[ATrpms-users] nvidia-graphics7185-1.0_7185-74.3.fc7 should have .so instead of .o?

[David O'Shea]

Hi,

I'm trying to use 
http://dl.atrpms.net/all/nvidia-graphics7185-1.0_7185-74.3.fc7.i386.rpm 
on Fedora 7 with a RIVA TNT2 M64.  When Xorg starts up, it reports 
'Failed to load module "nvidia" (module does not exist, 0)'.

This RPM contains "nvidia-1.0-7185_drv.o" and a symlink from 
"nvidia_drv.o" to this has been created.  I note that when I create a 
symlink from "nvidia_drv.so" (note ".so" not ".o") to the same file, I 
get a different error suggesting that Xorg wants a real .so, not one I 
just renamed ("dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//nvidia_drv.so: 
only ET_DYN and ET_EXEC can be loaded").

How come this RPM contains a ".o" instead of a ".so"?  I see in e.g. 
http://atrpms.net/dist/f7/nvidia-graphics-legacy-96xx/nvidia-graphics9639-1.0_9639-83.1.fc7.i386.rpm.html 
"Changed nvidia_drv.o for nvidia_drv.so", so did this old legacy 71.85 
driver miss out on this for some reason?  Is there some trick to using 
a ".o" instead of a ".so"?

I'm afraid Google hasn't helped me answer this question, I just see 
that others have upgraded to newer drivers to get a ".so" instead of a 
".o" but I think I have the latest RPM available from atrpms.

Apologies for my cluelessness, I used Red Hat back in the Red Hat 
Linux 5-9 days and never had a fancy graphics card and now I have all 
these new exciting things like closed-source drivers and SELinux to 
figure out :)

Thanks in advance,
David