After X updates, only blinking cursor

[jcphil]

After adding the Rawhide repo to my F15 system, I upgraded everything X-related. All dependencies were satisfied. But now when I boot up, I only get a blinking cursor after the splash screen. No command prompt. No KDM. No way to log in. Is there any way I can work through this? I would be happy to have either the command prompt or KDE. But I can't get to either. :Y

[glennzo]

You should be able to use CTRL/ALT and the F keys to get a virtual terminal. Try CTRL/ALT/F3 and see if you get a log in prompt.

Why did you add rawhide?

[jvillain]

Have you tried ALT+CTL+F8 or F9 etc?

Have you tried just booting to single user mode? If not

When you get to the grub boot menu hit the space bar or any other key.
Hit the 'A' key which will allow you to append to the end of the line. Add a space and then the word single

That should take you to rescue mode. If not then we will know your issue is is pretty narrow. But you can read the logs etc. If you make it to rescue mode then you can try init 3 or init 5.

[jcphil]

The ctrl-alt combinations don't do anything. I was able to boot into single user mode. A read of Xorg.0.log shows that X is seg faulting. So, my next challenge is to see how I can get a network connection from the command line. I can't use yum with no connection. Any suggestions there? :confused:

[jvillain]

You can try

init 3

err excuse me

systemctl isolate multi-user.target

Or more simply one of these two which ever one you use

service NetworkManager start
service network start

There is a plugin for yum called yum-plugin-local. If you install it it will keep copies of previous versions of your rpms on the local file system so it is easier to downgrade. Some thing to think about.

[jcphil]

Thanks! That got me up and running on yum. The sync-distro option is getting me back to a usable installation. :dance:

[martyfelker]

Sorry to say but my main advice is don't upgrade xorg drivers - particularly with NVidia. Possibly you could try the driver from Nvidia - if you follow the advice given and hit the space bar on the grub menu and edit the kernel line to add "single" <no quotes of course. Run the installer after chmod +x - but be warned its pretty chancy.

Marty

[jvillain]

The proprietary drivers are useless in rawhide. They can be OK in the release versions as long as you don't upgrade but they are completely hopeless in rawhide.