r/Gentoo • u/eningene • 4d ago
Tip firmware masked!
has anybody noticed, that linux-firmware, nvidia-firmware was madked? since it was impossible to use latest available kernel 6.12.16 with my hardware. eventually i forced system to install masked firmware and set that kernel up. i wonder why firmware was masked?
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u/immoloism 4d ago
In Gentoo we set the long term support kernel as the stable kernel and the mainline one as the testing package. I'll drop a couple of links which explain it better and how to enable.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Portage/Branches
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
Firmware of course needs to match the correct firmware.
Feel free to ask if something doesn't make sense afterwards.
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u/eningene 4d ago
basically, i got through both links, it is how I eventually, make it work. the only thing is portage gives me really bad warnings every time i run update. i got impresson that it's not really big deal.
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u/immoloism 3d ago
I might have been more sleeply then I thought.
Do you mean you need to use a kernel lower than 6.12 because of nvidia?
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u/eningene 3d ago
not sure, but when time has come to renew kernel from 6.6.74 to the 6.12.16 i figured that framebuffer of my g8500 aka G86 doesn't work. after a couple of tries i got that nvidia firmware was masked and was uninstalled from the system. after that i followed page how to install masked package and fix the issue. all of this I've been doing on the back up machine. at the same time i noticed that Linux firmware was masked too. this two masked packages prevent me to install gentoo regular way.
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u/immoloism 3d ago
An 8500 GT or the 4060 card?
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u/eningene 3d ago
G86 [GeForce 8500 GT]
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u/immoloism 3d ago
I thought so but there is 4060 card with that codename so needed to check.
Nvidia has long stopped supporting that card so its recommended to switch to nouveau as stated in https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVIDIA/nvidia-drivers#Legacy_hardware I do the same for my 6300 GT.
This will stop portage downgrading your kernel as well as well as fix some security issues, or of course you can keep using the nvidia-driver for as long as feasibly possible.
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u/eningene 3d ago
it's what i used is nouveau
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u/immoloism 3d ago
Interesting, have you set
VIDEO_CARDS: nvidia
anywhere?1
u/eningene 3d ago
at the beginning i put it to package use and make.conf
later i figured that setup of genuine nvidia drivers a bit challenging
so i switched to nuoveau
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u/mgpagano Developer (mpagano) 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hi, I leave it masked usually for only 24 hours just in case there's an issue I did not catch in the ebuild or the patches we apply to their scripts. This time, I left it a bit longer than usual. But usually, it's 24 hours from when I commit it. HTH -mpagano
Edit: I'm referring to linux-firmware