Re: nvidia-driver and no update in /usr/ports/UPDATING

Hello,

On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 09:45:44PM +1000, matti k wrote:
>
>The latest repo seems to have dropped the 470.x driver I need

[...]

>I have a kepler card and it needs the 470.x driver to work but pkg
>wants to upgrade it to the 510.x driver,  which fails to work
>
>I often wonder why some pkgs disappear from the latest repo (I guess
>the answer is easy and should use quarterly) but is there a way to
>track why they break and possibly assist somehow?
>
>Currently installing freebsd on an old laptop and scratching head which
>nvidia-driver to use,  maybe 390?  seems dmesg/messages don't show this
>until after installing an nvidia driver which may or may not work

You'll need to download the ports tree, freebsd sources, checkout your 
version, and build & install a kernel with the relevant driver
(ideally you want to download and build with an unpriviledged account)

This is for the 470 driver:

1. cd /usr
2. mkdir ports.
3. git clone ssh://anongit@git.freebsd.org/ports.git
4. git clone ssh://anongit@git.freebsd.org/src.git
5. edit /etc/src.conf (create it if it's not there)
6. add this line: PORTS_MODULES+=x11/nvidia-driver-470
7. save the file
8. cd /usr/src
9. git checkout (whatever release you're following) like so:
    git checkout releng/13.0
    (I follow stable for a graphical workstation so my equivalent
    would be "git checkout stable/13")
10. make kernel && sync && reboot

If you need the 390 driver then change the ports modules line to have
x11/nvidia-driver-390.

good luck,
-- 
J.