nvidia-340.104 dkms fails to build against 4.13.0-26

[Joshua R. Poulson]

Laptops like my Thinkpad W510 cannot use newer drivers than nvidia-340 because support for their old GPU was dropped in newer revisions.

Meltdown/Spectre is upon us and I got 4.13.0-26 today, but nvidia-340's dkms driver will not build, for the common reason most nvidia drivers won't build against the new kernels. Looking at nvidia's official announcement I did not see a plan or release date for updates to nvidia-340, yet.

Since my laptop is my own, I'm running with the pre-KPTI 4.10.0-42 for now, but figured I should report this.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Out of curiosity, what is the first build failure you encounter? Can you paste it?

[Matthias Schneider (w-ms)]

Bug confirmed, log attached:

Setting up linux-image-extra-4.13.0-26-generic (4.13.0-26.29~16.04.2) ...
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal 4.13.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-26-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms 4.13.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-26-generic
ERROR: Cannot create report: [Errno 17] File exists: '/var/crash/nvidia-340.0.crash'
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.13.0-26-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.102/build/make.log for more information.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 4.13.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-26-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-26-generic

[trzalica (trzalica87)]

...and in '/var/crash/nvidia-340.0.crash' it says:

```
DKMS make.log for nvidia-340-340.102 for kernel 4.13.0-26-generic (x86_64)
Thu Jan 11 15:20:00 CET 2018
NVIDIA: calling KBUILD...
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.13.0-26-generic'
test -e include/generated/autoconf.h -a -e include/config/auto.conf || ( \
echo >&2; \
echo >&2 " ERROR: Kernel configuration is invalid."; \
echo >&2 " include/generated/autoconf.h or include/config/auto.conf are missing.";\
echo >&2 " Run 'make oldconfig && make prepare' on kernel src to fix it."; \
echo >&2 ; \
/bin/false)

```

[trzalica (trzalica87)]

I've found appropriate solution for this problem (if you want to continue use nvidia-340 driver):

- just install 4.9 kernel (or 4.14 if you need newer kernel) and problem solved.

On kernel 4.9 nvidia-340 module build process passed without any problems.

[Joshua R. Poulson (jrp)]

The reason the 4.9 kernel works is because Meltdown fixes haven't been applied to it yet.

[trzalica (trzalica87)]

Yes they are, take a look at this article: http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux-kernels-4-14-13-4-9-76-and-4-4-111-bring-more-security-fixes-update-now-519321.shtml

[trzalica (trzalica87)]

I've also tested kernel 4.4.111 and it also works with nvidia-340 and in the article which I attached in the previous comment it says that 4.4, 4.9 and 4.14 are all updated with security patches... Have I missed something?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK, your build is actually failing here:

In file included from /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.102/build/nv.c:13:0:
/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.102/build/nv-linux.h: At top level:
/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.102/build/nv-linux.h:199:2: error: #error "This driver requires the ability to change memory types!"
 #error "This driver requires the ability to change memory types!"
  ^
scripts/Makefile.build:308: recipe for target '/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.102/build/nv.o' failed
make[2]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.102/build/nv.o] Error 1

So this is a duplicate of bug 1741671. Please add comments to that one.