Fedora 11 won't boot after Nvidia driver install

I decided to upgrade my graphics driver on Fedora 11. Everything went well until I rebooted and it got to the point where it should load the GUI but nothing happened, I was not even given a command-line interface. If anyone knows a way how to repair my Fedora installation without having to reinstall please let me know.

Here is the instructions that I used:
Fedora Nvidia Driver Install Guide

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Comments

tiersten

I assume you used the nVidia closed source driver? nVidia closed source driver is bad mmkay? You won't be able to get much support because nobody who works on the kernel will touch a tainted kernel.

Can you switch to a text VT? Ctrl+Alt+F2 or something.

exampasser

tiersten wrote: »

I assume you used the nVidia closed source driver? nVidia closed source driver is bad mmkay? You won't be able to get much support because nobody who works on the kernel will touch a tainted kernel.

Can you switch to a text VT? Ctrl+Alt+F2 or something.

Yea I used the nVidia closed source driver. I'll try the Ctrl+Alt+F2.

exampasser

That worked, I'm now able to use the terminal, so how do I revert back to the original driver? I'm going to boot up back to Fedora and try a few things so I'll be back in a few mins.

tiersten

exampasser wrote: »

That worked, I'm now able to use the terminal, so how do I revert back to the original driver? I'm going to boot up back to Fedora and try a few things so I'll be back in a few mins.

Don't know what you did to install it. That guide you linked to has several different methods.

exampasser

Here is what I ran:
yum install kmod-nvidia
mv /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img /boot/initrd-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)(this command resulted in an error message)

tiersten

Does "lsmod | grep nouveau" give you any output?

exampasser

I found out I installed the wrong driver, I needed kmod-nvidia-173xx so I tried to install it using yum and I got a driver conflict error.

Met44

I'm not familiar with the nouveau driver or its installation processes (seems a bit odd to be baking in your graphics driver), but have used the closed nvidia driver without issue.

I understand that X server configuration is a little different between Fedora and Debian (which I am more used to). By default, you shouldn't have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If you manually create one, you can specify the use of a different graphics driver (like vesa) which will override the decision that Fedora makes. This should give you your basic graphics back.

In addition to tiersten's advice, you may want to look into that.

exampasser

Met44 wrote: »

I'm not familiar with the nouveau driver or its installation processes (seems a bit odd to be baking in your graphics driver), but have used the closed nvidia driver without issue.

I understand that X server configuration is a little different between Fedora and Debian (which I am more used to). By default, you shouldn't have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If you manually create one, you can specify the use of a different graphics driver (like vesa) which will override the decision that Fedora makes. This should give you your basic graphics back.

In addition to tiersten's advice, you may want to look into that.

If I just want to go back to using nouveau what exactly do I place in that /etc/X11/xorg.conf file when I create it?

tiersten

Run the command in my previous post and post the output if any.

exampasser

tiersten wrote: »

Run the command in my previous post and post the output if any.

I did run the command. I can take a picture of the output with my camera.

exampasser

Here is the output I got from lsmod ,grep nouveau did not provide any output. I'm assuming that lsmod | grep nouveau are two separate commands.

It is all on one line. The noveau driver isn't loaded so you can't just change the X.org config file.

Read this.

exampasser

Ok here is the right output then:

2010_01280006.jpg

tiersten

Your configuration is in a weird state because when you originally installed the driver you used the wrong one and didn't disable noveau. I have no idea what other changes have occurred because of the nVidia driver installation. Have you look at the link I posted above?

exampasser

tiersten wrote: »

Your configuration is in a weird state because when you originally installed the driver you used the wrong one and didn't disable noveau. I have no idea what other changes have occurred because of the nVidia driver installation. Have you look at the link I posted above?

Yea I looked at it. Is there any way to uninstall the wrong nvidia driver that I have installed?

tiersten

exampasser wrote: »

Yea I looked at it. Is there any way to uninstall the wrong nvidia driver that I have installed?

You can try removing that package but I don't know what it'd do. I don't have or use the nVidia drivers.

exampasser

I used "yum remove kmod-nvidia", I don't know if that was what you were referring to.

jezzicaz789

exampasser wrote: »

I decided to upgrade my graphics driver on Fedora 11. Everything went well until I rebooted and it got to the point where it should load the GUI but nothing happened, I was not even given a command-line interface. If anyone knows a way how to repair my Fedora installation without having to reinstall please let me know.

Here is the instructions that I used:
Fedora Nvidia Driver Install Guide

Thank you for the post.
Hi guys, Im a newbie. Nice to join this forum.

exampasser

I found some help from a moderator at linux.com and everything is fixed now.