[arch-general] pacman -Syu ~ 1 yr. of packages, tty1 hangs after root clean, tty2 console login OK - how to fix?

[David C. Rankin]

On 8/15/20 3:07 AM, ProgAndy wrote:
> It was mentioned on arch-dev-public:
> 
> https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2020-March/029895.html
> 
> There were no maintainers that were able to test the legacy nvidia packages anymore, so they had to be dropped.
> 
> Unofficial binary packages are available in the disastrousaur[1] and jlk[2] repositories.
> The AUR package is mostly repackaging the upstream binaries anyways, only the kernel module is built from source.
> So I don't think it would be too bad to install it from the AUR.
> 
> [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unofficial_user_repositories#disastrousaur
> 
> [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unofficial_user_repositories#jlk

Thank you,

  Yes, when you build the nvidia-390xx from AUR you have the option of
installing nvidia-390xx or nvidia-390xx-dkms which is as you explain handles
the rebuild of the kernel modules.

  My only concern there, as with the 5.2 branch of VirtualBox I package for
AUR, builds break on kernel update. The vbox 5.2.45 (testbuild 139677) still
fails to build the kernel modules for 5.8. If something like that were to
happen with the nvidia driver, then you would simply break X on all affected
laptops until the AUR maintainer could update the package. AUR is good, but it
certainly is no where near as reliable as having a maintained package for
critical drivers.

  Moreover, with vbox, your guest may be offline until an update is provided,
but your computer still works. With graphics driver -- you are not as lucky.
I'm sure the testing could have been arranged to preserve the 390xx driver --
I would have been more than happy to do it. We will see how it goes, but I'm
not going to update to 5.8 and roll the dice yet.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.