Installing nvidia driver on Fedora 21 crashes my system

[Mike Ruckman]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:38:12AM +0100, Napoleon Quashie wrote:
> I have been using Fedora 21 since the alpha release and overall it has
> worked wonderfully (it has never one crashed and I use it every day), even
> to the extent of noticing a reduction in the memory consumed and processor
> usage when I have all my usual application up and running. One thing though
> is, I find my screen is kind of jerky when I scroll and this has never
> happened with other Fedora releases.
> 
> I therefore tried to install nvidia. I have always followed the steps from
> http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2014/fedora-20-nvidia-guide/. It
> basically boils down to:
> 
> Install RPMFusion
> 
> *yum install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs kernel-devel acpid*
> 
> yum install kernel-PAE-devel
> mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
> dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
> 
> *reboot*
> 
> However, after reboot, I get the rather interesting message:
> 
> Oh no something has gone wrong
> >
> > A problem has occured and the system can't recover.
> >
> > Please logout and try again.
> >
> > I've never had any issues installing nvidia in the past on any Fedora
> release. Hoping for some solutions on how to fix this. Thanks in the
> meantime.

nVidia drivers only work with certain kernels, and it looks to me like that's
your issue. I run the nvidia drivers, but I don't use RPMFusion. For me the 
workflow looks like this (starting from nouveau):

 1 - sudo yum update
 2 - reboot and download nVidia drivers
 3 - ctrl-alt-f2 and log in again
 4 - sudo init 3
 5 - install nVidia drivers (this will autobackup your x conf)
 6 - sudo init 5 (will work if the kernel matches what nVidia provides)
 7 - ctrl-alt-f2 and log out of that terminal
 8 - ctrl-alt-f1 to get back to the GUI and your day

If you get the same error after completing step 6, then you just have to wait
until nVidia provides new drivers for updated kernels. If you have to recover,
follow these steps (assuming you're starting from a failed step 6):

 1 - ctrl-alt-f2
 2 - sudo init 3
 3 - uninstall the nvidia drivers (run with --uninstall), this will ask you if
     you want to restore your previous settings, pick yes
 4 - sudo init 5 (this should bring you back to the GUI)
 5 - ctrl-alt-f2 and log out of that terminal
 6 - ctrl-alt-f1 to get back to the GUI

With running the nVidia blobs you're at the mercy of nVidia for support and 
which kernel the driver works with. If you use RPMFusion, you're also at the
mercy of the RPMFusion packagers. AIUI they do a pretty good job of keeping 
the packages up to date, but I prefer to just do it myself and remove that 
extra level.

If you get a working kernel, you can always '-X kernel*' when you do a yum
update to not include kernel updates. Though, if the kernel update has security
fixes, skipping it is probably a bad idea and you should just wait on nVidia to
publish new drivers.

Hope that helps. If you still want to use the RPMFusion repos, then you could 
probably get help filing a bug [0] with them, in #rpmfusion on freenode, or 
mailing their list [1]. But this doesn't look or feel like a bug with *Fedora*
but rather that the nVidia drivers don't support the kernel you have.

[0] http://rpmfusion.org/ReportingBugs
[1] http://lists.rpmfusion.org/mailman/listinfo/rpmfusion-users

-- 
// Mike 
--
Fedora QA
freenode: roshi
http://roshi.fedorapeople.org