Fedora Core 3 and Nvidia

I have had the Fedora Core 3 CDs burned almost since they came out and have been waiting for an ideal time to upgrade the Fedora Core 1 install on my desktop. Since there never is an ideal time to do a system upgrade I decided to let it run while working on my laptop today.

If you are doing the same for the first time I strongly recommend you follow the Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes as it is a valuable reference and can help you avoid a few pitfalls. I had the page bookmarked and never bothered to read it until after I had installed FC3. Read the notes before you install. Seriously.

The install went great and I immediately downloaded the latest Nvidia linux display driver 1.0-6629, read their installation notes and proceeded. After rebooting the result was a system that would hang on the message, "Configuring kernel parameters." If left alone the system would eventually boot to a login prompt. After a brief panicked search on Google I found this reference which mostly worked for me.

What I did to solve the problem and get FC3 back into a graphical state was modify the above to this:

1. Interrupt GRUB from booting by pressing any key, edit the bootparameters by pressing the "e"-key, and remove the "rhgb"-parameter from the boot parameters. Then continue booting normally. (This will skip the graphical boot in Fedora.)
2. Fedora might complain about not being able to the graphical display, however, ignore it and cancel all questions until you get to the login prompt.
3. Login as root, and enter "/sbin/modprobe nvidia" to load the nvidia-module.
4. Enter "cp -a /dev/nvidia* /etc/udev/devices/"
5. Finally, modify the /etc/rc.local file using a text editor (eg. "vi /etc/rc.local") and at the end of the file add the line, "/sbin/modprobe nvidia" This should fix the boot problem.
6. Save and exit and you should be back at the command prompt.
7. Reboot the system and you should be back in business

I have seen posts in the meantime that suggest using RedHat's up2date to update the udev packages before applying the Nvidia driver solve a lot of the problems and should make the above unnecessary especially step 4 above as that is the only way to make the changes stick through a reboot.