It is "
a remedy".
In general, almost all "package" problems can be solved by
not using the available packages from the ports tree from the remote repositories and instead building them all individually or, en masse by, for example, using
poudriere(8). These massive builds is not what I think of what is generally advisable to most users, unless there is a specifc motivation or specific and special reasons to do so.
It is not "caused" by having the
FreeBSD-ports-kmods enabled; this is an (mostly incorrect and) overly simplified view of what has happened.
There is no relevant distiction between having
FreeBSD-ports-kmods not enabled
- on a packaged base 15.0-RELEASE
- on a non-packaged base 15.0-RELEASE; that is a 15.0-RELEASE based on traditional distribution sets.
Packages from the ports tree (from the
FreeBSD-ports &
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repositories) and base packages (from the
FreeBSD-base repository) are two seperate and distinct items.
Frankly, when relying and using remote packages from the ports tree, I consider the "solution" of disabling the "kmods" as one of the clearly less preferred options; where the "kmods" refer to:
- the
FreeBSD-kmods repository on FreeBSD 14
- the
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository on FreeBSD 15 and later
The kmods were set up to aid the faster introduction of newly developed (driver) code that is kernel sensitive; that is: suitable only to run on a specific kernel; in practice that means mostly a minor version specific kernel. That driver code is contained in so called kernel modules in packages from the ports tree. Currently that applies mostly to drivers as part of the graphics and wireles stack: Wifi drivers and graphics drivers contained in packages fro the ports tree.
When there are two supported minor versions of the same major version, you are going to need those particular packages from a kmods repository: these will no longer show up in the main repository for packages from the ports tree; that is
FreeBSD on a supported FreeBSD 14, or
FreeBSD-ports on FreeBSD 15.
The upcoming overlap periods of three months are:
15.1-RELEASE may seem to be some time away. However, 14.4-RELEASE (and even the relevant
stable/14 and pre-release cycle versions, the ALPHAx, BETAy and RCz ones before that) are not.
Disabling the "kmods", for example
FreeBSD-kmods of 14.3-RELEASE (or 14.4-RELEASE) will get package users into problems when the relevant packages containing those kernel modules are available only from
either:
Code:
FreeBSD-kmods: {
url : "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:14:amd64/kmods_quarterly_3",
or
Code:
FreeBSD-kmods: {
url : "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:14:amd64/kmods_quarterly_4",
when these will still be
disabled.
When confronted with a versions mismatch with the Nvidia drivers as mentioned here, I suggest, choose one of the following:
- build it from source
- use
pkg upgrade -f -r <repository name> <package_of _the_right_version>: see here
- delete all Nvidia packages completely and install the normal way, see:
ad #3: for complete fresh installers, the "Nvidia" mismatch should no longer occur!
