Specific SuSE 9.1 Install Problems

[RX-Heaven]

Heres the deal.

Ive been trying to do a FTP install for the past 2 weeks. The platform im using is a Dual P3 550 XEON. 1GB RAM. The box is a Dell 610 Workstation. 2 SCSI 18GB HD's.

After it loads the RAMDISK and goes into the option screen about partitioning and packages, I select partitioning. I have sda and sdb. It wants to install / and Swap on sdb. Ive tried to change config around to no avail as all I get after it installs and tells me its gonna reboot is a black screen. Ive tried moving everything over to sda. Ive tried the previous while adding a boot partition. Under the bootin tab, says its gonna write to the mbr. Is this correct.

More importantly now is, is there a way to get this to boot without reinstalling and starting from scratch. A config file maybe. Keep in mind I cant boot and all I have is the .iso boot CD.

Please help

Ive installed 9.1 on 2 laptops and a desktop with IDE drives with no problem.

Thanks,
RX

[mdwatts]

How have you tried to change the partition setup? Are you selecting 'custom partitioning' and then manually selecting what HD is used and where the filesystems/mountpoints reside?

The custom partitioning option also allow you to change where the bootloader is installed.

Did the installation complete? Getting it to boot instead of starting from scratch will depend on where the boot/root partition and bootloader was installed.

If the mbr of hdb, then you will need to switch the first bootable device from hda to hdb. If on a separate /boot partition, then you might need to make that the active partition.

[RX-Heaven]

It never suggested to create a /boot partition. Only / and swap. On this current install, I left the defaults (Whatver SuSE wanted me to do). I did a failsafe boot and it went through the rest of the install (setting up root pw, user accounts, etc etc) in the non KDE IU. I then logged in as myself and did a "startx" and X came up. I rebooted and it wouldnt boot again.

How do I check for the stuff you asked. Ill have to boot into failsafe to get it to allow me to do anything.

RX

[RX-Heaven]

OK....box boots in failsafe. So I thought last night, lemme check the parameters for failsafe. So this morning I checked and the first one is ide=nodma. I took that out and the only other one I removed was nosmp as this box is a DP. Now how do I set these as default and also how do I make the box start in run level 5 all the time?

Thanks
RX

[RX-Heaven]

OK...Chose failsafe as the boot type and took out all the parameters such as DMA, APM, APCI etc etc and it still booted. Why does it boot in failsafe and not in normal mode even though I take all parameters out of the failsafe boot

RX

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by RX-Heaven
OK...Chose failsafe as the boot type and took out all the parameters such as DMA, APM, APCI etc etc and it still booted. Why does it boot in failsafe and not in normal mode even though I take all parameters out of the failsafe boot


Have a look in your Grub config (/boot/grub/menu.lst) to see the differences between the normal and failsafe boot modes.

If you determine the correct kernel parmeters you need to successfully boot, add/modify to the normal boot section of your Grub config.

[RX-Heaven]

Fixed it about an hour or 2 ago. Problem was SMP kernel. It would boot in failsafe and me knowing that I had DP I installed the SMP kernel and rebooted and all worked fine. Thanks

RX

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by RX-Heaven
Fixed it about an hour or 2 ago. Problem was SMP kernel. It would boot in failsafe and me knowing that I had DP I installed the SMP kernel and rebooted and all worked fine. Thanks

RX

Way to go. Good job and glad we could help.

Enjoy!!