I have an nvidia gpu on fedora 39 (kde spin) and a recent ‘dnf upgrade’ caused the nvidia drivers to crash when loading plasma.
I tried restoring the nouveau drivers by removing the nvidia drivers and rebooting. However, the nouveau drivers did not load and I still could not start plasma.
I noticed that the nouveau drivers were blacklisted in my grub config (with rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau specified in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX), so I edited /etc/default/grub and removed those blacklist entries then tried to update grub (UEFI) with:
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.
I think this command was not correct for my system as now it will not even get past the splash screen when booting.
I had made a backup of the old grub file in /etc/default/grub and I don’t know if the presence of that file in the directory could be causing an issue, but either way I cannot boot into my system now.
I have found many conflicting instructions on how to repair grub by booting from a live usb/creating a chroot environment and reinstalling grub. What can I do to get my system to boot again? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Can you provide the content of /etc/default/grub for us?
Also, can you boot to the grub menu then edit the kernel command line (begins with linux= to remove rhgb quiet and add 3 at the end of that line so the system will boot to a text screen where more info can be obtained.
The line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= was previously GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau"
(before I removed the two blacklist entries)
I am sorry but I don’t understand how to edit the kernel command line. I can get to the grub boot menu (with different linux kernels to boot into) and at that menu I can press ‘c’ to get to a grub prompt. But after that I’m lost … it’s just a grub prompt so I don’t know what to do at that point!
At the grub menu you press e instead of the ‘c’ which allows you to edit the entries. A prompt should show how to continue booting after performing the edit.
I believe that will be either ‘ctrl-X’ or ‘F10’
It may be more advantageous to use a live media usb for booting since a copy & paste is difficult when in a text screen. We can still see the inxi output from a terminal there. We could also use a chroot environment to see the installed nvidia driver packages.
Ok thanks for explaining - I’m happy to try editing the kernel command line and manually copy the info (unless there’s just too much). Or I can boot from the live media usb if you think that will be best anyway?
Since I removed all the nvidia driver packages before this whole problem occurred, I would guess that there shouldn’t be any of those still installed …
Depending upon how you removed the drivers it is possible that action triggered part of this issue. There is a firmware package (nvidia-gpu-firmware) that is installed by fedora and is often required before the gpu can have a driver loaded and become active.
Please show the output of dnf list installed '*nvidia*' as requested as soon as possible.
The version number you show does not appear valid - possibly due to a type.
The current version of that firmware package as updated on my system should be
It appears that package is up to date so now the inxi output would be helpful.
You could run that as inxi -Fzxx > myfile.txt then copy the myfile.txt to a usb device and would be able to upload the full output as text here from a different machine.
Please note that very soon f41 will be released and a month later f39 will become EOL so it may be of more advantage to update now to f40 or f41 rather that fight this problem with a release that is soon to become EOL
You could even do the full upgrade from within the text screen you get as you are able to log in right now and the upgrade probably would fix the current problems. Use the method shown at Upgrading Fedora Linux Using DNF System Plugin :: Fedora Docs
I have got the output of the inxi command (luckily I was able to install inxi) which I will paste below.
Re f41 I know that f39 has a very limited life now and am completely with you about the (lack of) value in fighting this problem with a release that is soon to become EOL.
Still, the difficulty is that I am running the KDE spin which now comes with Plasma 6 and despite upgrading to f40 some time ago, I unfortunately needed to reinstall f39 again as there were bugs in Plasma 6 which made the system unusable for me … so I’m hanging on till I have enough time to switch to a different desktop but for now I need to keep my system going as best I can.
I would actually be quite fine with running the nouveau drivers as I can manage without the nvidia drivers for now, so until I have the time to upgrade from f39 I would most like to restore grub/my system to a working version and get my desktop back.
I did check the version number of my installed nvidia-gpu-firmware.noarch and you’re 100% right - my eyesight haha I thought the zeroes were 8’s and it is actually:
With what you display there the kernel seems quite old.
The latest kernel for f39 is 6.11.4 with an update I just did today.
That gpu should be quite happy with the latest 560.35.03 driver from rpmfusion.
I would suggest that you first do a full system upgrade with sudo dnf upgrade so you have the latest kernel and all other packages. I would anticipate that your grub issues would be fixed with the kernel upgrade.
There is one other thing I would like to confirm before you do this. We have not discussed if you are booting with uefi or legacy boot. If you do not know then run cat /sys/firmware/efi/efivars. If that returns a notice the file is a directory then you are doing uefi boot. Following a positive confirmation that you are using uefi boot then run sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg and it should return something that looks similar to this.
I have now done a sudo dnf upgrade which went smoothly though I still cannot boot - the process does not get past the splash screen and I need to get to the grub command to boot as before.
I’m a bit surprised that my kernel 6.10.11-100.fc39 was quite old as it was in fact an update which I did yesterday (with sudo dnf upgrade) which then caused my system to crash when attempting to load the desktop.
Anyhow, it does have the new kernel installed now.
I am booting with uefi and sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg returns something almost identical to what you have shown, the only difference I can see is that there is an extra switch to the ‘search’ (--root-dev-only) as follows:
I have executed those commands (1 and 2 above) then rebooted, but unfortunately my system still won’t boot.
If I press spacebar as the system is starting up, it brings up the grub menu (as before) and I can see that the new kernel 6.11.4 is in the grub menu but selecting it has the same issue (gets stuck at the splash screen).
Kernel and UEFI are both old – best to update so you aren’t wasting time on a problem that has been fixed with newer versions. You can try booting a Fedora 41 Beta Live USB to see if the Plasma 6 problems you had with F40 have been fixed.
I grew up in New Mexico. Before TV the local culture respected elders and the humorous effects of old age were a source of entertainment.
We know the kernel is installed now and boots to the splash screen.
This indicates that the issue now may be the graphics drivers.
Can you boot using the 3 added to the kernel command line in the grub edit menu, then go ahead and do the upgrade to fedora 40? If you think that is possible then do it as shown here.
I discourage repairs on f39 since it only has a short time remaining with support. F40 has already been in use for 6 months and most issues have already been solved with software updates over that time period. It also is the version that most seem to be using at present.