Fedora 16 *MULTIPLE ISSUES* not booting up in graphical mod

[1528boyz]

Hi There,
I had a old Dell optiplex GX280 which was running windows xp very fine . i wanted to try Linux for the first time ever and was installing fedora 16 on it ,this was last sunday.


After 1 week of hassle and 3 times fresh installations and i finally wanted to give up on fedora before i thought if i could get some help from here to fix this thing.

ISSUE 1: Lot of issues since past week but my most and current issue is after booting in the GRUB menu i have 3 kernels listed and one of them is rescue mode . i am able to boot into a command line only in the rescue mode the other two options just hungs me and have to do a hard reset again .

Fedora (3.3.0-4.fc16.i686) -- Not working (says entering main loop and is hung)
Fedora Linux, with Linux 3.1.0-7.fc16.i686 -- Same issue as above not working
Fedora Linux, with Linux 3.1.0-7.fc16.i686 (recovery mode ) -- Through this i am able to login in command mode only

ISSUE 2: once in the command line rescue mode i tried typing startx, ctrl+D to enter graphical mode but of no use (log photo attached) .

ISSUE3:Finally i downloaded Fedora 16 DVD rescue version to see if it could repair the installed version ,validated the cksum's ,made a bootable dvd and tried to boot but this time it comes up with bootmgr is missing error and trying second time gives me No Default or UI configuration found error.

Guys --pls help me , I have been trying to fix this for the last 2 days spending hours of time looking through all the forums and stuff but i wasn't able to get to the root cause.

i dont want to do a fresh install i want to fix it because as i mentioned i have already installed 2 or 3 times this week ,i want to fix it .

INFO:

if i type runlevel it shows as "N S" and also i cannot change to any runlevel ,if i try to change to runlevel 3 or 5 by giving init 3 , the command prompt says ENTERING MAIN LOOP and takes me to a command line login screen asking me for my username and password and how many types i enter the details it keeps on asking me for the same.

NO ERROR IN Xorg.0.log
NO ERRORS IN boot.log


current situation is logged into rescue mode via command line ,Pls help me bring back the GNOME gui and fix my problem permanently , i dont know want info to provide but iam currently giving the hardware details and startx command line info . Xorg file do not have any errors i check it couple of times.

This is the only way i could get the logs for you ...
[URL="https://www.box.com/shared/2719681cabe0e9dcf4e0"]

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by 1528boyz

Hi There,
I had a old Dell optiplex GX280 which was running windows xp very fine

My first question would be if you have enough RAM?

When I ran Fedora 16 on an old Dell Inspiron 1100 (2 GHz Celeron with 1 gb of ram), it would only work in fallback mode. And then it was a little sluggish.

Given the age of your hardware, I would recommend at least 1 gb of ram, and Fedora 16 Xfce spin

[1528boyz]

i have 3 gb ram , ATI video card (not sure which one) Inter Pentium dual core 3 GHZ processor .

Is there a command i can run in rescue mode to get my complete hardware specs so that i can add that to my info that would be helpful for troubleshooting

[marko]

yes, lshw would be good but you might have to install it

[1528boyz]

No i am not connected to internet so not able to install anything ,as i told in my Original post my runlevel is showing as N S and i am not able to change it at all to start networking mode.

[JEO]

You can see what video card you have (and all pci cards) with the following command:

lspci

If you can't run graphical mode the video card driver is the likely culprit. My suspicion is that your video card is too old or doesn't have enough Video memory for modern linux graphical modes.

Note: there is an option in the install dvd to install using basic video driver (vesa). You might try that also.

[1528boyz]

i ran lspci and this is what my system currently have

01.00.0 VGA compatible controllers : ATI technologies Inc RV 370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)

02.00.0 Display Controller : ATI Technologies Inc RV370 [Radeon X300SE]

04.01.0 VGA compatible controller : ATI Technologies INC Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]


Also my system is not able to boot from USB or dvd at this time , when i try to boot it up it says

SYSLINUX 3.85 2010-02-20 CBIOS Copyright (c) 1994-2010 H. Peter Anvin et al
No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found!
boot:

[JEO]

The Radeon X300 should be new enough. You seem to also have an old Radeon 7000. I would try removing that 7000 and hook your monitor up to the X300 and see if it works.

[1528boyz]

i removed the Radeon 7000 completely and tried rebooting ,

still could not boot into GUI -- its stick in the fedora loading page
Was only able to boot into command line rescue mode with no network connection .

I am unable to boot from the fedora DVD install as its throwing a isolinux.bin is missing or corrupt (i have validated the cksum with two different tools and it is matching perfectly)
Any other suggestions , the problem is i am now not able to load windows also in this desktop whatever boot cd i put it either says isolinux.bin missing or if i put windows recovery cd it says Missing Operating system

[glennzo]

Hello 1528boyz and welcome to Fedora Forum. In future posts please leave the font size to default.

Have a look at the Posting Rules.

[marko]

Originally Posted by 1528boyz

No i am not connected to internet so not able to install anything ,as i told in my Original post my runlevel is showing as N S and i am not able to change it at all to start networking mode.

You don't have to be network connected, make a yum repo file called
/etc/yum.repos.d/dvd.repo that contains this (edit that as root):

[dvd]
name=dvd
baseurl=file:///media/"Fedora 16 x86_64 DVD"
enabled=0
gpgcheck=1

the 'enabled' is set 0 since you don't always want the DVD as a repository
then put the Install DVD in the drive and mount it, it should mount at point /media/Fedora 16 x86_64 DVD
with the gui not available you may have to mount it the old way by hand

mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /media/"Fedora 16 x86_64 DVD"

then do as root to install the 'lshw' command:

yum install --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=dvd lshw

You can install any packages off the DVD that way, the disablerepo=* is so all the other repos are ignored so you don't have problems with them being inaccessible

[rurikc]

Just to make sure (because it happened to me )

How do you know the system is hung ?

I'll give you my personal experience:

I've been caught twice with silly Fedora 16 settings:

1. Fedora starting a fsck, no progress bar, message lost in the flurry of all boot up messages (better lately but still), takes ages to fsck big slow disks ... Solution/workaround: do a fresh fsck (root must be read-only) There are other ways to disable fsck but require some tinkering with tune2fs (assuming you are using the extN fs).

2. Fedora swithcing to enhanced text based/ VGA mode but hanging in the middle, leaving a blank screen and the error hidden beneath, invisible. Solution: use "nomodeset" to disable VGA mode switch.

Now, the simplest thing is: boot in text-mode. Then just type 'X' at the prompt (this is uppercase X). This will start a barebones X server. See what happens. If it's an config error it will return very fast to text console and you will see. Alternatively it may hang (unlikely) or just haing in there in which case the problem lies elsewere.

Good luck.

[1528boyz]

thank rurikc

i typed X and it hung and never returned , so i guess error lies somewhere.

Anyways thanks everybody for your help i have re-installed the live cd and then installed windows ,i guess i will try fedora when i have my new desktop

[goodfella]

Originally Posted by 1528boyz

Hi There,


i dont want to do a fresh install i want to fix it because as i mentioned i have already installed 2 or 3 times this week ,i want to fix it .

]

If you start using Fedora you better get used to the idea of "fresh installs"