Welllll, I have been trying to reboot my machine after I tried to unsuccessfully install the Nvivia Drivers MANUALLY since the cut-‘n’-paste EASY method did not work. I removed the blacklist nouveau references etc., and got it back to the state where the boot should have worked, but it doesn’t. I what get is the spinning worm (not the Nvidia 3 orange dots ), which stops and then it stops, gives me a BLACK SCREEN, then there is a string of OK’s that flash by, and then hangs instead of giving me the login screen.
Next I got more SERIOUS and tried to RESCUE the system, which FAILED. I tried to edit the kernel by appending systemd.unit=rescue.target to the line that says Linux. Got to the point where I entered my root password, but then got lost trying to troubleshoot the problem – the problem is I can’t get it to boot! I tried startx but that does not work.
Before I get SUPER SERIOUS and simply try to replace /boot from a install thumb drive – which may REALLY toast the system – Before I get to that point I thought I’d check into here to see if any of you have any suggestions (besides putting a bullet through its CPU and end its misery ).
I really would like to avoid doing a total reinstall of the system, and I wonder if just installing a NEW /boot would kick start the bloody thing.
As an aside does anyone know when there will be a NEW kernel update over yada,yada, 9.1-yada, yada? I am sitting pat at 8.5 before I attempt a new rollover on my main machine (ocelot) which right now is running openSUSE 15.3 Leap ( which can be upgraded to 15.4 by standing on ones head, saying special incantations, while sacrificing ones first born. ).
As a suggestion, I get similar problems with nvidia drivers on CentOS 7. The system is actually booting and on the network - the problem is that xwindows isn’t starting so you don’t get the typical GUI login screen. Is it on a network? Can you try to ssh to that machine from another one? Also, try doing a CTRL-ALT-F2 and see if you get a commandline login prompt.
Installing the nvidia drivers is actually a little complicated. I would need to go through some notes to remember all the steps it took to get it working correctly.
Well… Did try CTL-ALT-F2 – No go there too. Tried a half dozen things, none of which worked. Two days ago I burned a copy of RL 8.6 to a thumb drive and on Wed. I took the EXTREME step of of doing a partial reinstall – ie I replaced the /boot, and – forced too – / partitions. The Good News / Bad News: The Good News is that I now have jaguar booting; the Bad News is that I am going to have to re-create all the VD, configuration files etc. I’m not sure if by doing so I also wrecked other files etc. I’ll need to survey the wreckage in the coming days. I am hoping things such as /home and other directories were not touched, but end up having to re-install mc (Midnight Commander), KDE, etc., I have also been forced with having to deal with the lockup of the screen by the screen saver. Since I no longer have access to the previous kernel, since I ONLY have the 9.1 kernel of 8.6, I can’t drop back to the previous kernel workaround. I have – I hope figured out a different work around: I simply disabled the screen locker. Hopefully this problem will be taken care of in the next kernel release… whenever that is. I have the Nvidia drivers working in CentOS 7, and have since the Jurassic, but it seems that the CentOS 7 procedure has changed fairly recently (that was one of the ways I tried that FAILED). When I installed the driver in CentOS 7, the only thing that needed to be updated was the kmod-nividia driver, when that failed it meant that a new point release was on the way, so updates usually included the --exclude=kmod-nvidia xyz, then when the point release came out and I rolled over the machine the kernel and the kmod drivers were in sync again. But that was usually the ONLY thing I had to do. NOW?!? Go figure. One thing that FAILED was the MANUAL install, a simple removing – ie reversing – of the changes you made, did NOT bring me back to the nouveau default. Given that jaguar aka the “Kitty Litter Box”, was NOT backed up meant I was unable to roll back the changes like can do on leopard, which is what saved my bacon when i rolled over my workstation to 8.6 which then blew up big time – I lost maybe 4-5 hours rolling it back to 8.5 not over a week or more more in the case of jaguar. There are no redundancy drives in jaguar, which is maxed out at 500 GiB total – yes jaguar is that old, which makes it perfect for testing things on, whereas both leopard and ocelot have multiple drives as well as a 2TB backup drive, and even backup partitions where things can be temporarily moved to, jaguar simply has a total max capacity of 500 GiB, is taken up in a single 500 GiB HDD (it can’t even use SATA drives).
In its next life jaguar will be used for testing RL 9.1 (9.0 is DOA I refuse to touch any XYZ.0 distro). I might buy a second 500 GiB HDD so I can work with both RL 8.x and 9.x by simply changing the ribbon and power cables from one drive to the other.
Would, but this is really, REALLY OLD – I think it dates back to 2010 – jaguar has an ancient Nvidia GeForce GT 7500LE card in it.
The other thing is it has to have a VGA port native since my 4 position KVMA switch is VGA – adapters tend to do some strange things in output as I have found out with ocelot – it currently has a Nvidia GeForce GT 730 in it. I have a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti that has VGA that I need to stick back into ocelot to see if it will work. As I recall it raised a hissy fit the last time I tried it, and fell across the GT 730 laying around.
My knowledge of Radeon Graphics Cards is non-existent and I have no idea what Radeon card matches its equivalent Nvidia card, and if it has a VGA port natively. But Yeah, I’ve considered it.