Firmware
1. Status
A list of which cards do and don't need to load blob firmware at this point.
2. Instructions
do an mmio trace of the blob (version < 270.xx preferred)
- Ensure that your kernel has MMIO tracing enabled
Kernel Hacking -> Tracers -> Memory mapped IO tracing
- Boot up the system, without loading the blob or nouveau
- Mount debugfs and start the tracer
mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug echo mmiotrace > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe > mydump.txt &
- Load the blob kernel module (insmod nvidia)
- run X or a CUDA application
- Stop the tracer
echo nop > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer
Extract register writes from the trace and put them in binary files:
41a1c4 -> fuc41ad
4091c4 -> fuc409d
41a184 -> fuc41ac
409184 -> fuc409c
The important lines in the trace will look like this:
W 4 433.851950 1 0xXX41a1c4 0x2072614d 0x0 0
where 0xXX41a1c4 is the register and 0x2072614d the value written
and put them in binary files in /lib/firmware/nouveau/
For Kepler, prefix the file names with "nvXX_", XX being the chipset id (so, nve4_fuc409c, for example).
import struct, sys, re
# substitute the correct value for XX
registers = {
'XX41a1c4': 'fuc41ad',
'XX4091c4': 'fuc409d',
'XX41a184': 'fuc41ac',
'XX409184': 'fuc409c',
}
firmwares = dict((register, open(registers[register], 'wb')) for register in registers)
for line in open(sys.argv[1]):
line = line.split()
if len(line) < 5:
continue
for register in registers:
if not re.match(r'0x%s' % register, line[4]):
continue
if not line[5].startswith('0x'):
break
firmwares[register].write(struct.pack('@I', int(line[5][2:], 16)))
Video firmware
Unlike the firmware you need above, there is no requirement on version. Up to nvidia 310.* will likely work. Newer versions are untested, but should still work.
1. Extracting kernel video firmware on fermi and kepler.
There are 2 sets of firmware for video decoding, one for kernel and one for userspace. Only nvc0 series need the userspace firmware. Kepler, and also nvd9 do NOT have userspace firmware.
The kernel parts can be obtained by doing a mmiotrace of a program using vdpau for video decoding, for example mplayer -vc ffmpeg12vdpau,ffh264vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffodivxvdpau, somefile.mkv
After you obtained the mmiotrace, look for the base offsets used by the firmware:
$ demmio vdpau-mmiotrace | grep P.*P.*XFER_EXT_BASE
[0] 437.753081 MMIO32 W 0x084110 0x004de400 PBSP.XFER_EXT_BASE <= 0x4de40000
[0] 445.278672 MMIO32 W 0x085110 0x004dde00 PVP.XFER_EXT_BASE <= 0x4dde0000
[0] 445.938745 MMIO32 W 0x086110 0x004dd800 PPPP.XFER_EXT_BASE <= 0x4dd80000
$ demmio vdpau-mmiotrace | less
/RAMIN32.*4de40000 would get you to the start of the mmiotrace, from my log I could see the RAMIN32 writes end at 4de50918, so I need to grab 4de[45].* for BSP firmware:
$ demmio vd-trace.xz 2>&1 | grep 'RAMIN32 .* 4de[45].* <=' | awk '{ print $7 }' | python -c \
"
import struct; import sys; fd = open(\"fuc084\", \"wb\");
for line in sys.stdin:
fd.write(struct.pack(\"@I\", int(line.rstrip(), 16)))
"This was just for PBSP, but the same applies to PVP with fuc085, and PPPP with fuc086. Put the resulting files in /lib/firmware/nouveau/
Offsets may differ, and it is recommended to check you don't end up with too big or too small a file. It *looks* like mine are multiples of 1000 bytes, on the nvidia 310 drivers.
2. Extracting userspace video firmware on nvc0 series (fermi) (NOT NVD9!!)
Requirements:
- libvdpau-dev, libpciaccess-dev, libx11-dev
- build a recent envytools.git, and go to envytools.git/vdpow directory
- with nvidia drivers enabled and X server running, do:
/usr/local/bin/valgrind --tool=mmt --mmt-trace-file=/dev/nvidia0 --mmt-trace-file=/dev/dri/card0 --mmt-trace-nvidia-ioctls --mmt-trace-nouveau-ioctls ./mmt_ufw 2>&1 | ./dumpstruct -m 10
Copy the resulting vuc-* files to /lib/firmware/nouveau/