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Instability in Fedora 15?
I have been using this website for years now, since I first got back into Linux, and its members have been invaluable to me since then. I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you first before I embark on a new list of complaints
I built a new system the other day. ASUS AM3 Motherboard, AMD Athlon II quad-core, eight GB ram, Nvdia GeForce GT 430 video card (the manufacturer is PNY.) One hard drive has Windows Seven and experiences no instability, even when I increase the clock ratio to 13x (I have an aftermarket heatsink.) On a second hard drive, I used the x86_64 KDE live disc to install Fedora 15 Lovelock, and I was able to also sucessfully install grub on the Windows (default) hard drive. So if I reboot the computer, I get the grub menu and am able to choose between Win7 and Fc15. A couple of times during installation the screen flashed black and diplayed a message for a brief second. I can't read that fast but it says something like "DRM nouveau- unknown or unsupported chipset" and one more line that I can't catch. When this happens, I see the pre-login loading screen, the one that shows an icon of a hard drive, network, and so on as each resource is secured. I can log back in, but this starts a new session- it doesn't remember what I was doing. I had to redo the install and setup several times because of this. I can log in and so on normally, but the black screen and message will appear at random,forcing me to start all over, which is really frustrating. Any ideas as to what's going on? Is it the video card? How do I install a driver for it? Also, the hard drive in question has been through a lot. could it have a bad sector or something? Windows didn't even want to "see" it, that's why Fedora is installed on there. Any help would be much appreciated. |
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not scared yet
Mr. Alex, Thanks for your reply. I'll admit that I only had time for about forty minutes of the video your provided. I found that it echoed a lot of my sentiments. I've been on board since Fedora 9 and I am a huge fan, and yet I feel I never quite got to duplicate my first install, with a working KDE theme with showy animations, when I said to myself, "I'll never go back to Windows for my personal computing again." Well times changed, and I didn't have a computer to work with for a while, so I've been out of the loop. I didn't realize that I wasn't the only one who felt that he was limping along with an umpolished product. I thought with a wan smile to countless hours swearing at the terminal to try and get Flash to work. It's a sad decline to watch.I remember my stepdad telling me about Redhat back in the nineties. That said, I'm not just any kid off the street. This is not my first sytem build, and I am not scared of "su-" or "man" or "yum". I am willing and ready to learn and tweak and patch and fix, to a point. I don't mind being a beta tester, and I wish I could help more. but if your intent with that reply was to gently suggest that I pack it away and try another distro, I'd definitely appreciate at least a recommendation or some pointers. Again, thanks for your help, but the issue I am experiencing was not really addressed in the video. I didn't even get to trying to install Flash. I just want my system to work for more than five minutes without resetting the session. Setting the clock multiplier back to "Auto" didn't help. |
@thezerodragon
The default font is chosen for a reason. Use it. |
Ok, so YouTube links and other unhelpful comments aside ...
The easiest way to fix this is to reinstall using the "Basic video driver" option, then install the nVidia drivers from their web site, or google for nVidia Fedora (there is a way to install them using RPM Fusion repos) Another way to fix it without reinstalling is to boot to run level 1 (edit your boot options when the boot screen comes up by selecting your most recent kernel, then hitting "a" for append, then typing a "1" and enter). Then edit /etc/grub.conf and add nomodeset to every line that starts with a tab and "kernel". |
Awesome
To MTK358:
Respectfully, I choose serif fonts because they are designed to draw the eye along to the next word, good for narrative descriptions and walls of text such as I am wont to produce. I realize it's not everybody's preference and I thank you for your input. To: Sandwormmusic Thank you so much. This is the kind of reply I was hoping for. I am willing to reinstall but I am curious to try this second option of booting to run level 1. I understand how to append the one at the bootloader, and I am familiar with logging in as root, even before the GUI is active, but I would really appreciate a bit of help to understand how to edit grub.conf . Again, thanks for your time and attention. |
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And if a user really likes serif fonts, he could just change his browser's settings. |
You may find it annoying to re-install & setup every year, as Fedora is RH's R&D distro & each version only lasts 13 mths iirc.
If you'd prefer to just set it up once and then be able to use it like that for several years, consider Centos (free version of RHEL). This has supported updates for 5-7 yrs. It's one of the reasons I switched, way back when. |
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Within that file you'll have many lines that start with "kernel". Those lines specify which kernel to boot into for each particular entry. You'll notice when you update Fedora sometimes a new entry will appear ... those are old kernel versions in case the new one does something bad. Anyway, at the end of those lines that begin with "kernel", add the option "nomodeset". That will disable the fancy boot up and kernel-based video acceleration. When nouveau is active, it interferes with nVidia somehow and will not allow the other drivers to install. The "nomodeset" option will disable the in kernel video acceleration. For example, if the below was in your grub.conf: title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64) root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 ro root=UUID=d18f27a8-5c8b-4f82-af72-75cc78ad3f27 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UT$ initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64.img Change it to: title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64) root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 ro root=UUID=d18f27a8-5c8b-4f82-af72-75cc78ad3f27 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UT$ nomodeset initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64.img Also, you'll have to follow the steps below to get a working video adapter after doing the above steps. If you boot to a blank screen, try Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a console session. http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia |
Install the RPM Fusion repos (easy instructions on their website) and install the proprietary video drivers. The only people missing out with this rejection of the proprietary is the end user (you and me.)
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resolved
Dear SandwormUSMC (sorry I got that wrong last time)
Thanks again for your help. I rebooted to run level one as per your instructions, and it was still unstable, so I used ctrl+alt+F2 for a console-only login. I used nano to edit grub.conf the way you advised, then I rebooted to the recently updated kernel and was able to get a stable session with limited graphics support. Then I used this guide: http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutoria...dora-13-and-14 to help me install the nVidia driver. After a reboot, the nVidia driver utility appeared and I was able to modify advanced features and got both monitors working. I was even able to install Flash. Maybe this distro is usable after all. |
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One recommendation I can make (though I haven't tried it myself) is Fusion Linux, which is a Fedora "Remix". It includes all of the proprietary packages that Red Hat leaves out on purpose. I'm thinking of trying it out soon also, it seems to be promising in that it would save a lot of these types of headaches. |
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