NVIDIA drivers version

[Andreas Beckmann]

Hi Emilio,

On 2019-05-24 18:28, Andreas Beckmann wrote:
> your questions are better asked on this list:
> Debian NVIDIA Maintainers <pkg-nvidia-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>
> (these are the people maintaining the non-free bits).

and I'm now replying with my NVIDIA Maintainer hat on :-)

>> The point is: I'm using CUDA and some NVIDIA deep learning stuff on top
>> of it, all of it in a docker instance. The docker image is based on 
>> CoCalc [1][2], project built using Ubuntu 18.04 as base distro. The host
>> machine is a Debian Buster/Sid/Experimental system.
>>
>> So far, I managed to keep the same NVIDIA Driver on both the host and
>> the docker image, something apparently necessary to have all the stuff
>> running properly in the nvidia-docker envinronment. Specifically, the
>> version I'm using is 410.104.
>>
>> This version (410.104) could be easily installed in both the host
>> (Debian) and the guest (Ubuntu) using deb packages in the official
>> repos. And NVIDIA also provides all the stuff I need for this version in
>> convenient deb packages (CUDA 10.0, NCCL, CUDNN, nvinfer, etc.) here:
>> [3][4]
>>
>> So far, so good :-)
>>
>> Now, I want to update part of the software stack and also the NVIDIA
>> driver, to use the version that will be the definitive in Buster
>> (418.74, I guess). Unfortunatelly, the 418.x drivers in the NVIDIA repos
>> I need for some of the stuff (the mentioned [3] and [4]) are not 418.74,
>> neither any of the versions I can found packaged in Debian/Ubuntu.
>> Specifically, in those repos I can get stuff for 418.39, 418.40 and
>> 418.67 :-?
>>
>> Isn't that weird? :-? Why are they using those versions and
>> Debian/Ubuntu are packaging others? (after reading some stuff in Debian I
>> assume the versions being packaged are a kind of long-support versions,
>> but...)

In Debian we try to track the "long lived branch" releases (and the
legacy branch releases in their own set of packages). You will
occasionally see beta and "short lived branch" releases in experimental.
Switching the major upstream version usually comes with some delay, as
it often means adding new packages or other more involved changes
(especially after NVIDIA started a new legacy series and therefore
removed support for some older cards from the mainline driver).

For stable we prefer to use legacy branches, since they have a long
upstream support frame, for stretch we have now reached that with 390.xx.
For buster we will again track the "long lived branch" releases, bumping
major versions whenever CVEs require us to use new upstream releases.

At the time NVIDIA released 418.74, they also made 430.xx the new "long
lived branch" with the 430.14 release (which I uploaded to experimental
a few minutes ago).

I have no clue what (software and versions) NVIDIA or other vendors are
providing as packages. There is already enough to do for a consistent
NVIDIA stack within the contrib and non-free components of Debian :-)

>> Can you think in an alternative that allows me to stick with the deb
>> packages setup (yeah, I know I can solve the problem if I avoid the deb
>> packages and use other installation methods, but I will like to keep it
>> that way if possible).

You can probably stick with an older driver version until you can update
the driver on your whole software stack. All old packages are available
from snapshot.debian.org, 410.104 is not a risk security-wise, it just
lacks support for a bunch of current cards.


Andreas