LinuxQuestions.org - Kernel 3.7 -no video on Dell inspiron 5150

Assistance in resolving recent yum upgrade from in Fedora 17 from kernel PAE 3.6.11-5 fc17.i686 to kernel-PAE-3.7.6-102.fc17.i686
or kernel-PAE-3.7.9-101.fc17.i686. Problem started in the first 3.7 upgrade.

Essentially the system rebooted with the newer kernels but there was no video. The system appears to boot normally according to the disc activity. Attempted to go to a virtual screen and it worked, but still no video.

I tried a “tree /” and again from the disc activity light I could see it worked. So I did a “dmesg > 37102 and I successfully made the file, although I could not see it at the time.

Logged out and rebooted with the 3.6.11 kernel and in a virtual file I did “dmesg > 36115 and it also worked. Now I did a “diff 36115 37102 |tail -n 40”. As I scanned the files I could see that the 3.6 kernal used the nouveau video but the 3.7 kernel did not.

Instead it listed and error “ [drm:drm_debugfs_create_files] *ERROR* Cannot create /sys/kernel/debug/dri/channel/3 “. Could this be a 32 bit vs 64 bit problem?? If not...what?? Nvidia driver issue, if so how might that be resolved?

I have a 32 bit Dell Inspiron 5150 with 2Gb RAM.

~~~ lspci displays: ~~~

[Ron@Ronfd17 ~]$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)

00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)

00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34M [GeForce FX Go5200 64M] (rev a1)

02:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4510 PC card Cardbus Contr .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So although I was working in the dark (no video) on kernal 3.7 I was able to find an *ERROR* listed (via dmesg).

If the new 3.7 kernel is built for a 64 bit computer WHY isn't it specified somewhere, or did I miss that memo??

What is the next step, do I just go on to FD18 and not look back?

[Ron@Ronfd17 ~]$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.6.11-5.fc17.i686.PAE root=/dev/mapper/vg_ronfd17-lv_root ro rd.lvm.lv=vg_ronfd17/lv_root rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 SYSFONT=True KEYTABLE=us rd.luks=0 rd.lvm.lv=vg_ronfd17/lv_swap LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rhgb quiet

This is the 3.6 fall back kernel.

Suggestions are appreciated.