First off I'm not familiar with fedora so other's comments may be more applicable. First a safety tip, you should get your hands on a live boot cd if you don't already have one. That way if you really muck things up you can boot from the CD, mount the HD and undo whatever you did. Also don't delete anything until you are sure you don't need it anymore, either rename it in place or move it to another directory.
I'm not sure how you could have changed the kernel without realizing it...what may have happened though is that you replaced the video card's kernel module, possibly with one that wasn't compatible with the kernel. Do a "dmesg | less" and read the listing carefully looking for anything having to do with your video card. That will be your best source of information regarding what the problem is. If it doesn't show up during a boot that gets you to a text console you should be able to find something in one of /var/log/{syslog|messages|debug}. These three may be really long files so starting at the end and reading backwards might help.
Quote:
Now, fedora is not booting.....it loads everything except some stuff related to "nvidia"
|
Specifics matter, until you know what the problem is you can't figure out how to fix it.
Since you asked...to remove kernels (be careful!!)...
1. You need to figure out what boot manager you are using. I've always used Lilo, but others should be similar. During the boot process right after the POST you should see a message giving the name of the boot manager. It may flash really quick so watch carefully. Most likely it's either Lilo or Grub.
2. Once you know the boot manager you need to find it's configuration file, probably in /etc. You should be able to edit it to remove the references to the kernels you want to remove. Man pages are your friend here so read the ones for your boot manager carefully so you know what the changes you make are doing. Make sure to leave at least one kernel.
3. Here's where my lack of knowledge of grub shows up. With lilo you then run lilo and it reinstalls itself per the configuration you specified in the configuration file.
4. Another change I would make is to set the default runlevel to 3, in /etc/inittab here. That way you can boot to a usable console while fixing things, and test the other runlevel as you go.
5. Once all that is done you should be able to reboot and end up in a text console. Now the fun begins...
6. Go to /boot and remove the kernels you don't want. Reboot under all remaining kernels to make sure you didn't get rid of the wrong ones. If you delete the kernels before reconfiguring your boot manager you may wind up with an expensive doorstop until you reinstall.
One thing you may find in the /boot directory are copies of the kernel configurations for each of the kernels. If so stash one for a kernel you know used to work. You can refer back to it when reconfiguring your kernel.
To edit the configuration for X...
1. Use your preferred console based text editor (purists will say vi, I prefer joe), there are probably several different ones on your system, to edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf or..
2. Run xorgconfig to generate the configuration file. The reason I don't use this one is that you have to go through all the configuration steps to change a single thing (very tedious).
To reconfigure the kernel...
1. Find the kernel source directory, at /usr/src/linux here (actually that is a symlink to the actual directory), if you don't have the kernel source then you didn't rebuild the kernel before. If you don't have a copy on your hard drive there should be one on the installation disks. If all else fails you can download it from kernel.org. Make sure the kernel source you get matches the kernel you are currently using (you can play with upgrading the kernel when you are more familiar with what you are doing). The reason the one form the installation CD is preferable is that if there are any third party drivers used y your system these will probably be available on the CD.
2. Once you have the source you have to configure it. I use "make menuconfig", but there are several. Whichever one you use work your way through the configuration and save the result. If you have the option (available in 2.6 kernels, not sure how far back it goes since I jumped from 2.2) set LOCALVERSION to something that won't conflict with any existing kernels, e.g. test, so your new kernel and modules won't overwrite anything already on your system.
3. do "make clean", can usually be skipped when tweaking but you may end up having to go back and do it anyway.
4. "make"..go get a drink of water, make a sandwich, etc. while your new kernel compiles.
5. now you have to install the kernel, this will depend on the boot manager you use..."make bzlilo" if you use Lilo. The makefile will install your kernel as /boot/vmlinuz so you should have your boot manager setup not to use this kernel as the default, which it probably does.
6. "make modules_install" to install the modules for the new kernel.
7. Cross applicable fingers and/or toes and reboot. If all goes well you should be able to boot your new kernel. If not reboot with your default kernel and figure out what you did wrong.