Black screen after Fedora 7 install

J

jimcoyle

Hunter
I've tried to install Fedora 7 a few times and everything seems fine until the final configuration questions are asked; immediately afterwards Fedora:confused: goes to a black screen with the X system icon, and there are a few attempts to get the desktop to come up. After a few tries, I get a system warning that it has tried to get the windows going, but "something bad is happening."

I ask you...what's bad and how do I fix it?

Thanks.
 
I ran into the same problem. The fix for me was to, once the X server startup had given up, open up another virtual terminal (type <alt>F2 for example) and manually run a yum update. Once updated, reboot and the X server should start succesfully.
 
No problem.

1) Once the X server startup has finally given up and you are left with a small screen filled with the error message about being unable to start the server, move the mouse cursor inside the window and left click. This will select the window and capture the keyboard input.

2) Press <ALT><F2> You should then get a new screen with a login prompt.

3) Login by typing "root" and then hit enter (leave out the quotes). You will then be prompted for a password. Use the one that you entered earlier when you performed the installation.

4) You should now be presented with a command prompt, similar to a DOS command prompt. From there, enter the command "yum update". It will then procede to go out to the Fedora update server and pull down all of the latest updates. You will be prompted a couple of times to confirm various actions. Simply respond yes to them.

5) Once completed and the command prompt is back, you can reboot the software by typing the command "reboot". That should do it.

Note that being able to perform the update assumes that you have a working internet connection. You can verify that from the command prompt by typing the command
"ping -qc 3 apple.com". If things are working, you should get back something like:

PING apple.com (17.254.3.183): 56 data bytes

--- apple.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 92.075/95.674/97.730/2.553 ms

I hope this helps.

-Mardy
 
mardy said:
I ran into the same problem. The fix for me was to, once the X server startup had given up, open up another virtual terminal (type <alt>F2 for example) and manually run a yum update. Once updated, reboot and the X server should start succesfully.
Click to expand...

Alternatively, if you have Parallels 3, Installing the Parallels Tools for Linux also does the trick at this stage.
 
Hi, I am trying to install Fedora 7 into Parallels for Mac 3, and tried the yum update fix, but it gets to the "Updating : gdm" and freezes.

Also, when I get the login prompt by pressing <ctrl>F2, and logging in as root, I try to follow the instructions for installing the Parallels Tools for Linux, but it complains when I try to mount cdrom, saying it is not defined in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab.

Can you describe how you installed the tools to get around the black screen problem.

Thanks in advance.
 
objectiser said:
Can you describe how you installed the tools to get around the black screen problem.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Actions -> Install Parallels Tools then get a terminal prompt (Either Alt-F2, or ssh into your VM from the OS X terminal) then:
su -
(give your root password when asked)
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
sh /mnt/parallels-tools.run
shutdown -r now
 
I'm getting these black screen and then the message about the 6 attempts too. I'm unclear what to do from there. I've tried alt-f2 but it just takes the focus out of the fedora windows and brings up an OS X System Preferences Window. I've tried fn-f2, ctrl-f2 and command-f2 and those don't do anything either. I've tried this when it's trying to do the 6 attempts and when then error message is displayed. Any advise appreciated.
 
Since the Action/Install tools seemed to have a warning, I had not done it yet. But it seemed in one of the posts above that it implied you had to do that and then the alt-F2. However, I just did that, and now it's printed up some ata errors. When I hit enter, it still tries to do the screen six times and is now back to the "ok" prompt. I feel like I'm 30 seconds from successful installation but have no idea exactly what's required to type/do.
 
Hi,

I am in the process of following the "yum update" steps. i did see another posting that stating to change the VM type to Solaris 10. Is it recommended to leave it at this or Change back to Fedora, since I am installing Fedora 7?

Thanks,
Vic
 
Last edited:
Hello,

I ran the "yum update" but once the installation began it seemed to have hung on the updating gdm [132/369]. I have currently left it in this state, but if it does not recover should I re-run the "yum update"?

Thanks,
Vic
 
Voila!!

I had to shutdown the Vm and relaunch and initiate the "yum update" it completed successfully and Fedora launched without a hitch.

Thanks for the help!!

Vic
 
Well, I started hitting some more keys, as I recall getting a shell many moons ago installing various LINUXes and UNIXes but hitting break, control-backslash, etc.

Anyway, I starting typing a whole bunch of them, I thikn the last one being control-alt-delete and all of a sudden I got the login prompt. So I'm in the middle on the yum update right now. Something other did not mention is that the original display error message keeps coming up through this process. And if I keep hitting ok, it'll bring up the yum update for a few minutes before retrying the resize(?) again. Anyway, I keep hitting ok and the yum update keeps running. It's still running. BTW, I'm unclear what this update is supposed to "fix"?
 
vicjaw said:
Voila!!

I had to shutdown the Vm and relaunch and initiate the "yum update" it completed successfully and Fedora launched without a hitch.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I hit control-C and got a promtp back and now a re-yum update is attempting the remaining 142 updates. My fingers are crossed :)

BTW, if it matters any what I originally installed from is the F-7-i386-DVD.iso from the Georgia Tech mirror.
 
Ok, I appear to have Fedora up and running now too.

Now I'm not sure how to update the Parallels Tools from from F-7-i386-DVD.iso, which is a file on the OS X side of things??

ADDED: Ok, duh, I realized that the iso image appears as the cdrom when I originally configured the VM. So I appear to now have the mouse stuff ok now too, and full screen if wanted.

So, I guess that if one wants to eventually use the real CD, are we supposed to go change the VM config info?
 
Last edited:
ccparallels said:
I'm getting these black screen and then the message about the 6 attempts too. I'm unclear what to do from there. I've tried alt-f2 but it just takes the focus out of the fedora windows and brings up an OS X System Preferences Window. I've tried fn-f2, ctrl-f2 and command-f2 and those don't do anything either. I've tried this when it's trying to do the 6 attempts and when then error message is displayed. Any advise appreciated.
Click to expand...

Just for a follow-up and clarification. Depending on how you have your f-keys set (whether to be true f-keys or system keys [i.e. volume, brightness, etc]) you will need to hit fn-alt-F2 to get the prompt without it opening system prefs. (A side note: try using alt-'f-key' to open various system prefs as short cuts)
 
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