RHEL Engineering is moving the tracking of its product development work on RHEL 6 through RHEL 9 to Red Hat Jira (issues.redhat.com). If you're a Red Hat customer, please continue to file support cases via the Red Hat customer portal. If you're not, please head to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira and file new tickets here. Individual Bugzilla bugs in the statuses "NEW", "ASSIGNED", and "POST" are being migrated throughout September 2023. Bugs of Red Hat partners with an assigned Engineering Partner Manager (EPM) are migrated in late September as per pre-agreed dates. Bugs against components "kernel", "kernel-rt", and "kpatch" are only migrated if still in "NEW" or "ASSIGNED". If you cannot log in to RH Jira, please consult article #7032570. That failing, please send an e-mail to the RH Jira admins at rh-issues@redhat.com to troubleshoot your issue as a user management inquiry. The email creates a ServiceNow ticket with Red Hat. Individual Bugzilla bugs that are migrated will be moved to status "CLOSED", resolution "MIGRATED", and set with "MigratedToJIRA" in "Keywords". The link to the successor Jira issue will be found under "Links", have a little "two-footprint" icon next to it, and direct you to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira (issue links are of type "https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-XXXX", where "X" is a digit). This same link will be available in a blue banner at the top of the page informing you that that bug has been migrated.
Bug 991129 - Attempt to autoconfigure proprietary X drivers if present
Summary: Attempt to autoconfigure proprietary X drivers if present
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Classification: Red Hat
Component: xorg-x11-server
Version: 6.6
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Adam Jackson
QA Contact: Desktop QE
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 1021012
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2013-08-01 17:00 UTC by Daniel Dadap
Modified: 2016-04-28 17:25 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-04-28 17:25:32 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Daniel Dadap 2013-08-01 17:00:39 UTC 
Description of problem:

The Xorg X server will attempt to automatically configure detected hardware with an appropriate driver, if a driver has not been explicitly specified for that hardware. The list of drivers which Xorg will attempt to autoconfigure is limited to those drivers which are shipped with Xorg.

It would be nice if Xorg could attempt to autoconfigure proprietary drivers supplied by the vendors of the detected hardware, if those drivers are available.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:

Install graphics hardware along with a proprietary X driver for that hardware. (e.g. an NVIDIA GPU and the NVIDIA X driver). Attempt to start X without explicitly configuring any driver.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install hardware and driver.
2. Ensure that no explicit driver configuration is present in xorg.conf or xorg.conf.d/*
3. Start X

Actual results:

X will attempt to load one of its built-in drivers. (In the NVIDIA example, nouveau_drv.so.) If the install process for the proprietary driver involved forcibly disabling the built-in driver to avoid conflicts (again, Nouveau in this example), X will fail to load any driver for this hardware.

Expected results:

X could attempt to load the proprietary driver.

Additional info:

Several years ago, Aaron Plattner at NVIDIA committed a patch to X.org to autoconfigure the NVIDIA driver. It was reverted, with the rationale being that Xorg should only try to autoconfigure its own drivers, and if distributors wanted to patch X to autoconfigure additional drivers, they were free to do so:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2008-July/037098.html
Comment 1 Daniel Dadap 2013-08-01 17:02:31 UTC 
Adding kem and jkachuck to CC list, as we have discussed this topic in a RH/NVIDIA conference call.
Comment 3 RHEL Program Management 2013-10-14 02:52:47 UTC 
This request was not resolved in time for the current release.
Red Hat invites you to ask your support representative to
propose this request, if still desired, for consideration in
the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Comment 4 Joseph Kachuck 2013-10-18 18:49:50 UTC 
Hello,
This is now requested for RHEL 6.6.

Thank You
Joe Kachuck
Comment 10 Joseph Kachuck 2016-04-28 17:25:32 UTC 
Hello,
As this has not been fixed in RHEL 6.x. I would recommend if you are still seeing this issue on RHEL 7 to open a new BZ there. 

Thank You
Joe Kachuck
Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.