[CentOS] Strange crash after NVidia driver installation from ELRepo

Tue Mar 3 15:51:15 UTC 2015
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Tue, March 3, 2015 9:41 am, info at microlinux.fr wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just had the weirdest of system crashed. Here goes.
>
> I wanted to install a desktop step by step, as I usually do. First the
> base system, then the X Window System, then the WindowMaker window
> manager. Everything went OK, then I installed kmod-nvidia from ELRepo.
> Yum informed me that the driver conflicted with x11-glamor (something
> like that), so I removed the corresponding package.
>
> While doing all this, the system still defaulted to boot in console mode
> (meaning multi-user.target and not graphical.target). To test X, I just
> launched WindowMaker using startx.
>
> Anyway, I rebooted, and then... nothing. System refused even to startup,
> and systemd suggested to me that I open journalctl (which taught me
> nothing).
>
> Right now I've started a Slax LiveCD to backup all my data and reinstall
> the whole thing from scratch. I don't have the slightest clue as to what
> could possibly have happened here. The only thing I wonder: could it be
> that installing the kmod-nvidia driver while booting to a default
> console (and not graphical) could lead to this weirdness? A previous
> installation on that machine went OK, but the difference was that the
> first time, I started with a full GNOME installation right away.
>
> Any suggestions?

If I were to troubleshoot this I would do it the following way:
1. wipe everything and set up standard desktop set with Xwindow
2. install nvidia driver
3. remove packages you don't like and replace them with the ones you like
to achieve your final configuration

Why? Because all usually is tested in pretty much standard set of
packages, thus if you follow the route above you will unlikely have your
box bricked after installing nvidia driver. Then in step 3 you will
discover doing which of your customizations breaks things. I call it for
myself lazy person easy path approach ;-)

Just my $0.02.

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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