F13 - installation problem (Anaconda + Display)

[Richard Shaw]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Federico Marziali
<federico.marziali at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm trying to install Fedora 13 on a Sony Vaio VPCF11C5E (F-series)
>>> and I'm incurring in the following 2 problems
>>>
>>> 1. If I try to customize the partitioning layout, I get a python error
>>> and the suggestion to file a bug. I just applied for an account to
>>> bugzilla.redhat.com and I might try to reproduce the bug once I have
>>> access to bugzilla. In the meanwhile, since I'm installing on a SSD,
>>> I'm curious to know if somebody else had the same problem with this
>>> type of hard drives.
>> Not sure what's going on here, but then again I wanted a striped LVM
>> partition (4GB SSD, 4GB SD) so I used System Rescue CD booted on a USB
>> flash drive to setup my partitions. I only let Anaconda format them.
>
> Oh well, I still haven't got access to bugzilla, so I'll worry to file
> a bug when I eventually get the username and password (BTW, is that
> normal that it takes "so long" - i.e. more than 24 hours - for an
> account?)

No, that's not normal, you might need to try again.

>>> 2. More serious: the screen resolution used is wrong and as a result I
>>> can see only a portion of the screen content, which creates
>>> difficulties both at installation time, when one wants to click on the
>>> "forward" button :), and during "normal" usafe.
>>> After installation I tried to install the nvidia drivers from RPM
>>> fusion, resulting in a not anymore functioning system (the boot
>>> process gets till when the fedora logo gets "filled up" and than hangs
>>> there forever)
>>> The graphic card is a Nvidia geforce 330M.
>>> Specifying the parameter "resolution=1920x1080" at boot time didn't help.
>>> Any ideas how to proceed?
>> Try adding "rdblacklist=nouveau" to your grub kernel parameters in
>>"/boot/grub/menu.lst". This usually happens after a fresh install
>>because the initial ram disk still has the nouveau driver in it and
>>once it's loaded the nvidia driver can't load. If the proper module
>>blacklist was added by the package, which it should have been, this
>>will be taken care of for you at the next kernel update but it doesn't
>>hurt to leave the kernel parameter there.

If you saw the graphical bootup (called Plymouth) and did not add a
vga= then the rdblacklist= parameter did not take. If it does and you
don't specify vga= then you should see the text mode bootup version of
Plymouth, so I would assume the nouveau driver is still loading. You
definitely need to fix this problem first.

Perhaps you can post your /boot/grub/grub.conf to the list? (this is
the same as menu.lst, in fact, menu.lst is a symbolic link to
grub.conf)

> Richard, thanks for your hint, but unfortunately this didn't fix the problem.
> I now have a black screen after the "filled-up logo".
> Is there a way to boot  and loading a "compatibility" display driver?
> So that I can remove the nvidia packages...
>
> I just came across a IA 64 specific readme on the nvidia website:
> ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-ia64/1.0-5336/README.IA64
> I assume that the RPMFusion package redistributes this proprietary
> driver but....Is that a typo or does the above readme really state
> that the 64 bit drivers do not work with kernel 2.6???!!

I think you're confusing IA 64 with x86_64. Your system is x86 based.
I use the rpmfusion packaged driver on 3 x86_64 installs of Fedora 12
& 13.

>> Also, once you do that it will revert to a text mode boot up, if you
>> want the graphical bootup add a "vga=..." kernel parameter as well.
>> The best way to figure out what resolution is to manually add
>> "vga=ask" the first time and pick one of the available resolutions,
>> such as 317 or whatever it is. Once you find one you like (this will
>> also affect virtual terminals), add it to your grub kernel options but
>> put "0x" in front of your choice, i.e.: "vga=0x317"
> Actually this didn't fix the problem when X gets started... it still
> leaves a portion of the screen chopped out...

I would leave the vga parameter out until you get the nouveau driver
to stop loading.

> I'm starting to wonder if these problems coudl have an easy happy
> ending by just installing the 32-bit version of fedora. :)

It may be worth a try, but I don't think your problems are 32 vs. 64
bit problems. I did a quick search online and found some bug reports
for your specific model on Ubuntu for graphical issues[1].

Richard

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers/+bug/565382