Description of problem: When installing Fedora 9 preview, after the disk checking stage, and after displaying "Loading Anaconda/probing for video card/waiting for X to start" (or words to that effect), the installer hangs with a blank screen. This occurs with the x64 version (I haven't downloaded i386 to see whether it suffers the same issue). The system in question has an ABIT IP-35 pro motherboard with an Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS graphics card, and is using a Dell widescreen LCD monitor with 1920x1200 native resolution. How reproducible: Begin graphical Fedora install with the setup outlined above. Actual results: Installer hangs with blank screen. Expected results: Fedora 9 proceeds to install. Further information: The problem appears to be related to X or the graphics subsystem since I was able to successfully install F9 without encountering this issue by selecting a text mode install from the initial menu. After booting to the installed system in text mode, selecting "configure X" from the configuration tool that loads by default seemed to cause the same problem. However, oddly, dropping to a command prompt and then running "startx" manually caused no such issue, and Gnome loaded up as expected.
Does booting the installer with 'xdriver=vesa' help?
(In reply to comment #1) > Does booting the installer with 'xdriver=vesa' help? Yes, the graphical installation proceeds as normal with that option specified, and I don't encounter the problem.
I hope it's OK for me to add this info here. I get the same problem on an Acer laptop (Nvidia 7000m) where the graphics installer does not start, this whilst using the i686 live cd. I will try the xdriver=vesa to see if it helps in this case.
Just to confirm xdriver=vesa also works for i686 live cd.
Thanks for the bug report. We have reviewed the information you have provided above, and there is some additional information we require that will be helpful in our diagnosis of this issue. Please attach your X server log file (/var/log/Xorg.*.log or /tmp/X* in case of failure during installation) to the bug report as individual uncompressed file attachments using the bugzilla file attachment link below. We will review this issue again once you've had a chance to attach this information. Thanks in advance.
I'm not sure how I can provide such a log, since as mentioned, the installer hangs with a blank screen upon loading X. It won't respond to attempts to switch to another terminal.
OK, that's bad. Could you install in the text mode and then try startx from the runlevel 3? /var/log/Xorg.0.log would be very useful for us.
As I mentioned originally, running "startx" after installing in text mode doesn't display the problem, and Gnome loads as expected. However, selecting "configure x" from the setup tool does seem to display the same problem, with a blank screen resulting, and no response to trying to change terminal. I'm therefore going to attach Xorg.0.log (the result of running startx, where things load normally) and Xorg.setup.log (where the problem is exhibited). Hopefully this will be of some help.
Created attachment 303673 [details] Log of successful start
Created attachment 303674 [details] Setup log where problem seems to be displayed This log is only 16 lines long, it seems to stop recording fairly early in the process, I assume as a result of the issue.
Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
I'm having the same issue with an Asus P5K-Deluxe (Same chipset as creator), 8800GTX and a 24" 1920x1200 Dell monitor.
I've installed the release version of F9 and the issue still exists for me i.e. text mode or VESA driver is required to proceed with installer, but Gnome loads fine after installing in text mode and using the "startx" command.
Can you confirm whether or not it uses the nvidia blob once installed? I'm trying to decide if it's worth installing as I'm trying some other distros, but if I have to use VESA to get it to work I think I'll wait on it. I don't mind a text mode installer but I want nvidia's binary driver once the installation is done.
It uses the NV driver once installed, it just seems to be an installer issue. I would expect that it will work fine with the Nvidia binary drivers as well, but I haven't tried them since there aren't non-testing drivers that are compatible with F9's version of X yet as far as I know.
I installed Fedora 9 with no video related problems on a system with 8800GT-512MB card, and an old 15" LCD monitor whose maximum capability is 1024x768 and analog VGA input. Once the system was installed and updated fully online I relocated it to my desk with a 24" DELL 2405FPW LCD (which has a native 1900x1200 resolution) connected via a DVI-to-VGA adapter which is connected to the uppermost DVI/VGA port (near the card bracket screw) position. I have been unable to get X started with the nv driver at any resolution I've tried, including various lower resolutions like 1024x768. I just get a black screen when I "init 5". e.g. these did not help even when I did a cycle of init 3 / init 5 to restart X. system-config-display --set-resolution="1280x1024" system-config-display --set-resolution="1600x1200" When I did this: system-config-display --set-driver=vesa to switch /etc/X11/xorg.conf to the vesa driver instead of the nv driver, I am able to "init 5" and use the default gdm + gnome + graphical environment. I am now posting in 1600x1200xMillions of colors with the Vesa driver selected on the same 8800GT and with the same DVI -> DVI to VGA -> DELL 2405FPW connected as fails to work with the nv driver. There is a known ABI incompatibility with the beta X-Org server used in Fedora 9 and the "full" NVIDIA closed source blob driver: q.v. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=d6ea2cc9c98b447e3fbecda94f01a139&t=107725 FYI: ...apparently you have to recompile GDM to get it to pass the ignore ABI switch to get it to work better or revert to the Fedora 8's Xorg which is a supported version for the most recent LINUX closed source driver. Although no official source has suggested this, I suspect within about 10 days we'll see an updated closed source LINUX driver version release from NVIDIA which is likely to support Fedora 9's beta Xorg ABI; I base this aspiration on their monthly history of releasing LINUX blob drivers around the 3rd week of the month, and on a forum comment by a NVIDIA staff person indicating that they planned to support the "beta" ABI in an upcoming driver because X-Org has promised that the ABI will not change between now and the final Xorg release. That all being said, I'm still surprised / dissapointed / confused that the open source Fedora 9 default *NV* driver doesn't work better on the G92 8800GTs (and maybe other cards) since clearly it would likely have been compiled to support the F9 distribution's Xorg release + API, so I presume this is some new kind of bug / problem unrelated to NVIDIA's blob driver XORG support issues.
I'm having comparable problems with the anaconda installer using the Fedora 9 X64 release DVD. It asks for my language, keyboard layout, whether to test the install disc media, then proceeds to tell me it is starting X; the following messages are correctly displayed: Running anaconda... Probing for video card: 8800GTX ... G80 ... it identifies the card correctly. Waiting for X server to start.... After that I get a blank screen which I'm not able to usefully do anything at except CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot. As far as I can tell, C-A-Fn doesn't do any useful console / text mode switching; C-A-BS doesn't do anything useful; C-A-- or C-A-+ doesn't do anything useful either. I have a setup roughly similar to the original bug submitter and Mr. Gibbs in Comment #12 -- my setup is: P5K DELUXE, XFX 8800GTX, DELL 2405FPW 24" Dell Monitor on DVI #1, PRO-458 analog 1024x768 15" vga monitor on VGA #2 through the DVI->VGA dongle, 8GB RAM. Soft-Powering off the Dell LCD (leaving it connected), and powering on the PRO-458 1024x768 monitor doesn't seem to help the system present a usable video mode. I've soft and cold power-cycled the system and the monitors a couple of times without any difference in the manifestation of the bug. Yesterday I submitted this bug report: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447239 concerning a different system (ABIT IP35-E / 8800GT-512) which had occasional but not perpetual "nv" driver problems with the same Monitors used here. If I add the kernel boot line agruments: xdriver=vesa I am able to get into anaconda / X and see useful video on the DELL 24" DVI monitor.
I'm also using a Dell 2405FPW monitor, which could be significant since most of the people reporting this problem seem to have a similar setup (this monitor, nVidia 8800 series card, similar motherboard chipset).
I have same problem preventing upgrade to 9, this is with two different MB's one gigabyte AMD the other asus Intel, both with x86_64. The problem I see is the video driver, I have an 8800gts 640mb used in both trials and always produces a blank screen. I will wait until the drivers are stable and working before trashing my system.
This message is a reminder that Fedora 9 is nearing its end of life. Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 9. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '9'. Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 9's end of life. Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 9 is end of life. If you would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version of Fedora please change the 'version' of this bug to the applicable version. If you are unable to change the version, please add a comment here and someone will do it for you. Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes bugs or makes them obsolete. The process we are following is described here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
Fedora 9 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-07-10. Fedora 9 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.