Giving Up On Fedora

[Pete Travis]

On Sun, 2011-12-25 at 13:55 +0100, Swapnil Bhartiya wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I did not want that subject line, but am forced to.
> 
> I have been writing about Fedora on Muktware and the review was massive 
> hit -- around 80,000 reads. Users liked the review and our articles. But 
> since now I myself am not able to run Fedora on both my machine I don't 
> know how to write about it. I am willing to share info (error messages) 
> with you so as to be able to use Fedora.
> 
> I have been a long time Ubuntu user and decided to switch post Unity 
> mess. I tried Fedora 16 and loved it. I installed it on both my main PC 
> (which has Nvidia GTX 470 card) and Dell XPS. The main was stuck at 
> boot, after first reboot and installing Nvidia drivers. Could not find a 
> fix and started using openSUSE. Just today the Fedora on XPS also got 
> stuck during boot and shows "use systemct1 default" or Ctrl D. Not able 
> to boot into the system. I posted the issue about main PC on the forum 
> but did not get any solution, which I totally understand as its 
> volunteer list and not everyone may face the same problem. But since 
> Fedora is not running on both my PCs I am in bad position. I do want to 
> use Fedora, but due to my own technical limiations I can't. I 
> desperately seek your help to enable me to use Fedora :(
> 
> Best
> Swapnil  Bhartiya


Hey Swapnil,

I'm glad you've been enjoying Fedora.  Some time ago, I was an Ubuntu
user, and I think it provided a valuable introduction to the Linux
ecosystem for me.  Most seasoned users will attest that their choice of
distro is a personal choice, with some exceptions for special purpose
applications. Okay, you aren't looking to start a flamewar on the best
distro, that just wouldn't be appropriate for a support list, so I'll
get to some helpful information...

Fedora now uses systemd for it's init system.  The init system is
responsible for spawning daemons, managing service dependencies, and
generally helping the system get from a bare kernel to a useful system.
For more information on using Fedora with systemd, read here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd .  I'd also encourage you to at
least skim over the developer's writings, links from the wiki page to
0pointer.de pages, for a better understanding of systemd.  But how does
this help YOU?

With your desktop, I'd venture a guess that your GPU is too new to have
3D support from nouveau, the free driver.  Fedora doesn't distribute the
'nvidia' driver, but we can install it sanely from a 3rd party source.
Since you haven't said how you got the nvidia drivers, I'll head in that
direction. We can help your laptop along the way.

If you are familiar with the concept of 'runlevels,' there are parallels
with systemd to accomplish the same goals.  You can still use the
numerical designations - append {1, 3, 5} to your kernel boot line - but
it's valuable to know how the system works, so we'll use systemd.  Since
your system can't boot to a graphical interface, we need to stop at a
'lower runlevel.'  The systemd way would be to append
`systemd.unit=multiuser.target` - roughly analogous to a runlevel 3.
You should be able to log into a working bash session at this point (if
not, try a different target.)  See if you can pull anything helpful from
the logs to share {/var/log/messages, /var/log/Xorg.0.log, others.}
While you might be able to get by with an nvidia-xconfig to generate an
xorg.conf, if you downloaded the nvidia binaries from nvidia, you should
uninstall them, set up the 'rpmfusion' repo and install the packaged
drivers they provide, by following these instructions:
http://fedorasolved.org/video-solutions/nvidia-yum-kmod
It is a good idea to install akmod-nvidia with kmod-nvidia, this will
locally build the driver for new kernels if needed.  Finally, create a
basic xorg.conf file with the command `nvidia-xconfig` and reboot to
load the drivers.  If it doesn't work as expected, return to the lower
target and share the logs.

Please let us know how it works out, and if you discover specific
symptoms we can help with.  If you have trouble interpreting your logs,
fedora has fpaste, similar to ubuntu's pastebin(it?) so you can publicly
share them.

HTH,

Pete