F13 - installation problem (Anaconda + Display)

[Federico Marziali]

[CUT: bugzilla account request]

>>>> 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)

Of couse, here it goes:

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.33.5-124.fc13.x86_64)
	root (hd0,4)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.33.5-124.fc13.x86_64 ro
root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root
rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=de rhgb quiet
	initrd /initramfs-2.6.33.5-124.fc13.x86_64.img
title Fedora (2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64)
	root (hd0,4)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64 ro
root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root
rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=de rhgb quiet
	initrd /initramfs-2.6.33.3-85.fc13.x86_64.img
title Windows 7 DE
	rootnoverify (hd0,1)
	chainloader +1

I wonder if I can just remove the nouveau drivers now that the nvidia
ones are  "somehow" working.

[CUT]
> 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.
You are absolutely right... in the desperation of finding a solution I
overlooked the architecture information... :)

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

Thanks for your very informative response. Actually by manually
editing the xorg.conf file as I'm now again able to boot and I can
even see the whole screen! :)
I still have to specify at boot time

But, even more funnily, I have the following error at boot time:
Enabling the nvidia driver: /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions: line 526: NNNN
Segmentation fault  "$@"
where NNNN is a 4 digit random number...

Any more hints? :)
Thanks for your help so far!