DKMS 3.1.4 breaks the no-autoinstall behaviour and return no functional parameters during compilation.

[wildtruc]

In this exemple, we are talking about Nvidia drivers with both open and proprietary models precompiled in dkms /var/lib.
For this to work, it is needed to install both drivers in different dirs and rename for open version:

• /var/lib/dkms/nvidia
• /var/lib/dkms/open-nvidia

To prevent auto install of proprietary driver at kernel update overwriting open-nvidia, the config empty files /etc/dkms/no-autoinstall is mandatory, and the option AUTOINSTALL=yes is set in the dkms conf file of the current used driver and unset in the unused.

DKMS 3.1.4 doesn't recognize or take care of no-autoinstall file and return weird variables values line 'standard_output' during compilation and finally breaks with "fatal error" concluding with a crash of the xserver.

Downgrading to 3.0.13 solved the problem.

[anbe42]

Please try again with 3.1.5.
What distribution are you using?
Please paste the commands you used and full verbatim output showing the errors you are talking about.

/etc/dkms/no-autoinstall is not intended to be used by any dkms module. It's an option intended for CI purposes and for the local admin to disable dkms entirely.

Where do you get the dkms modules from? Which script manages the AUTOINSTALL=yes setting?

[wildtruc]

Please try again with 3.1.5.

I will when distribution will do.

What distribution are you using?

Fedora 40

Please paste the commands you used and full verbatim output showing the errors you are talking about.

This is in a script to manage Nvidia drivers : dkms install -m nvidia/xxx.xx -k xxx In script context it looks like (--force is optional): $p_dkms install -m $_dkms/$(new_version) -k $KERNEL $force 2>&1

/etc/dkms/no-autoinstall is not intended to be used by any dkms module. It's an option intended for CI purposes and for the local admin to disable dkms entirely.

I know. But there no other way to prevent driver module update a boot time. The only solution I found is to block the entire process and compiling modules one by one with the AUTOINSTALL=yes set in dkms.conf of each modules needed.

Where do you get the dkms modules from? Which script manages the AUTOINSTALL=yes setting?

They come from the Nvidia http repos, the script is Zenvidia available in github which manage the dkms.conf file creation. The dkms.conf is in modules source dir.

—

I'll sent the compilation log soon. I need to reinstall 3.1.4 first.

…

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[wildtruc]

Edit:
Fedora has just update dkms to 3.1.5. So I did test for compilation first in command line and then at boot time.

• command line do not report any issues. No more unknown variable appears.
• boot time update failed with no-autoinstall file, the correctly success with the file removed.

Then, where the no-autoinstall file was needed with 3.0.x to accomplish the script process, this is no more needed with the fixed 3.1.5.
Good job :)
I will update my script to take care of this change.

[scaronni]

Hi @wildtruc, I guess you are not using the packages provided in the CUDA repository? Because there kmod-nvidia-latest-dkms conflicts with kmod-nvidia-open-dkms and viceversa. Why are you installing both kernel module packages and not just one between open or closed? They're definitely not meant to be installed together.

I've changed substantially the packaging in the CUDA repository for 570, please give it a go on Fedora 41 if you can (as Fedora is not supported).

If you prefer a different packaging with both open and closed modules in the one package there's always my private repository which still has Fedora 40 support:

• https://github.com/negativo17/dkms-nvidia/blob/master/dkms-nvidia.conf#L5-L9
• https://negativo17.org/nvidia-proprietary-and-open-source-kernel-modules/
• https://negativo17.org/repos/

[wildtruc]

No, @scaronni, I don't. :)
If I like to have both it's because I like the idea to switch when ever I want to test and see progress between both, because of gaming essentially.
I use my own script for years, Zenvidia, coming from the time when there was even no kmod, etc. The only one allowing me to switch on a simple session restart. :)
Plus, it allow me to not take care of any repos support.

[anbe42]

If you use dkms install, both /etc/dkms/no-autoinstall and AUTOINSTALL are irrelevant.

So if your script manages the module (with dkms install) and you want to prevent the dkms autoinstall job at boot time from interfering with that, you should have AUTOINSTALL="" (empty string means "no") in both dkms.conf and you shouldn't have /etc/dkms/no-autoinstall.

You should also be able to override the dkms.conf coming with the module source by placing AUTOINSTALL="" in /etc/dkms/{nvidia,open-nvidia}.conf

[wildtruc]

Really ? Man pagee in older version said that AUTOINSTALL is "yes", or is not. Does it changes ? If effectively AUTOINSTALL could be change to "" instead of suppress it in the driver dkms conf, this simplify greatly the dkms conf build/update part of my script. In fact, when driver are upgraded, the script first remove old drivers (open, nvidia), add, then build and just install the used one. When switchinng, it replace the previous driver by new one , depmod, then rebuild initramfs. The script could manage very old version of the driver, so I have to take care a which version of dkms is ued by the distribution.

[wildtruc]

Test done.
AUTOINSTALL="yes"/"" works as no option at all works in the conf file.
On the other hand, there is no mention in the man page.
Here the paragraph about it:
"dkms_autoinstaller
This boot-time service automatically installs any module which has AUTOINSTALL="yes" set in its dkms.conf file. The service works quite simply and if multiple versions of a module are in your system's DKMS tree, it will not do anything and instead explain that manual intervention is required."
Nothing else.

[wildtruc]

DKMS man page need an update, but I didn't find who is maintaining it. All link for this are welcome.
The conclusion is that AUTOINSTALL desactivation works with both ways:

• mention of AUTOINSTALL=""
• no mention at all.
  Case closed.

[anbe42]

So the intuitive way would be supporting AUTOINSTALL="no" (in addition to an empty value) to disable autoinstall.
And to error out on unknown AUTOINSTALL values.

[wildtruc]

Yes, I think so too.

• No mention of AUTOINSTALL for the already existing dkms.conf.
• AUTOINSTALL="" or "no" for disabling.
• AUTOINSTALL="yes" for enabling.
• AUTOINSTALL="poopoo" reject.