Bug 886638 - F18-Beta Installation Blocked by lack of GUI support for older nVidia PCIE video cards
Summary: F18-Beta Installation Blocked by lack of GUI support for older nVidia PCIE vi...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: xorg-x11-drv-nouveau
Version: 18
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
urgent
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ben Skeggs
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2012-12-12 18:08 UTC by bob
Modified: 2014-02-05 13:50 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2014-02-05 13:50:40 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description bob 2012-12-12 18:08:05 UTC
Description of problem:

F18-beta installation is blocked if you have an older PCIE video card by Nvidia.

This happens because nouveau will not support these cards and there is no back-up facility for text mode installation.  If you attempt to use any of the GUI installation media, the installation will fail when the video board is asked to enter high resolution graphics mode.  The result will be a black/blank screen with a functional mouse.

By old, I mean an older PCIExpress card, not anything ancient like AGP or PCI.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

F18-beta -- all installation media are effected.  I've tried them all.

How reproducible:

every time.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to load F18-beta on a machine with an older nvidia PCIE card.
2. System hangs with a black screen of death when the GUI is loaded.
3.
  
Actual results:

Black Screen of Death

Expected results:

GUI

Additional info:

To get a basic text mode system installed, the only method that will work is to perform a VNC installation over a network, using the GUI on a remote VNC client with a supported video card to run anaconda.  Installing Fedora shouldn't be this hard.

Here is the video card that is effected:

# lspci | grep "VGA"
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600 GT] (rev a2)

Once a basic text mode system has been installed to bare metal, removal of nouveau and installation of the appropriate proprietary nvidia driver solves the problem.

Comment 1 bob 2012-12-12 18:24:29 UTC
Please ignore the previous lspci data which was posted in error.  It describes a video card that *is* supported by nouveau.  The following information accurately describes the PCIE card that nouveau does not support:

[root@localhost ~]# lspci | grep "VGA"
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation NV37GL [Quadro FX 330/GeForce PCX 5300] (rev a2)

Comment 2 Fedora End Of Life 2013-12-21 09:52:53 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 18 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 18. 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 '18'.

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 18's end of life.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we may not be 
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Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
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Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2014-02-05 13:50:45 UTC
Fedora 18 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2014-01-14. Fedora 18 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.

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