How to boot into kernel 5.8 (Display on Nvidia card doesn't work on kernel 5.9)

[mackissack (Alfredo C Harvey)]

How do I go back to kernel 5.8?

Updates installed kernel 5.9 and 5.10 and these kernels don’t work with the Nvidia drivers of my GPU.
I found some information on the topic and that NVidia will take some time on solving the issue.
But, now I cannot boot.

[FranciscoD (Ankur Sinha)]

Hi @mackissack,

By default you should have 3 kernels installed on your system. When you boot your machine, the grub boot loader will list all 3 installed kernels and allow you to select an older kernel to boot from.

[mackissack (Alfredo C Harvey)]

Right, @FranciscoD.
I was booting from Kernel 5.8.
But updates kept being installed and I didn’t take the precaution to lock 5.8.
And now it was gone.

Other alternative is to boot in text mode and update until Fedora and NVIDIA solve the issue.
But I don’t remember how to do it.

[grumpey (Joe Walker)]

You can get 5.8 from koji, koji search for kernel 5-8

These should help:

How do I install an old kernel?

You can find a list of all kernels built for F30 here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/?packages=kernel&release=F30 (There you can select a kernel and click on Builds). You can download all kernels that have been built for F30 from here: https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8. Then, simply use dnf to install them. Alternatively, you can use koji download-build <package-name> to download the package directly, no browsing involved. I would recommend that method. He…

How to boot an earlier kernel on Fedora - Fedora Magazine

[mackissack (Alfredo C Harvey)]

Well, @grumpey, I found the koji repository.
But there are a lot of options.
Which rpm file should I download?

[grumpey (Joe Walker)]

kernel, kernel-core, kernel-devel, kernel-modules

sudo dnf list installed | grep -i kernel
should tell you what’s installed

I’m not sure if you need this to build the NVIDIA drivers, but just in case: kernel-headers 5.8.18

[mackissack (Alfredo C Harvey)]

Thanks, @grumpey.
But I cannot boot.
Well, when the boot process reaches the loading of Display Manager, it halts showing the white screen with the face of a sad monitor.

How can I stop the booting process so it stays it text mode, like in terminal mode?

[grumpey (Joe Walker)]

You will need to be able to access the grub menu.
During boot press ESC or F8 while GRUB loads (simply press the key repeatedly directly after power on until you are in the menu).
For Reference Grub Hidden Menu Change

Then you’ll need to use the arrow keys to select the kernel you want to use and hit e to edit that line.

Find the line that starts with linux add 3 after quiet.

To change that permanently:
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
To change it back:
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target

[mackissack (Alfredo C Harvey)]

OK, @grumpey, I could boot in text mode or terminal mode.

Updated Fedora and kernel 5.9.13-200 would’t fix the GUI issue.
White screen indicating non recoverable system is still showing up.
The GPU I have is NVIDIA GT218 (GeForce 210).

[grumpey (Joe Walker)]

If you want to rollback to 5.8’ish:
Use what ever you’d like for the directory paths.
This assumes koji isn’t installed.

mkdir oldkernel
cd oldkernel
sudo dnf install koji
koji download-build --arch=x86_64 kernel-5.8.18-200.fc32
sudo dnf install kernel-5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64.rpm  kernel-core-5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64.rpm kernel-devel-5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64.rpm kernel-modules-5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64.rpm

If you need the kernel headers to build nvidia:

koji download-build --arch=x86_64 kernel-headers-5.8.18-200.fc32
sudo dnf install kernel-headers-5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64.rpm