Did it actually take 15 minutes, or are you just exaggerating there? Udev shouldn't take anywhere near fifteen minutes to start.

EDIT: Before you go re-installing the OS (if you haven't started already), what is the EXACT release of the LiveCD you are using? I don't know how Fedora releases their LiveCDs, but the version number, and the last date your CD was updated, if any additional updates were done.

EDIT 2: Also, reboot into the LiveCD and post the output of dmesg, and lspci -vv. Also, just out of scientific curiosity, post the output of "cat /proc/mtrr" (though I doubt this has anything to do with it).

You don't happen to be using a Dell by any chance, do you? You didn't happen to notice an unusual video display problems even before the switch (trailing or jumpy/broken graphics), did you? Or maybe unexplainable slowdowns in performance?

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No exaggeration. Maybe it was 10 minutes, but I think it was longer. And I tried several times with the same result.
AFAIK, Fedora only puts out 1 version of their install media for each release. In any case, I had downloaded mine about a month ago.
See: http://deesto.pastebin.com/F8aM0Xyc

Yes, and yes! This is a 3-y-o Dell Precision 490, 2 dual core machine. I attributed slowness/etc. to the crappy nVidia card and lack of memory (only 2 GB, 4 more on order).

I don't have time to go over this ths minute, but deesto, boy have you hit the jackpot!

Okay, your /proc/mtrr (Memory Type Range Register) is completely ****ed if you only have 2 gigs of memory as you say. Even if you have more, they are ****ed, just not as badly. This, unfortunately, is a common problem for Dell users that no one seems to give a **** about.

This may be the reason you have:

Slow udev start with the LiveCD
Lack of compositing support w/opensource drivers & experimental mesa in your normal enviroment when, according to Adam, you should have compositing support in this situation
Unexplainable problems with starting X, or with X in general

To start with. Correcting these will also solve a whole mess of other problems you haven't even mentioned, and a whole mess of other problems you probably didn't even know existed.

Unfortunately correcting your mtrr will be nothing short of a ***** as this is one of those wonderful undocumented, and not understood parts of Linux that even the "gurus" can ony seem to explain in vague theorectical terms.

Fortunately, I have dealt with the problem before (as you probably have already guesses), and know how to solve it. Fortunately, you will probably not have to go through the painful process of backing up your system and reinstalling.

Unfortunately, I only vaguely understand mtrrs. Unfortunately, there is no easy an straightfoward way to determine what your /proc/mtrr should look like: we're going to have to resort to a bit of experimentation and trial and error. Unfortuanately, this will probably be more painful than a reinstall. Unfortunately, a simple reinstall will not fix your problem.


That aside, I haven't even glanced at anything beyond your /proc/mtrr, but will do so to see if there is anything else unusual. But to start with, I take it you posted all of this from your LiveCD enviroment, correct? If so, please do whatever fun things you need to to bring your normal Fedora install to the settings of the LiveCD (i.e., get rid of everything but opensource drivers, make sure KMS is enabled, return to runlevel 5, etc. (and on that note, take the time to make totally sure that you've removed all video driver cruft))

Once this is done again post the dmesg, lspci -vv, Xorg.0.log, and /proc/mtrr (please put this first), from your installed Fedora. I will need this both for comparison, and for the fact that you have a 64-bit OS installed, and 32-bit LiveCD, if I have understood everything so far (also because we will need to correct the installed Fedora, obviously).


In the meantine, it's about 4:00 in my timezone right now, and I have to head out and won't be back until about 10:00 to take a look at any of this. I may or may not be able to make another post then. In either case, don't get anxious about this one, it won't be an easy fix. If you get bored in the meantine, you can go ahead and read through this wonderful thread, and learn more about your issue than you ever wanted to know:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=88679

Welcome to the world of Linux!

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Alex: if this is what you can do when you don't have time to go over something, I'd hate to see what happens when you do!

Yes: this was all posted from a LiveCD session: Fedora 12 KDE 64-bit Live CD (at the very least, running with a 64-bit kernel: 2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64 #1 SMP).

Enabling KMS: is this the "right" way to do it: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.p...522665#p522665

As for clearing out the "bad" driver packages: what am I looking for? radeon? ati?

All right, I got a short break, but this will probably be my last post for the night.

I meant remove the bad radeon drivers, as your problems seemed to get worse after you install the proprietary drivers on your system (And the mesa-experimental for that matter). Basically, what I meant was try as best you can to restore your system back to the way it was at the beginning of this thread, before Adam and I "helped" you.

However, now that I think about, this probably won't do much for you, will it? You can't even boot into runlevel 5 can you? (Sorry if I'm a little sketchy on details of what has happened up to this point right now, this is a bit rushed.)

If this is true, and you still can't boot into runlevel 5 (I only need you to get into a tty and post these outputs, so I don't care if X doesn't work properly). Try re-installing your nvidia and boot using that. If that works, we'll work with that now, correct your /proc/mtrr, and whatever other problems we find, and worry about the ATI card later.

If this doesn't work, and you can't boot into runlevel 5 no matter what you do, then go ahead an re-install Fedora (with the nvidia card, as that will actually work for now), then do whatever updates you may need to do (again, I don't know how Fedora, specifically handles system updates), and post the ouputs.

Also, post the kernel version of your newly install system as well (uname -a, I believe, but you posted the other kernel version, so I assume you don't need to be told how to do this).

Finally, I was a bit unclear about the KMS part: it should be enabled by default, so just make sure you have removed those lines we appended to grub at the beginning of this thread.

On a last note: Do you know how to compile a kernel? Adam mentioned Fedora had some "unique" kernel code, I would like to attempt to eliminate this as a possible problem source. (DON'T attempt this if you don't know. It isn't very difficult, but could screw a whole lot of stuff up if done improperly).

Oh, I almost forgot: if you end up having to use the nvidia card, please boot back into the LiveCD and post those outputs again. Also, be sure to note any weird boot issues again if you happen to encounter them.

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Alright, I'm free most of today. Just post those outputs whenever you've gotten the machine booting into run level 5, and we'll go ahead and get to work on this.

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OK, I pulled the ATI card, replaced the nVidia card, rebooted a few times, but that got me to the same place: couldn't get into init 5. I couldn't do a 'startx' and get to a Gnome desktop (but no launchers and couldn't do anything useful). So I gave in and installed @gnome-desktop via yum (remember: I was running KDE), and suddenly 'init 5' worked and got me into Gnome (EDIT: I'm wondering now if I should have done this with the ATI card ...). And so ...

http://deesto.pastebin.com/5Bfj1WVN

Go ahead and try with the ATI card, just for good measure. We may have been chasing down a ghost previously.

Also, before you go ahead and do that, boot into the LiveCD environment now that you have the nvidia installed, and post all that same information again. If the Fedora LiveCDs are static releases, I want some comparison on a couple of things. Also, see if there are any boot problems w/Nvidia+LiveCD.

Either way, your /proc/mtrr is screwed up and we're going to have to mess with it. However, your Xorg.0.log is a bit screwy too, so I'm thinking this is a kernel level issue. If this is the case then *hopefully* solving this will be as easy as ditching the Fedora kernel for the 2.6.3x vanilla (depending on what you need functionality-wise). For now, we're going to mess with the 2.6.32.

You didn't tell me whether you know how to compile a kernel, do you? If yes, go ahead and download 2.6.32, install that, reboot and post the same information. Also, tell me if video performance seems to have improved at all.

If not, just tell me and I'll post instructions.

On a side note, you said you upgraded and were getting more memory for improved video performance. What video performance are you looking for? Rendering, gaming, or just some compositing effects?

Trying LiveCD now ... quick note: took a long time, but booting into init 5 now! More info later....

Information from system via F12 64-bit LiveCD session:
http://deesto.pastebin.com/4H5fDcdN

Forgot to say: this was from runlevel 5 with the nVidia card.

Same info from a LiveCD session using the ATI card (from within runlevel 5):
http://deesto.pastebin.com/t72Jpqyq

Other info:
I do know how to compile a kernel. It's been a while, but I'd basically do as described here:
http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_fedora

On memory: my system has always seemed a bit sluggish, in spite of the fact that it's got four 3.0GHz cores. I assumed tripling the memory would give it a serious boost ... maybe not. Since this is a workstation (at work), I'm not looking for blazing graphics for gaming, but it would be nice to be able to open more than a few windows at a time without bringing the system to its knees.

Sorry, maybe I was a bit unclear, I wanted you to boot to a standard (non-LiveCD session) with the ATI card and post that info (that is, if you can boot without it crashing, of course). However, this really isn't necessary right now as read through your other outputs and have come to the conclusion that:

A) Your kernel is causing your problems (maybe not the MTRR issue, but apparently your entire system is falling apart).

B) The Linux kernel just doesn't like your system doesn't like your system, and you're going to need a lot more than my help to pull you out of this.

EDIT: before you even do the following step, I actually want to go ahead and make sure you have the latest bios update for your system. If that doesn't seem to help anything, please read on.

So, to begin with: compile the 2.6.32 kernel from kernel.org, and post the same info. Let's do this with the Nvidia because your system seems slightly less ****ed up with this card (Sorry, I know I have you juggling graphics cards here. This should be the last time I ask you to do this until we're done diagnosing the problems I can help you with, and ready to install the ATI for the final time.) Tell me if graphics performance seems any better. While you are doing this, I'm going to review a bit and post more instructions in case the 2.6.32 kernel doesn't make anything better.


As far as the graphics go, the reason you are having so many problems is the kernel. It has nothing to do with your hardware. Even with your Nvidia w/2 of RAM your system should scream if you aren't doing anything more than compositing.

Wonderful. No information on Page Allocation Tables either.

I'll be honest with you, I'm going to be shooting in the dark a bit here, because we are dealing with parts of Linux that I only vaguely understand (some more than others). I promise you however, that I'm trying to adhere to things that probably will help you, but of which I am not entirely certain.

With that said, go ahead and try adding the line "nopat" to your grub.conf, and see if this helps anything at all. Do this either before or after you compile the kernel (it might be faster to do it before, just to check if it does anything, but in either case I'm going to want you to install the 2.6.32 kernel). Even if performance doesn't improve, post your dmesg and /proc/mtrr (I don't need anything else).

More coming later.

Sorry for the misunderstanding INRE: Live vs. native system login. Since I have the ATI card in, and since I seem to be able to get to runlevel 5 without trouble now anyway, here's the system info from a non-LiveCD ATI session:
http://deesto.pastebin.com/Q9zp9NZ9

Unfortunately, I do have the latest available BIOS installed (A08, 5/2008).

All right. From my quick review, I believe the proper order to disable a register is: write-combining, uncacheable, write=back. But I could be wrong about that. Either way, after you have done everything above, go ahead and try the following from a terminal (your system will become extremely slow. This is expected.):

#echo "disable=7" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=6" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=1" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=0" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=3" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=4" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=5" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=6" >| /proc/mtrr

If your system doesn't crash, we're in business. Reboot and report back. If you system does crash, go ahead and try"

#echo "disable=6" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=1" >| /proc/mtrr
#echo "disable=7" >| /proc/mtrr

and disable the others in the same order as before. If your system still crashes, you will just have to mess around with them until you can find some combination that works correctly. When you find the correct combination, report back and I'll tell you where to go from there.

Also, later on we will have to pass an argument of boot via script. Do you know how to do this? I don't know if Fedora has and rc.local, or if it operates by an entirely different means.

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