[Triumf-linux-managers] Problem with elrepo nvidia drivers

[Konstantin Olchanski]

Hello.

As kray nicely wrote it up here:
http://it-services.triumf.ca/computing/linux/nvidia-x11-drv
users of NVidia graphics cards can install the elrepo drivers
as an alternative to manually downloading and installing
the drivers from the NVidia web site.

I tried it on a couple of machines and it worked (other than
the need to reboot after installing the new packages - because
the required /dev/xxx files were not created. An annoying bug,
as the vanilla NVidia drivers from NVidia do not require a reboot).

But now yum updates started failing with complaint about a conflict
with module-init-tools.

To add injury to insult, this trivial failure also blocks all further
yum updates, including the critical security updates, etc. (Perhaps
the cron job should run "yum --skip-broken" by default).

The reasons for this failure are documented here:
http://elrepo.org/tiki/Update
http://lists.elrepo.org/pipermail/elrepo/2010-May/000282.html
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=593504

In the nutshell, there is some kind of mess-up with the way
elrepo do kernel modules.

They recommend this workaround (installing their version of module-init-tools):
yum --disablerepo \* --enablerepo elrepo update module-init-tools

This workaround seems to fix "yum update", enabling automatic update of kmod-nvidia.


-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada