Black Screen with cursor after dnf system-upgrade reboot

Ask Fedora
,
1

As the title suggests, I downloaded the upgrade packages for fedora 44 (from f43) using dnf system-upgrade download and then performed dnf system-upgrade reboot. Following that, I am receiving a black screen with cursor and no GUI.

Upon trying Ctrl Alt F2, the console window would open for some time and then automatically go back to the black screen.

Edit: GPU is nvidia Gt 1030 and drivers are latest ones provided by F43 repos.

Any suggestions to get me out of this pickle highly appreciated!

2

Which nvidia driver and card?

3

ahh, sorry.. should’ve mentioned that.

The card is GT 1030.

I am not sure about the driver version but I installed it using akmods and ran an update earlier today, so it should be on the latest version provided by f43 repos?

4

Try running

sudo depmod -a

5

No output upon running sudo depmod -a.

Additionally, running any dnf install/update command returns:

Cannot load dnf5 plugin: /usr/lib64/dnf5/plugins/builddep_cmd_plugin.so
Cannot load shared library “/usr/lib64/dnf5/plugins/builddep_cmd_plugin.so”: /usr/lib64/dnf5/plugins/builddep_cmd_plugin.so: undefined symbol: _ZN4dnf511match_specsERNS_7ContextERKNS47_cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEEEEEbPKc

6

No output is the expected result, did you reboot after running it?

7

Does this work?

dnf4 list *\dnf5\*
8

I rebooted now, no change.

Output of dnf4 *\list* seems to refresh repositories like dnf update does, and then lists packages with “dn5” in them

9

Ok, try

sudo dnf4 --releasever 43 distro-sync
10

I rebooted now, no change.

Output of dnf4 *\list* seems to refresh repositories like dnf update does, and then lists packages with “dn5” in them

Here is the list of installed packages attached:

Screenshot_20260430_191217_Gallery|690x368

11

Screenshot_20260430_191507_Gallery
Screenshot_20260430_191507_Gallery2230×432 728 KB

Upon running with --skip-broken, I get the same output, just without the "try to add ‘–skip-broken’ line.

12

Please post screen output as preformatted text. Before retiring I worked with a big scientific app suite and spent a lot of time looking for replacements when libraries were removed from linux distros. In most cases, libraries are dropped because there are new-improved alternatives, but also rare cases when the package author has died or is driving a taxi for a living.

If your projects don’t need cobalt right away, try removing the package.

13

Ok, looks like your running fc44, try removing nvidia and install 580.xx instead.

14

That would be hard as he only has VT access

15

I doubt that.

You upgraded from f43 to f44, and had the driver for f43 installed before the upgrade. That usually means the driver gets updated to the version with f44 (595) and that card is only supported by the 580 driver. 595 dropped support for older cards (maxwell, pasqual, etc).

Try running dnf list --installed \*nvidia\* and see what it returns. May be the 595 versions of all packages shown.

If so there are a couple things needed to recover.

  1. sudo dnf remove \*nvidia\* --exclude nvidia-gpu-firmware which removes all the installed nvidia packages but keeps the firmware package which is required for the nouveau driver.
  2. dnf repolist to see what repos you currently have enabled. If that shows the rpmfusion-nonfree and rpmfusion-nonfree-updates repo in the listing then skip step 3 below
  3. install the rpmfusion-nonfree and rpmfusion-free repos.
    sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
  4. Install the 580xx driver for f44. sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia-580xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx-cuda
  5. Wait about 5 minutes then reboot.

If all went well then the nvidia drivers should now load and things should be back to normal.