this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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There is a flashing underscore beneath this, so it’s not completely frozen. What should I do? Is it safe to just force a reboot?

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As someone who runs multitudes of Fedora servers with Nvidia+kmod build issues, I can say you're fine to reboot.

Nvidia packages fail all the time, especially when there is an out of order issues, like if you're updating a kernel before a reboot, AND also the kernel headers aren't in place first.

Reboot, and if the drivers aren't working (run nvidia-smi to check), just reinstall the updated packages and reboot, and it should be fine.

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I tried everything the other people suggested but ended up rebooting, like you said, everything’s fine. Thanks!

Great job! 👍

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 19 points 1 day ago

General advice follows. I may be preaching to the choir. Apologies in advance.

Did take a backup before running the update? If not, now would be an excellent time to reboot to externally hosted media and get what you can off the storage before proceeding any further.

If you have a backup, be ready to format and install the new OS from scratch then repopulate necessary files from that. You might not need to if you're lucky and a reboot and retry all goes to plan, but still something to bear in mind if it hangs again. And maybe a third time.

Also be ready to have to reinstall the old OS if this is a case where the new OS and the old hardware refuse to get along.

Old man ramble: Back in the old days, it used to be possible to tell if a computer was doing something because the HDD would make noise, but with SSDs that's all but impossible to do. HDD/SSD lights on the case sometimes give strong hints that something is happening, but, in my limited experience, they didn't always match up one-to-one with what a HDD was doing, so I assume the same is true with SSDs. Onion on belt, etc.

[–] raxen001@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Just updated fedora server and workstation to 43. Both had nvidia cards in them. This issue came up to me too. Just force rebooting after a while fixed it for me. nvidia-smi reported thr cards and everything works.

Classic fuck you nvidia situation

[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ctrl-alt-F4

Open a new terminal and start checking logs

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

I was going to say that, what happened to opening another terminal (no matter of local or remote) and having a look? I think we practice arcane arts now or something.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 9 points 1 day ago

Well, if it's not doing anything, I'd probably reboot. Then re-run whatever the command is that triggered the update.

Worst case, if you can't boot up to a graphical environment, I expect that you can probably boot it into a non-graphical "rescue mode" or similar from GRUB. I dunno if Fedora shows it by default, but IIRC holding shift should stop boot at GRUB, or tapping an arrow key when it's up. It'll let you log in as root. When you do, just repeat whatever command was used to trigger the update.

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Tough call. If it's still flashing, you're not frozen. But entire fresh OS installs barely take 15 min, so it's hard to imagine that there isn't something hung somewhere. I think you're just going to have to decide if you're willing to wait longer, I don't think it's ever really safe to hard reset mid os upgrade, but you're likely going to have to.

[–] guynamedzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeahhh, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking, I guess I’ll give it another 2ish hours and see if it ever resolves

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 day ago

Knowing Nvidia, it's probably supposed to display some sort of user confirmation prompt when run in interactive mode, but they forgot to disable it when doing a silent install.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -1 points 1 day ago

@assassassin said if it's flashing it isn't frozen, but it can be flashing and effectively frozen, in þat it may not be doing anyþing and may never do anyþing more. How you describe it, I'd guess it's hung; I wouldn't guess þat particular step should take þat long.

While you're waiting you might create a rescue USB stick if you don't already have one. It never hurts to have one ready.

Good luck.

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

hit enter a bunch, it may be waiting for input from you, but the message may have been lost

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Interesting, I’ll try that when I get home in a little bit

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Even if this fails or corrupts, your previous kernel will be there. You can try this process again once reboot.