I have an old Dell PowerEdge SC1420, originally used as a server, but now just following weather maps from the Web, and backing up newer machines. It has been running Fedora for at least half a dozen releases.
Now, suddenly, it triggers the message on my monitor saying I have to tell the OS that the monitor (an HP w2207h) is 1680x1050.
I tried getting it out from behind my KVM switch and connecting it to all three peripherals directly. No joy.
I tried letting it finish booting and ssh-ing into it. No joy : "no route to host". (I probably have denyhosts installed, and it must've gotten set to launch on boot.)
I have media with Knoppix, SuperGrubDisk, and more; but in this case I'm not sure what to do with them, other than maybe get into the list of things that launch on boot and disabling denyhosts, and then perhaps telling Grub to boot to init 3. But then what?
I'm pretty sure that even F17 ran on that machine at first; I know for certain that it was OK up through F16.