Yes that's right I ran update on my suse and it died. It looks like everything is booting perfectly until the graphics are supposed to show up....they just don't show. I get no response, I have to reboot. I ran more than just a kernel update, but I don't remember all the security patches. What to do? What to do... [bawling] any way to revert the update

No idea how SuSe's update manager works; I always compile my kernel sources myself.

Personally, whenever I compile/install a new kernel, I keep the old one (and a corresponding grub entry) around just in case I make a boneheaded mistake (the kind you only make when it's really late at night and you're short on caffeine—or when you're drunk, I suppose, though I don't drink—like the time when I forgot to compile in ReiserFS support, and my / partition is Reiser ...). That way, if something does go wrong, I can easily boot the system (as before) and double-check my configuration.

20 bucks ur running Nvidia drivers. if you are, you need to re-install them, they have a kernel specific "glue" module, it's compiled to suit your current kernel version and config.

20 bucks eh.... well your right, I might think about it [wink]

Is there an easy way to disable the nvidia driver or revert the kernel just so I can get back in? Just finding it difficult to get much done with a black screen.

I have two ways of accessing the drive, through the CD "restoration" mode that came with suse and gives me a command prompt, or through Ubuntu which I just installed.

I don't know about SuSE, but on RedHat and Mandrake you can press I at the start of the boot process to enter interactive mode. You then get to say Y or N to everything it loads.

Quote: Original post by BoderIs there an easy way to disable the nvidia driver or revert the kernel just so I can get back in? Just finding it difficult to get much done with a black screen.

If you want to disable the nvidia driver, you can edit your X config to make it use the non-nvidia driver. You'll have to boot using your restoration CD or other installation and mount the partition for the "broken" installation (the restoration CD may or may not do that for you). Then you can edit (using your favourite editor) either the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/XF86Config (depending on which one is there) and look for a section that says:

Section "Device"        Identifier  "<name of card>"        Driver      "nvidia"....

and replace "nvidia" with "nv". That will switch to the opensource driver instead of the official nvidia one, and should allow you to boot into your normal graphical environment, but without 3D acceleration.

However, that's just avoiding the problem. The way to fix it (if it actually is a problem with the driver), would be to download the latest linux driver from nvidia and save it somewhere easily accessible. Then boot from your restoration cd, (you may then have to mount the partition and chroot into it, but it might do that for you), then run the nvidia installer, and it'll update the driver and everything should be fine....

edit: BTW, what happens when you try to boot now? You say the screen just goes blank.. have you tried pressing ctrl-alt-f1, ctrl-alt-f2 etc, to switch to a different virtual console? What about ctrl-alt-backspc to kill the X-server? I'm not sure if it actually is the graphics driver or not, because on giving it further thought if the graphics driver were at fault I would've just thought it would kick you out to a console rather than just a black screen of death.

[Edited by - necromancer_df on February 17, 2005 7:21:12 PM]

I wish they hadn't soothed me into a false sense of security, but the SUSE guys are aware of this problem. Seems I am not alone. The funny thing is I found the link from the nvidia website. SUSE 9.1 nvidia driver install

I really don't want to have to deal with compiling my kernel, so I will try to degrade my kernel.

Thank you so much everyone, and especially necromancer_df! [smile]

edit: shoot shoot shoot, I can't find a way to go back to the good kernel of yesterdays, looks like no 3d for me

Quote: Original post by Boder
I wish they hadn't soothed me into a false sense of security, but the SUSE guys are aware of this problem. Seems I am not alone. The funny thing is I found the link from the nvidia website. SUSE 9.1 nvidia driver install

I really don't want to have to deal with compiling my kernel, so I will try to degrade my kernel.

You don't need to recompile the kernel, to install the nvidia drivers. The only thing needed is that the kernel source is installed. The nvidia drivers compile a kernel module and to do this they need the kernel's header files.

I suggest you visit this board for all issues about nvidia's driver & linux:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14

(the link is from nvidia's driver page). I have always found answers there - I'm using fedora and as known there were a lot of issues about stack size in kernel etc...