nixos/nvidia: various fixes

[Kiskae]

Description of changes

Cleaning up my backlog

• Remove unused libnvidia-pkcs11.so - libnvidia-pkcs11.so missing RPATH entry for libcrypto.so.1.1 #273064
• Make the driver version a mandatory choice for new releases - linuxPackages.nvidiaPackages.beta: 555.52.04 -> 560.28.03 #329450 (comment)
  • Also add a release note about this change
• Allow the GSP to be toggled for the proprietary driver - Nvidia disable Open GPU doesn't seem to work on latest Nvidia package (555.58) #323886

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandboxing enabled in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
  • sandbox = relaxed
  • sandbox = true
• Tested, as applicable:
  • NixOS test(s) (look inside nixos/tests)
  • and/or package tests
  • or, for functions and "core" functionality, tests in lib/tests or pkgs/test
  • made sure NixOS tests are linked to the relevant packages
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review rev HEAD". Note: all changes have to be committed, also see nixpkgs-review usage
• Tested basic functionality of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 24.11 Release Notes (or backporting 23.11 and 24.05 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

---

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[NickCao]

Overall LGTM, one question is: do cfg.gsp.enable require additional kernel parameters on non-open drivers?

[Kiskae]

Overall LGTM, one question is: do cfg.gsp.enable require additional kernel parameters on non-open drivers?

Nope, per #313440:

The GSP firmware is now used by default on all GPUs which support it. It can be disabled by setting the kernel module parameter NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0.

[NickCao]

Tested evaluating various permutations of the config.

[jcaesar]

Is it possible that this is causing breakage, by removing the default value for hardware.nvidia.open?

I'm seeing

       … while evaluating the option `hardware.nvidia.gsp.enable':

       … while evaluating the option `hardware.nvidia.open':
       error: The option `hardware.nvidia.open' is used but not defined.

(See nix eval --show-trace github:jcaesar/sysflake/943e73289543eba136640505343ef4cfcacd6b8f#nixosConfigurations.korsika.config.system.build.toplevel for the full error I'm seeing on my flake.)

Re-adding that makes the error go away:

--- a/nixos/modules/hardware/video/nvidia.nix
+++ b/nixos/modules/hardware/video/nvidia.nix
@@ -256,6 +256,7 @@ in

       open = lib.mkOption {
         example = true;
+        default = false;
         description = "Whether to enable the open source NVIDIA kernel module.";
         type = lib.types.bool;
         defaultText = lib.literalExpression ''

Was removing the default intentional? If not, I'll do a PR.

(For now, I'll just set config.hardware.nvidia.open = false; in my flake. It's a bit odd that I seem to be the only one?)

[Kiskae]

Yes, that breakage was intentional. Users need to explicitly pick which version of the driver they want since nvidia recommends the open one, but that is incompatible with older drivers. (16xx and earlier if I recall)

[superherointj]

[...] It's a bit odd that I seem to be the only one?)

Nope.

[Mindavi]

Heh, I guess I expected a nicer error message. Anyway, I quickly found it in the release notes so maybe that's good enough.

[CertainLach]

Given that proprietary drivers will go away some time, wouldn't it better to set default value of nvidia.open to nvidia.package.preferOpen (This flag does not yet exists, it should be added and set to true for recent versions) depending on stateVersion?
Thus making all the new installations default to open-source driver for new gpus, and remain closed for older gpus

config.nvidia.open = mkDefault (config.system.stateVersion > "24.XX" && config.nvidia.package.preferOpen);

[Mindavi]

I think I´d prefer the build failure over introducing stateVersion switches for this. Doing a new installation doesn't mean that your PC is new.

[CertainLach]

Doing a new installation doesn't mean that your PC is new.

That's why I propose to add preferOpen flag to the package, only newest drivers, which have the same supported hardware list (If I recall correctly) will default to open versions.

[necauqua]

Found this because of the option used but not defined error, would've preferred if it had a nicer message (like such breaking changes often do), something like "blah-blah, nvidia opensourced driver, for newer cards <the condition of 'newer'>, you'd want to set this new mandatory option to true" instead of (as it also sometimes happens) searching the nixos github for the context - could've prevented a couple of issues already created for this

[Mic92]

Since this affect quite a few people, we might want to introduce some guiding message here. If we also accept "unset" here, then an assertion could reproduce the changelog above.

[Mic92]

You can see how people will get confused here: NixOS/nixos-hardware#1092 (comment)

[NickCao]

If we also accept "unset" here, then an assertion could reproduce the changelog above.

That's the original version of this pr, accepting null. But then we would have to cast nullOr types.bool to types.bool on every place referencing cfg.open, or adding a pretty ugly isOpen indirection. I would rather prefer improving the error message for all mandatory options as in #338362

[llakala]

Since this affect quite a few people, we might want to introduce some guiding message here. If we also accept "unset" here, then an assertion could reproduce the changelog above.

Yep, just helped someone that updated their flake and got this issue. Would love to see a PR to make this message cleaner, at least for the short term.

[nixos-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/hardware-nvidia-open-is-used-but-not-defined-error-when-updating-nixos-flake-config/51359/7