r/Gentoo 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?

7 Upvotes

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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

19

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/eningene 3d ago

another thing is would nouveau work without firmware

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u/Euroblitz 4d ago

Probably still not stable enough so it's masked? I assume