CentOS 7 - Started GNOME DIsplay manager hangs

[aztec11us]

hi all!

i am back ...but this time with a different problem:

my setup is an i7 with rx470 strix oc graphics.

in the last 2 days, i asked for help here to install my official drivers, and it worked!
my system is a triple boot:
- Linux Mint 18 sarah
- Linux Centos 7 (with KDE environment)
- Windows 10 Pro

If it matters, Windows has a HDD all to itself (hda), and the two Linuxes are on a separate hdd (sdb).

i needed the epel repo to install the official amd drivers which for a couple of days worked great....but today (like 5 min ago actually...), when booting centos 7, it arrived at that line where it says:

"Started GNOME Display Manager
[ 37.645108] [drm] dc_pre_update_surfaces_to_target: comit 1 surfaces to target 0x153b0180..."

And alot of these lines like that one above!

One more important thing: a short while before this issue, in Linux Mint 18, i installed and ran grub_customizer to simply make the boot process take 60 seconds instead of the 10 seconds default (and then upgraded the boot grub).

Also, i moved the Windows OS last in the last (the initial order was Ubuntu / Windows 10 / Centos 7 ....i made windows be the last choice)

The funny thing is, that after this, for a couple of reboots, CentOS 7 actually booted as normal!

Only the 3rd or 4th time is started this error i mentioned above! Until it had the error, i didnt changed anything in centos 7, no upgrades etc!

In fact, centos 7 had all the upgrades, and the official amd video driver for rx470, and was working fine!
So...did this happen because i used grub customizer in Mint 18?


Is there a fix to this (if so, how?) ?
or did i irrevocably destroyed centos 7?

i still have live dvd isos for all linuxes and windows 10, if it helps

Many thanks alot to everyone!

[TrevorH]

The problem with using the AMD/nvidia provided installers is that it only installs for the current kernel. As soon as a new kernel comes along you have to reinstall the driver. There was a kernel update for el7 yesterday or the day before so it's probably updated and tried to boot and the drivers are missing. Reinstall them.

[aztec11us]

which i would gladly do...but i cant get into the OS itself!

i cant even finish the booting sequence, so obviously, i cant get the drivers again!

what do i do?

[TrevorH]

Well it's up and running when you see it do what it does so you can ssh to it etc. I'd be fairly sure that you can also hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch to VT2 and login there at the command line. You can also edit the grub command prompt when you first see the kernel selection screen and if you hit 'e' to edit it, you can scroll down to the kernel command line is (on a line starting with linux16 or linuxefi) and append a space to the end of that line followed by the digit 3 then press ctrl-x to boot up. That will get you to a command line only boot.

[aztec11us]

hi!

and thanks for your help

i used the adding 3 at the end trick to get into it, and re-executed the installation of those drivers.



But it hangs...at the exact same spot: Started Gnome display manager spot!

Is there some place, some log i can check and see why it freezes? some key information i should look for?
Thanks

[aztec11us]

.... /sigh

after some searches, it seems alot of people are hit by this stupid bug

i cant call it any other way than a bug!

a system update from official sources should NOT f*ck you up !

will red hat fix this?
are there plans to fix this stupid broken update process so it doesnt destroy things with every kernel upgrade?

on linux mint 18, there never were any problems with upgrading the kernels !!!
not even reboot needed and everything works smooth!

this seems like such a basic thing and yet, they (Red Hat) failed at it (

i am assuming Fedora 21 also has this issue, right?


is there some way to communicate to Red Hat so they know and start fixing it?

[TrevorH]

The problem isn't with the new kernel, it's the video drivers that are built from source. This is why we routinely recommend using ELRepo for video drivers as they know how to package things so that they do not break with every kernel update. If you install something from source and it has specific dependencies built into the results on the exact kernel on which it was built then that is not our problem, it's a problem for the video driver provider to fix.

[aztec11us]

ok, maybe not the kernel itself, maybe the way the desktop environment or other parts of the OS were conceivedm, surely are!

Look, i coducted loads of tests between 2 OS'es:
- Linux Mint 17.3 (and now Linux Mint 18 Sarah)
- CentOS 7

Also, i ve had the 17.3 for a long time, went through several kernel changes, not one !
Never had any issues of any kind! **

Both on 64 bits obviously, both using proprietary graphics drivers for same hardware.
So testing conditions were IDENTICAL!

3 guesses as to which of the two OS'es above had troubles with proprietary graphics and which one had zero issues !!!
i'll give you a hint: the one with zero issues is the one NOT RPM based!

While i may not be a programmer, i do have a scientific reasoning mindset: if 2 experiments, under identical conditions yield different results, might not the test subject themselves be the root (lolz pun intended ) cause?

CONCLUSION: Give than one of the OSes has zero issues even with proprietary driver and the other has grave issues ....there is a strong point to be made here: thats its Red Hat's fault for how they coded their system in dealing with proprietary drivers


And now for the big question:
I have a fresh centos 7 install and i got and installed elrepo ....but how exactly do i get centos 7 to start using my graphic board so i can enjoy full HD instead of this low resolution crap?

and one more thing: on this HDD, i had 2 linuxes --- Sarah 18 and Centos 7. I removed the centos 7 (by going into Sarah 18 and deleting its partition and grub entries with grub customizer), and installed centos 7 anew.

but now, centos 7's own grub has taken over the boot process and linux mint 18 wont load (linux mint 18 will load, but only if i press F2 or DEL when computer starts and i choose it manually)

How do i make it so Linux Mint 18 again takes control? update-grup didnt help!



**: had one time, but that was entirely, 100%, my own damn fault for messing with settings i shouldnt have messed with!