[PlanetCCRMA] re: Newbie can't get FC4 installed...White screen of Death

[Benjamin Hardy]

After trying a few other distros for the heck of it, I decided to go back to Fedora Core 4. I've installed it a few times so I know it works well on my hardware, but tonight I ran into something peculiar. After going through the install procedure, rebooting and then setting my monitor resolution and user name I hit next or finish. Instead of getting the gdm login screen I get black. Also, I have no keyboard input - i tried hitting the caps lock button on my usb keyboard and the led wasn't going on at all. I suspect nothing was going on with the mouse too, but I can't say as the screens just black. I tried a couple more reinstalls and noticed on the third try (I'm not famous for picking up important details) I noticed while setting up my partitions with disk druid (I always do) that it mention that my partitions were previously mounted as /1 , swap, and /home1. I most assuredly didn't put that in when I set up the mounts the last install and I did format them to erase all data prior.
 Well I got sick of seeing the black screen so I installed Fedora Core 3 and everything is fine. I'm currently updating to FC4 via the yum command line, look here for a quick guide on how to do this (as it doesn't always work well). http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq#head-bee4591f4bebe867a1cfbbef57475418fe6bc228
 
 FC4 installs sometimes end up with weird /etc/fstab file entries, I wonder if my problem was related. Someone else here had issues with thier swap partition and I had some issues in December.

Joe Fay <wb0fhu at aol.com> wrote: Success!!!  I finally got FC4 installed.  Thanks to all who made good 
suggestions, such as Fernando, BJay, and Nigel!  You all (yes, I'm from the 
south ;  ) pointed me in the right direction.  As it wound up, here's what 
the situation was, and the resolution:
1.  Fernando pointed me towards the video card.
2.  Nigel called my video card to a tee, as one that he'd had trouble with 
in the past.
3.  Bjay's comments were confirmation to what everyone else said.
4.  I went out today with an armload of my old serviceable cards, and went 
to a dealer
     who had some old used stuff, as well as new stock.
5.  I traded out my old stuff, plus $20 for an old isa video card (My mb 
dosen't have an
     AGP slot) an old S3 critter with 2mb of ram, plus a new audio card with 
four  channels and a Linux driver for the card, with full instructions as to 
how to install the driver.

When I had installed everything, I said a little prayer and turned on the 
machine.  The install coughed up a hair ball, but no white screen of 
death!!!  I had gone with the CUSTOM install route the first time, so I 
decided I would just do the basic WORKSTATION install.  Everything then went 
like clockwork and installed in 30 minutes.  The system rebooted right into 
further setup, and then into FC4 and the Gnome desktop.  I played around a 
bit, then held my breath, shut the machine all the way down, with the DVD 
out of the reader, and it booted right back into Gnome...no problems.

Now all I have to do is go get the right Jack, Rosegarden, and Ardour files 
off the net, and then download the CCRMA.  But at least I have a fresh 
install of FC4.

Thanks for your great responses and your help to me.  Hope I can do as well 
for someone else.  I tried two other lists to get answers, but only got them 
here.  I will be around for some time to come.  I look forward to making 
music on Linux, and getting rid of XP.

Gratefully,
Joe Fay, WO0O

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