FreeBSD-12.1 on laptop

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 00:36:53 -0600, Scott Bennett wrote:
>      First off, knock it off, you guys who have been leading "vm finance" down
> the primrose path for *days*.  It is not amusing. ~>:-E
> 
> vm finance <vm.finance2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Please find error output of startx....and kldstat output as well.
> 
> vm finance,
>      As I've followed your postings and others' responses, several things have
> become apparent.  For one, you appear not to know the difference between an
> ordinary port and a metaport.  An ordinary port builds and installs software.
> A metaport installs *nothing* at all, except for an entry in the pkg data base
> that claims that the metaport is "installed".  Metaports have other purposes,
> e.g., math/octave-forge, which installs nothing, but an attempt to install it
> gets you a menu from which you can choose which special octave libraries/tools
> developed at sourceforge out of dozens available in the ports tree you would
> like to have installed.  It then adds those selected from the menu to its own
> dependency lists, thereby forcing those other ports/packages to be installed.
>      graphics/drm-kmod is a metaport, and it does not install software.  It
> chooses the appropriate drm kernel module's port for your system based upon
> the version of your system and adds that port to its own dependency list, thus
> forcing that specific drm kernel module to be built and installed.

I think you're not fully correct here - except your description
of what a metaport is. Allow me to explain:

The screenshot presented shows the bottom part of something that
seems to be a typical "make config" screen. So probably the correct
"future content" of the drm metaport has been selected, it just
stopped building due to a security issue. Instructions on how to
override it were presented, but probably not recognized as such.
The core problem still seemed to be that the ports tree hasn't
been updated as required (command "portsnap fetch extract" was
not entered).



>      When you did a "pkg delete drm-kmod", all you did was remove the entry
> for the metaport from the pkg data base of installed ports/packages.  You did
> not remove any software.  The drm.ko module that you had originally installed
> from pkg was the one built for the 12.0-RELEASE GENERIC kernel.  AFAICT from
> all that you have posted to the list(s) to date, you have never removed or
> replaced that module.

Yes, it looks like that. The problem the described method should
have solved did not exist, i. e., the "wrong ABI lockup module"
was never installed, so there was no need to remove it. However,
the step of installing the up-to-date module could have worked
if the ports tree was current.



> Each time you think you are installing or updating
> graphics/drm-kmod, all you are doing is installing or updating the pkg data
> base entry for the metaport.  The metaport sees that graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod
> is already installed, so it finds no further work to do.  What you need to do
> now is something like "portmaster graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod" *or* if you don't
> have portmaster installed (see ports-mgmt/portmaster),

That requires portmaster to be installed. I think the "make deinstall"
in the ports directory as the same effect, and can be achieved with
on-board means. However, the re-installation should take place with
the _current_ ports tree.



> Either method should rebuild the port based upon your currently installed
> system and then install it for you.  Note that there is *still* no port called
> drm-fbsd12.1-kmod (nor is there a drm-fbsd11.3-kmod), so drm-fbsd12.0-kmod is
> indeed the one you need, but it must be built for the system it runs on.

Correct, and thanks for explicit clarification. The _name_ of the
port is misleading in this case, and it might be confusing for
new users who assume a ports tree is somehow depending on the OS
version (like one tree for 12.0, one for 12.1, which is _not_ the
case).



>      Please continue reading, and also please stop top-posting.  It is quite
> rude, and my usual treatment of top-posted text appearing below the signature
> block is simply to delete it because the previous poster to whom I am replying
> obviously considered it irrelevant.  In this case I am making an exception due
> to the seemingly egregious treatment you've gotten on this list.

A friendly reminder:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html

A: Yes.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

Top-posting also degrades the value of the mailing list archive as
a source of information.



>      The reason for the above is one of those artifacts of cute and expedient
> ideas with poorly thought out consequences that become clearly visible in
> hindsight.  As the various drm kernel module versions for different FreeBSD
> versions were being turned into ports, there were large numbers of bugs reported
> in bugzilla and on the -x11@ mailing list.  Those early ports did not have names
> reflecting the OS versions to which they were applicable, and in some cases more
> than one choice was available for a particular OS version.  When the graphics
> team eventually considered them ready for general use, the names were changed
> to drm-{legacy,fbsd1{1.2,2.0},current,devel}-kmod.  The drm-kmod metaport selects
> *only* either drm-fbsd11.2-kmod or drm-fbsd12.0-kmod for its dependency list.
> People choosing any of the other versions are expected to understand what they
> are doing already and know enough to install their desired version directly with
> no metaport involved.

Current messages indicate that the DRM components will be removed
from the OS entirely, and replaced by appropriate ports that can
be installed if needed:

drmn0: =======================================================
drmn0: This code is obsolete abandonware. Install the graphics/drm-legacy-kmod pkg
drmn0: =======================================================
drmn0: Deprecated code (to be removed in FreeBSD 13): drm2 drivers
drmn0: =======================================================
drmn0: This code is obsolete abandonware. Install the graphics/drm-legacy-kmod pkg
drmn0: =======================================================
drmn0: Deprecated code (to be removed in FreeBSD 13): drm2 drivers
drmn0: <Intel i965GM> on vgapci0

That is a message coming from the kernel module of FreeBSD 12.0-p7;
the machine is due for update, but it's too scary to think about that
in the current context, so I follow the "never touch a running
system" method for a while. ;-)

As you can see, the message is repeated two times: probably once
for the i915kms module, once for the drm2 module (dependency).



>       One last thing I should point out is that "vm finance" posted a list of
> his already loaded kernel modules.  Polytropon then made some annotations to
> the list, happily proclaiming that the desired drm module was already loaded,
> the which statement was false.  The drm2.ko module he highlit was the one
> from /boot/kernel/, not the drm.ko installed by the drm-fbsd12.0-kmod port
> into /boot/modules/.

Yes, I thought about this too late - because it was not fully clear
to me if this was the installed one (which wasn't installed at all,
as it seems), or the one supplied by the OS. The distinction is
easy to do if you use "kldstat -v" and examine the paths for the
modules. I think this should have been clear by now. :-)




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...