[SOLVED] F16 installation crashes

[skeetrules]

I'm a complete newbie to Linux, I just did a clean x86_64 install on a Athlon64 desktop. Installation went smoothly, but it crashes every time I hit the login screen I get the "oops something went wrong." I've tried doing a yum update, but I get the "cannot find repository: fedora." I tried to fix that error but I'm severely limited because I'm a noob to this command line.
Possibly relevant is that I'm working with nVidia graphics, but I don't know. Let me know what information might be helpful and I'll post it.
Any direction/code for how to fix this would be appreciated. Please assume that I don't know the commands, but I'm willing to experiment and learn.

[recondite]

1) "oops something went wrong" is too general. Can you give us the exact error message?

2) If you can login as root try the ifconfig command (just type ifconfig) to see if your system can find the ethernet port to the internet. You cant do a yum update if you are not on the internet so you should check that first.

Are you trying to login to the GUI or command line interface? You should not need to do yum to login to either. Are your sure the install went smoothly?

[skeetrules]

The problem with giving you a better error message is that it's not giving me a better error message. It gets to the point where it tries to load the login screen and crashes directly to the oops screen without flashing an error message or anything else.

The reason I wanted to try to do a yum update was that I was trying to see if it was drivers or some other obscure setting that was causing the crash. I googled my hardware and all the forums said do a yum update if you're crashing from the start, so that's what I tried first. Then of course that didn't work either, so I tried finding out what would cause yum to crash and was told to edit my .repo files. Which would be wonderful if somebody also told me how to access them.

As for the install, I did the basic GUI install the whole way, I got no error messages or crashes during installation, and I actually reinstalled to make sure that was the case. Unless I'm missing something subtle I don't think there's a problem with my install. I installed from a DVD if that makes a difference.

Ok ifconfig gives me this:

lo Link encap: Local Loopback
inet addr: 127.0.0.1 Mask 255.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope: Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU: 16436 Metric: 1

and all the rest report as 0, which I think probably means I'm not actually connected to anything.

[skeetrules]

This link limit is annoying. I don't know how else I'm going to post where I've been trying to get other help for reference. Rant over.

So I did a careful reinstall making sure my internet worked. I don't get the oops something went wrong screen anymore, it actually lets me log in. However, except for the background, the toolbars and windows (when they actually appear) look like they're in 16 bit color. I think this is the fault of my nvidia graphics card. I've downloaded the driver, and have it physically on my computer, but I can't seem to get it to install. The main error I get is that the nouveau driver is still implemented, so I've tried to shut it off using

rdblacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0

at the boot options screen but it seems to do nothing. Apparently there's some other way to edit the grub.conf files but I have not had any luck getting them to work.
excuse the spaces in these websites, like I said we're supposed to be restricted in the number we post:

h ttp :/ /jaredlundquist.com/?p=278
h ttp :/ /geek.co.il/wp/2011/11/15/installing-nvidia-drivers-on-fedora-16-the-wrong-way
h ttp :/ /forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=270956

I've followed the instructions on all of these, at some point there's always been a step that flat out doesn't work.

I've done my best to find some way to get this driver to install, I can't find one. I'd appreciate any help from anyone on this.

[ryptyde]

If you followed the guide at nVidiaGuide and you have checked to see if your card is supported then it may be just a simple edit of the xorg.conf file.

Check the xorg.conf file and see if it has nvidia listed instead of nouveau as the driver. The section will look like this in the file.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"

phil

[skeetrules]

Well, I did a clean install (mainly because I'm a noob and had no idea how else to make sure everything was reset) and followed that thread to the letter first thing and it's working! Thanks for confirming that that was the right procedure, everything functions fine now as far as I can tell!