Nouveau regression since kernel 4.3: loading NVIDIA's firwmare files

[Ilia Mirkin]

Hi Alex,

As you're well-aware, your commit
8539b37acef73949861a16808b60cb8b5b9b3bab (drm/nouveau/gr: use
NVIDIA-provided external firmwares) broke tons of existing setups for
people who were using extracted firmware files (stored in the
"nouveau" firmware directory) as a result of nouveau's ctxsw fw being
... lacking. This is especially common on GK106's for some reason.

The arguments for doing this at the time was that (a) all the bugs in
nouveau's fw have been fixed and thus those people don't need to be
using those extracted firmware files and (b) NVIDIA was going to
release firmware and so things would Just Work (tm) since the new
files would be at the new locations.

Neither of these have come to fruition. Plenty of people still have
GK106's that don't work well with nouveau's fw. NVIDIA has shown no
interest in releasing firmware in a redistributable fashion.

Can you please create a patch to fix this up so that it still tries to
load files from the previous location with the previous names so that
people's previously-working setups can keep on working?

Thanks,

-ilia

[Alexandre Courbot]

Post by Ilia Mirkin
Hi Alex,
As you're well-aware, your commit
8539b37acef73949861a16808b60cb8b5b9b3bab (drm/nouveau/gr: use
NVIDIA-provided external firmwares) broke tons of existing setups for
people who were using extracted firmware files (stored in the
"nouveau" firmware directory) as a result of nouveau's ctxsw fw being
... lacking. This is especially common on GK106's for some reason.
The arguments for doing this at the time was that (a) all the bugs in
nouveau's fw have been fixed and thus those people don't need to be
using those extracted firmware files and (b) NVIDIA was going to
release firmware and so things would Just Work (tm) since the new
files would be at the new locations.
Neither of these have come to fruition. Plenty of people still have
GK106's that don't work well with nouveau's fw. NVIDIA has shown no
interest in releasing firmware in a redistributable fashion.
Can you please create a patch to fix this up so that it still tries to
load files from the previous location with the previous names so that
people's previously-working setups can keep on working?

Certainly. Actually my first version of 8539b37acef7 did fall back to
the original paths for loading firmware, but Ben suggested that we
just replace the paths entirely, hence the version currently merged:

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2015-June/084914.html

Ben, do you agree with falling back to the old "nouveau/nvxx_fucxxxx"
firmware names so people don't need to move their firmware files
around?

[Ilia Mirkin]

Post by Alexandre Courbot

Post by Ilia Mirkin
Hi Alex,
As you're well-aware, your commit
8539b37acef73949861a16808b60cb8b5b9b3bab (drm/nouveau/gr: use
NVIDIA-provided external firmwares) broke tons of existing setups for
people who were using extracted firmware files (stored in the
"nouveau" firmware directory) as a result of nouveau's ctxsw fw being
... lacking. This is especially common on GK106's for some reason.
The arguments for doing this at the time was that (a) all the bugs in
nouveau's fw have been fixed and thus those people don't need to be
using those extracted firmware files and (b) NVIDIA was going to
release firmware and so things would Just Work (tm) since the new
files would be at the new locations.
Neither of these have come to fruition. Plenty of people still have
GK106's that don't work well with nouveau's fw. NVIDIA has shown no
interest in releasing firmware in a redistributable fashion.
Can you please create a patch to fix this up so that it still tries to
load files from the previous location with the previous names so that
people's previously-working setups can keep on working?

Certainly. Actually my first version of 8539b37acef7 did fall back to
the original paths for loading firmware, but Ben suggested that we
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2015-June/084914.html
Ben, do you agree with falling back to the old "nouveau/nvxx_fucxxxx"
firmware names so people don't need to move their firmware files
around?

The theory was that the nouveau fw was going to be sufficient for
pre-GM200 chips. Practice hasn't lived up to that - a ton of people
with a GTX 660's have issues with the nouveau fw being unstable, whose
issues are fixed by the extracted firmware from the blob.

-ilia