Attempting to install Fedora 20 on an older i7 system recently produced a series of failures. For starters, after the installation allegedly completed, the system would hang after the BIOS screens at the point where the OS should start. That’s because Anaconda installed no bootloader. A computer isn’t very useful with no operating system.
To fix this problem, boot off the Fedora 20 live CD, select “Rescue a Fedora Installation” and install grub2:
$ chroot /mnt/root $ grub2-install /dev/sda $ grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg $ ls -l /boot/grub2/ # if you only have grub.cfg.new, move it to grub.cfg: $ mv /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.new /boot/grub.cfg $ exit $ reboot
After the system rebooted, around when the X server was initialized, a fan in the computer’s case began running at max speed. At first I thought it was the CPU fan, but investigation proved it was the fan on one of my Nvidia GPUs. The easy solution here was to eliminate the worthless Nouveau driver as usual and install Nvidia’s Linux driver.
Download the latest Linux driver.
Then, create a new file in /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau, containing the line:
blacklist nouveau
Create a new initramfs:
$ mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img.bak $ dracut -v /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
Reboot the system again, then enter runlevel 3: when the “Fedora will boot in 5 seconds” screen appears, hit e to edit the default kernel/boot option, then add a 3 to the end of the linux /vmlinuz line and press F10 to boot.
Add any prerequisites you need (gcc, kernel-devel) and run the Nvidia installer:
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.49.run
When that completes, reboot into your finally usable Fedora 20 desktop.
