cannot boot after F12 to F14 upgrade

[Juan R. de Silva]

I've had F12 installed on Dell Latitude D820 as a part of multi distro 
system.  Today, just for curiosity sake, I've tried to upgrade it 
directly to F14 (still in beta until tomorrow) using PreUpgrade utility.

After upgrade completed and reported successful, the system stalls at 
boot. It shows the boot progressing blue/white bars as normal, reaches 
the end (the bar gets all white), displays F14 and freezes at this point.

Pressing Ctl-Alt-Del displays list of process being stopped preparing to 
reboot as usual. To me it looks like X for some reason cannot start (?).

I tried to boot to previous kernel - the same story.  I looked at Fedora 
boot directory from withing Ubuntu - did not find any special.

Any suggestions, please?  I have NVIDIA graphic card on board.

[Chris Smart]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Juan R. de Silva
 wrote:
> Any suggestions, please?  I have NVIDIA graphic card on board.

Sounds like you might have an xorg.conf configuration file which uses
the nvidia driver? If so, that driver probably does not exist in your
system after you've upgraded to F14.

Try booting up and log onto terminal 2 (Alt + F2). Move your
/etc/X11/xorg.conf file out of the way, if you have one. With no
xorg.conf, this should get Fedora to start X automatically with the
vesa driver (as nouveau might be blacklisted).

Or, you can try installing the latest nvidia driver (you need
RPMFusion repositories and I've no idea if this works on F14 yet).

mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-moved-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
yum install kernel-devel dkms akmod-nvidia
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 time
/usr/sbin/akmods --force
dracut -f /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
reboot

Hopefully, that will build and install the nvidia driver. See if that works :-)

-c

[Chris Smart]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Chris Smart  wrote:
> mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-moved-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
> yum install kernel-devel dkms akmod-nvidia
> xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 time
> /usr/sbin/akmods --force
> dracut -f /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
> reboot

Opps, that's wrapping, it should be:

1) mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-moved-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
2) yum install kernel-devel dkms akmod-nvidia \
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 time
3) /usr/sbin/akmods --force
4) depmod -a
5) dracut -f /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
6) reboot

-c

[Juan R. de Silva]

> mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-moved-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)

Moving out of the way xorg.conf worked out as you suggested.  I am now 
in F14 using vesa driver.  Thanks for that. :-)
> yum install kernel-devel dkms akmod-nvidia \
>
> xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 time

This part worked out fine and installed all requested.
> /usr/sbin/akmods --force

But this produced the following errors:

[root@mobyfedora]# /usr/sbin/akmods --force
Checking kmods exist for 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE         [  OK  ]
Files needed for building modules against kernel
2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE could not be found as the following
directories are missing:
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE/
/lib/modules/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE/build/              [FAILED]
> depmod -a
> dracut -f /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r) 6) reboot

Thus executing the remaining part had not much sense.

I'll try to look deeper into it tomorrow since now I'm too sleepy.

Again, thank you for help. And for further expecting suggestions :-)...

[Chris Smart]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Juan R. de Silva
 wrote:
> Moving out of the way xorg.conf worked out as you suggested.  I am now
> in F14 using vesa driver.  Thanks for that. :-)

No worries.
> > /usr/sbin/akmods --force
>
> But this produced the following errors:
>
> [root@mobyfedora]# /usr/sbin/akmods --force
> Checking kmods exist for 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE         [  OK  ]
> Files needed for building modules against kernel
> 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE could not be found as the following
> directories are missing:
> /usr/src/kernels/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE/
> /lib/modules/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE/build/              [FAILED]

Hmm.. did you get a kernel update at some point and not yet reboot? Is
that the kernel you're currently running? Maybe make sure you're
running the right kernel and see if you have kernel-devel installed
for your kernel. If so, it should have given you
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE

-c

[Juan R. de Silva]

On Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:03:41 +1100, Chris Smart wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Juan R. de Silva
>  wrote:
> > Moving out of the way xorg.conf worked out as you suggested.  I am now
> > in F14 using vesa driver.  Thanks for that. :-)
>
> No worries.
> > > /usr/sbin/akmods --force
> >
> > But this produced the following errors:
> >
> > [root@mobyfedora]# /usr/sbin/akmods --force Checking kmods exist for
> > 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE         [  OK  ] Files needed for building
> > modules against kernel 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE could not be found as
> > the following directories are missing:
> > /usr/src/kernels/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE/
> > /lib/modules/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE/build/              [FAILED]
>
> Hmm.. did you get a kernel update at some point and not yet reboot?

noops
> Is that the kernel you're currently running?

yes it is
> Maybe make sure you're running
> the right kernel and see if you have kernel-devel installed for your
> kernel. If so, it should have given you
> /usr/src/kernels/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.PAE

however this directory does not exist. mistery...

at this point i've given up. i am going to restore the entire system to 
its initial state, then upgrade and proceed up to the point i can use the 
system with vesa driver.

then i'll remove old nvidia modules and related kernels and manually 
install new ones. let's see.

[Chris Smart]

On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Juan R. de Silva
 wrote:
> at this point i've given up.

OK :-)

[Juan R. de Silva]

On Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:56:37 +1100, Chris Smart wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Juan R. de Silva
>  wrote:
> > at this point i've given up.
>
> OK :-)

that's really very interesting. this time the update worked out as a 
charm. no need to get rid of the old xorg.conf. it just installed nvidia 
driver and booted X as a good boy.

mistery.

though now i'm having another problem and it looks to me like a bug in 
F14. i'll make a new post about it. in a minute.

again, thanks for your help