Scientific Linux 6 hangs on startup... suddenly.
 

Hi all,

I don't even know where to begin with fixing this issue. I use Scientific Linux 6.1 on an HP desktop with dual displays controlled by an nVidia GeForce 9400 GT, and I have GRUB set up to allow me dual boot in to Sci Linux and into Windows Vista.

I didn't install anything, didn't update any drivers, didn't do anything today except print some PDFs and check my webmail. I shut the system down and came back to it later in the day. Twice it stalled after lighting up both monitors with the logo and the rotating circle. The third time, I hit escape to watch the daemons start. It got as far as WINE, then ground to a halt. If I do it this way, I can Alt-F2 and get to the console, but I'm at a loss for what to do once I get there. I uninstalled WINE -- I don't really use it anyway -- but it hung at the same spot, which is now after the at daemon.

Sci linux doesn't use xorg.conf anymore; that's ordinarily the first place I would check. This seems very much like something that would happen after a video driver updated, but I haven't touched my nvidia drivers, the kernel, or anything. And, the kicker is, Vista still works fine, including with both monitors.

So, my question is, where do I begin? And, what information can I give you to help me?

Thank you very much!

To create it you have to issue command
or

I tried Xorg -configure and got a massive list of error messages. I can go recreate it and try to post the result here, if it would help.

When you create it it gets listed under / as xorg.conf.new then you have to move it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Also the official nvidia driver should be available thru your package manager. I also have the 9400GT & it works well. If you install nvidia you can also install nvidia-settings which is a gui tool which can configure both monitors.

I've hit a similar problem on two machines. One is a VM (Virtualbox) running under Win7, Scientific Linux 6.1, and the other is SL 6.1 as the host system. Both were working fine for many months until a recent yum update. Now the GUI won't start. I get Xorg errors about version mismatch for the various video drivers on both the VM and the SL 6.1 full installation. The stand alone full installation is installed on a machine with an on-board Intel card, but the xorg-drv-intel won't load. The VM is using whatever the standard virtual video that VirtualBox runs.
I tried booting into older kernels, with no luck. I can get into runlevel 3, and networking, etc works fine. But no X :-(. Also Xorg -configure throws the same errors about "failed to load..." for each video driver.

Anyone know if there's an update in the pipeline that will fix this??

Thanks,
Micha

There was an automatic yum update that ran yesterday on my machine, coinciding with my machine breaking. I undid the update in yum, and now it doesn't hang, but it still stops before X can begin. Runlevel 3 is fine for me too. Maybe you can try a yum downgrade on xorg?

you have to update the nvidia driver as it does not update itself

I've jumped past the problem (on two machines) by upgrading to Scientific Linux 6.2. I got into the grub menu (press any key at the boot screen) and enter 'e' to edit the boot line. Add "single" at the end to enter single user mode. THen at the command prompt I first ran
(to get into runlevel 3 with networking). Next
There are 100's of MB of new, replacement packages. When it finished I rebooted, and the X system came up.

It's unfortunate that a broken update snuck into the repo, but I guess it happens on rare occasions. I'm sure that the packages for 6.1 will be fixed and pushed out soon, but 6.2 has been out for several months, so no reason not to go ahead and upgrade.

I'm in the midst of trying the same thing (well, a slightly different way, but with the same end result). I'll keep you posted.

downgrading Xorg - a very bad idea and NOT easy
and in this case not needed

that auto update probably installed a new kernel
NOW if you installed the nvidia driver FROM "yum" using the kmod-nvidia
the nvidia driver WILL AUTO UPDATE with a new kernel

HOWEVER
if you used the nvidia.run driver THEN
For EVERY kernel and X11 update you will have to MANUALLY reinstall the nvidia.run driver -- EVERY TIME

I eventually gave in and did the same. Problem solved, though not exactly in the way I wanted to solve it.

Agree.