F18 yum update bricks X - workaround

[Adam Williamson]

On Sat, 2012-09-15 at 12:38 -0700, Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R wrote:
> On 09/13/2012 01:37 PM, Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R wrote:
> > After successfully installing RC3 and adding various
> > packages to compile gnuradio et al. I issued a
> > yum -y --skip-broken update
> >
> > This pparently updated Noveau or something to a
> > version that doesn't quite work.  The cursor does
> > not appear and I was unable to log in by using
> > tab and cursor keys.
> >
> > This Noveau thing has happened once or twice before with F18.
> >
> > This time I was able to install the latest NVIDIA driver but the
> > machine then locks up when I try to start X.
> >
> > Intel Core CPU, 8GB, Nvidia 480GT
> >
> >
> Changing "rhgb quiet" to "nomodeset" in grub.cfg results in a
> workable system that displays the cursor.  Unfortunately it
> won't use my monitor's full 1920 resolution but it's better than
> something that is profoundly broken.

This sounds like https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=857300 .
You only need to drop 'rhgb' to work around it, no need to drop 'quiet'
or add 'nomodeset' (which results in the system using the 'vesa' driver,
which will be slow in addition to the issues mentioned above). To fix it
just grab the kernel update -
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/kernel-3.6.0-0.rc6.git0.2.fc18 .
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net