Can't start directly in runlevel 5

[daviddoria]

I am using Fedora 13. If I boot directly to runlevel 5, the Fedora progress bar goes all the way across and then just stays at 100% and X never loads. I have to hard-restart the machine. However, if I press 'a' to append the kernel arguments and append the '3' to start in runlevel 3, login at the terminal that is displayed, and then type 'startx', everything works perfectly. This is not the end of the world, but is quite annoying. Does anyone have any idea what could be going wrong?

Thanks,

David

[CSchwangler]

After a failed start, could you start again and look into /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/messages? It may contain some evidence why the previous start failed. I guess it would be best for the second start to not use a gui, since that would overwrite Xorg.0.log.

[daviddoria]

There didn't look like anything relevant in /var/log/messages, but /var/log/Xorg.0.log said:

[    21.625] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[    21.626] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
[    21.626] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[    21.626] 	compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[    21.626] 	Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[    21.628] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module. Please check your
[    21.628] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages.
[    21.628] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
[    21.628] (II) Unloading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
[    21.628] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module-specific error, 0)
[    21.628] (EE) No drivers available.
[    21.628] 
Fatal server error:
[    21.628] no screens found
[    21.628]

I'm confused though since I can start in RL3 and then 'startx' and everything works fine - what is the difference?

David

[CSchwangler]

Not sure, may be it is the kernel mode setting that takes place if you start in run level 5. Can you try to add nomodeset to the kernel parameters?

[daviddoria]

Worked like a charm, thanks!

[daviddoria]

Ok, I'm really confused now. It worked when I added 'nomodeset' manually as a kernel argument. Then I added 'nomodeset' to all of my kernel options in grub.conf. When I restarted it stopped at the progress bar like it did before. I restarted again and hit 'a' to modify the kernel arguments and 'nomodeset' was already there. I simply hit 'enter' without modifying it and then it booted correctly!?

Any idea what the difference would be?

David

[daviddoria]

Ah, it all makes sense now. In /boot/grub/grub.conf it was set to :
default=3

so it was booting a different kernel than the one I was selecting manually (the first one).

I changed it to
default=0

and all is well.

David