Will we ever see an amd64 NVidia driver for FreeBSD? [Archive]

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conrads

12-11-06, 06:02 PM

The subject line says it all. There are *lots* of us out here with NVidia-based amd64 boxes who would be thrilled and delighted to see proper accelerated support for our graphics hardware. While the "nv" driver included in the xorg distribution does work, it has definite limitations, particularly in the area of hardware-based acceleration, 2-D, 3-D or otherwise.

I there are any specific technical hindrances holding up progress on the development of an amd64 driver for FreeBSD, please don't hesitate to contact any of the following FreeBSD mailing lists, which are simply rife with knowledgeable, helpful people:

freebsd-amd64
freebsd-arch
freebsd-bugs
freebsd-current
freebsd-drivers
freebsd-hackers
freebsd-hardware
freebsd-multimedia
freebsd-stable
freebsd-x11

All of the above are hosted on "@FreeBSD.org", of course.

Thank you for your time and consideration re: this matter.

Sincerely,

Conrad J. Sabatier
<conrads@cox.net>

adamk75

12-11-06, 07:03 PM

This has been rehashed, over and over and over again. There are technical hindrances (in FreeBSD) to such a driver and nVidia has been working with the FreeBSD developers to fix them. There will undoubtedly be a FreeBSD/amd64 driver from nVidia once those problems have been resolved.

Adam

DasFox

01-09-07, 04:46 AM

SirDice

01-09-07, 11:39 AM

LOL, I ditched FreeBSD, when it couldn't even support my nForce2 board, support was so crappy, and this was with 6.0 and it was like, well how long has FreeBSD been around, and how long the nForce boards been around, and they still couldn't get decent support for it.
Support for nForce2 was added in 6.0, the current version is 6.2-prerelease. First time a driver gets added it's bound to contain bugs. That why people need to test and send in bug reports. Bugs get fixed over time. You won't believe how crappy 3.0 ran compared to 6.2. Perhaps you should upgrade?

FreeBSD can be great at some things, and at other times the hardware support can be really lame.
That's what you get when you buy state of the art hardware. If you buy a new mainboard with a brand spanking new chipset on it I'll doubt Linux will have support for it to. I look through the hardware compatibility list before I buy new hardware. That way I can be sure my hardware works with my OS of choice.

Yes, I'm a long time FreeBSD user. Almost a decade now :)

Malus

01-09-07, 05:29 PM

FreeBSD came out with a driver for my VIA 8251 chipset months before Linux did. Also, the BSDs have much better support for wireless cards than Linux does. Linux isn't always better in that regard.

brakezone

01-16-07, 09:57 PM

AS far as nforce2 is concerned, thats absolutely ridiculous. I've had an nforce2 motherboard acting as a internet firewall as far back as freebsd 5.1!!!! The only thing that wasn't in the general kernel was the ethernet driver for the nvidia ethernet card; however, this was available in the ports system.

Most all the drivers were supported by freebsd and the ethernet driver was availalbe in the ports section long before 6.0 was out. I've had that same system with 3d support, audio support, ethernet support as far back as freebsd 5.1. The motherboard was A7N8X - deluxe.

"LOL, I ditched FreeBSD, when it couldn't even support my nForce2 board, support was so crappy, and this was with 6.0 and it was like, well how long has FreeBSD been around, and how long the nForce boards been around, and they still couldn't get decent support for it."

Can you be any more ignorant?

h0nke

01-22-07, 06:40 PM

Yes, we will.

When? Your guess is as good as mine.

FreeBSD has supported nforce2 boards forever, not sure why you had problems there. I have installed several older versions on my A7V8X-E deluxe perfect.

dcrosstech

02-07-07, 02:54 PM

SirDice

02-07-07, 03:58 PM

Ok... There are problems in FreeBSD preventing amd64... what are they?

Have they been posted to a mailing list, has a PR been filed? Any reference would be great for us to know; there are people here who are willing and capable to solve these issues within FreeBSD.

Please give us a pointer and we'll help out. Even if that helping is just leaning on other people.
Look in the other AMD64 thread..

Edit: It seems it's pretty buried now.. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=41545 the interesting bits are at the end..

adamk75

02-07-07, 04:59 PM

Ok... There are problems in FreeBSD preventing amd64... what are they?

Have they been posted to a mailing list, has a PR been filed? Any reference would be great for us to know; there are people here who are willing and capable to solve these issues within FreeBSD.

Please give us a pointer and we'll help out. Even if that helping is just leaning on other people.

Yes, they've been posted to a mailing list:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html

dcrosstech

02-08-07, 12:27 PM

Thank you very much for your prompt and accurate reply.

I will apply what pressure I can :)

anonuser

03-05-07, 12:02 AM

The pmap_* interfaces were developed. At least on -CURRENT (7 at the time of this posting).
And other interfaces existed that addressed the majority of the problems, ie contiguous mapped memory and device cloning.

I'd love to hear about what's going to happen to the FreeBSD drivers and maybe what are the current limitations with getting FreeBSD improved nvidia support.

zander

03-05-07, 02:52 PM

To the best of my knowledge, the various obstacles still stand, e.g. the pmap_change_attr() interface doesn't handle large pages on FreeBSD/amd64 and the mmap() character driver callback doesn't allow drivers to specify a memory type for the mapping. As to device cloning, it unfortunately turned out to be too immature to support; it doesn't block a FreeBSD/amd64 port, though.

anonuser

03-05-07, 06:25 PM

Can you explain the current obstacles that prevent FreeBSD in having better support for nvidia cards?

I guess what I'm looking for is what still stands? And what is most needed for better support? And I can concentrate effort on bringing the API's and implementations up to speed.

Its over 1 year later and I'd like to see what headway has been made and what needs to be done.

Freaky

05-02-07, 08:27 PM

PAT support just got MFC'd (http://freshbsd.org/2007/05/02/19/42/47).

dcrosstech

05-08-07, 01:28 PM

So... now that we have the MFC... ETA on the driver? at least a BETA? even an Alpha anything! :)

llwang

05-18-07, 02:12 AM

Now that the PAT patchset has been MFC'd. We would really like to know the current status on planning to support FreeBSD/amd64, and whether there is still any obstacle.

dcrosstech

05-21-07, 12:42 PM

Indeed, we (the FreeBSD community) have ponied up. (Note that there were previously workarounds offered on the mailing-lists for the issues mentioned, but those were not good enough, so we delivered PAT.. And its not like this was new, it was in -CURRENT for awhile so things could have started to have gotten going.) Yes we took our sweet time, and I am not pounding my fists on the table saying today, now, gimme, etc.. but I'd like to keep momentum here.

zander

05-21-07, 05:59 PM

I double-checked with John Baldwin on this and it looks like the FreeBSD kernel is still missing required functionality. For example, pmap_change_attr() doesn't break down large pages (the direct mapping, etc.) and the mmap() interface hasn't been updated to allow character drivers to specify memory types for mappings, etc.. For a detailed list of feature requests, please see: http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers&m=115157983106569&w=2; unfortunately, the status data appear to be mostly unchanged.

An exception is the per-open instance data feature request: the FreeBSD kernel provides some support for this via cloning devices; the NVIDIA FreeBSD graphics driver used this interface for a while, but bugs/limitations and differences between kernel versions made it necessary to revert to regular device nodes.

kastein

06-02-07, 03:55 AM

Thanks for the informative posts about what's actually missing. I was going to post in one of the other threads and pound my fist on the table and demand support, but decided to read up on the issue first. Guess I'll look at the list of required functionality and see if I can help with getting it written.

gitrema

06-28-07, 06:07 PM

Will we see an AMD64 driver for upcoming FreeBSD 7 release?

What do you think? Is there too much work to do?

zander

06-28-07, 06:21 PM

Unfortunately, I don't expect FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE will have the relevant kernel features.

Harvey Pooka

06-28-07, 09:17 PM

For anyone that wishes to see the current state of the necessary changes in FreeBSD: http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests

zander, is that page correct in what is needed?

zander

06-28-07, 10:09 PM

@Harvey Pooka: I've only looked at it briefly, but I believe so. My original email still mostly reflects the needs and status, with the exception of device cloning, which looked like it would work, but didn't due to various technical problems (e.g. interaction with stat(2)). One solution for this that was suggested by a FreeBSD developer is to pass down the equivalent of a 'struct file*' from the devfs layer. I'm told that work on some of the other interfaces like pmap_mapdev_attr() and pmap_change_attr() is on hold until the superpages work is complete. If I recall correctly, there are tentative ideas/plans for the mmap(2) interface, as well, but nothing concrete, yet.

dcrosstech

07-05-07, 01:11 PM

Ok... there are problems with the interface presented for the driver... we've got it. Now, rather then a finger-pointing session.. Which this has turned into. Can we fix it? More importantly, is there something "special" about the AMD64bit architecture that makes this more important? Since the 32bit drivers have been out for forever, and should have the exact same issues?

You seem to be worried about performance... well... put it to you this way, performance RIGHT NOW is far from optimal, I don't see the harm in improving THAT for the interim, provisionally, with an "alpha" or "don't look into remaining eye" driver. That covers your butts and gives us what we are asking for.

Given there is the 32bit driver _ALREADY_ it also doesn't seem to be asking for that much in development time.

To put it yet another way, I recently speced out 4 new machines, into these machines I put ATI cards... why? Because even with their complete lack of OS support (or one may say because of it), they have better drivers. I am about to recommend that we replace ALL of our NV cards. I think its beginning to make sense for other people to consider doing the same.