release. I'll csup back to 7_2 and rebuild.

[edit] yep, that fixed the issue. How daft of me... thanks for the pointer :)