Fedora won't start up after F10 upgrade

[belliott4488]

Hi,

Some quick background info: I am not a Linux expert, but I'm not sure I can still qualify as a "newbie", since my first Linux install was RH9 in 2003. I later upgraded to FC3 and continued to use it until my hard drive crashed around a year ago. I suffered on an old WinXP machine until I was able to buy a new system from someone on Craig's list. Although the guy didn't realize it (hence neither did I), it has a 64-bit processor, so when I installed Fedora 10, I installed the x86_64 version.

I chose F10 since I use the Planet CCRMA pro audio packages, and they lag slightly behind the latest and greatest distro versions. I'm also not a bleeding-edge kinda guy, since - as I said above - I am not an expert.

So, then, here's what's happened: I installed F10 by downloading the 64-bit DVD image from the Fedora Unity respin site. As I had hoped, after the installation when I asked yum if I was due for an upgrade it said I was up to date.

That was fine for a few weeks, but then this past Sunday I got a pop-up message saying that I was due for a system upgrade. I was hesitant, as I usually am before making any drastic changes, but I figured this is Fedora, they want to do the upgrade, this has got to be pretty safe. Not so much.

I fired off the upgrade before heading to bed and let it run overnight (it actually took only an hour or two, but I started it late). In the morning I found my system with a blank screen and essentially unresponsive. I can move a block cursor around the screen, and if I type anything it is echoed on the screen, but there is no response; I don't believe I am in a shell of any kind.

Hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL reboots the system, and it gets past the grub menu and the Fedora start-up progress bar (the dark blue/light blue/white text blocks with "Fedora 10" at the right). After the progress bar finishes, though, the screen goes blank (maybe X is starting up?) but never gets anywhere. That's when I can type stuff on the screen, but nothing provokes any kind of response (except for CTRL-ALT-DEL).

I'm mildly curious to know if the recommendation about upgrades vs. fresh installs, as given in the sticky post on this forum, still applies, or if it is now considered safer to let the system upgrade itself when it feels ready.

What I really need to know, however, is where I should start in order to get my system back. Should I go to the command line from the grub menu? Boot from my install disc in rescue mode? I'm not even sure what I should look for once I've done either of these, so I'm kind of floundering ...

This PC has a dual-core Pentium 4 running at 2.9 GHz, and apparently it's a 64-bit processor. The video card is by NVidia, but I don't know the exact card off-hand. There's a built-in Intel sound card of some kind and I added an M Audio Delta 1010LT multi-channel card.

Thanks for any suggestions!!

[stoggy]

Did you install the nvidia proprietary drivers? It sounds like X is trying to start but cant find the driver module.

try this: when your system is booting and gets to the grub menu. highlight the kernel you want to boot, hit e, then highlight the kernel line and hit e again. scroll to the end of that line and add a space and a 3. press enter to temporarily save it and press b. Your system should boot up to a console prompt.

If so all is well re-install the proprietary nvidia drivers and run `sudo /sbin/telinit 5` and you should be back at the gui. Above editing the grub menu wont save permanently it just saves for that 1 time, so you can boot your changes. Next time you reboot it will go back to runlevel 5 aka the gui.




Bump: oh yea.... if you never get the grub menu and your computer just boot into the latest kernel you are going to need to boot off the DVD and select the boot off the local hdd option.

This will also get you to a console prompt, but more like runlevel 1, or single user mode. You could chroot yourself into the hdd partitions, but lets keep it simple for now.

edit /mnt/sysimage/boot/grub/menu.lst and comment out the hiddenmenu line.

so change this line:
hiddenmenu
to this:
#hiddenmenu


then reboot and see above the Bump: part

[belliott4488]

Well, my original installation seemed to work fine for the couple of weeks before I was prompted to upgrade, so can I assume that the necessary Nvidia drivers had been identified and installed? Is it likely that the attempted upgrade would have replaced those drivers with incorrect ones?

In any case, once I have a console prompt, how do I check this out?

Thanks again.

[stoggy]

no but depending how your respin works, if they included the nvidia drivers in w/ your old kernel but not the new kernel then the drivers would be compiled for the wrong kernel.

ok try hitting "ctrl+alt+F2" its just like ctrl-alt-delete but hit F2 instead of delete. and see if that gets your to a terminal screen

[belliott4488]

Originally Posted by stoggy

no but depending how your respin works, if they included the nvidia drivers in w/ your old kernel but not the new kernel then the drivers would be compiled for the wrong kernel.

ok try hitting "ctrl+alt+F2" its just like ctrl-alt-delete but hit F2 instead of delete. and see if that gets your to a terminal screen

Okay, thanks - I'll try that at home tonight (I'm sneaking in a little forum time at work ).

- Bruce

[stoggy]

im telling!!! oh wait me too...

[belliott4488]

Originally Posted by stoggy

im telling!!! oh wait me too...

You can tell my boss ... she's probably on Facebook right now ...

Bump: hm ... well, okay, so I can get to a command prompt. Then I sit there stupidly wondering what to do with it.

I gather I need to confirm the version of the video drivers that got installed, is that right? Then somehow try to figure out which ones I should have and see if they're the same?

How about this - I hadn't yet done anything worth saving on this machine, so what if I just re-install Fedora 10 from my DVD - will that work, or will the attempted installation of Fedora 11 interfere with the installation?

I guess I'm not sure if it will be easier to go back to F10, which seemed to work, or to try and fix F11, which seems to require more debugging. Or, would a fresh install of Fedora 11 from disc be best?

Bump: Sorry ... this thread might be moot for me. I just checked the Planet CCRMA page, and they still don't have packages for Fedora 11, and since I'm planning to use their packages for recording audio, I think I'm best off with Fedora 10.

(I have to admit that I didn't even recognize that the automatic "upgrade" that I was prompted to accept was to Fedora 11 - I thought it was just an update of F10. If I had realized what it was doing, I probably would not have accepted it.)

Anyway, I'll bet I'm going to need a little help re-installing F10, since I'll be downgrading from 11. Sounds like a new thread ...

thanks!

- Bruce