I ran into a few problems installing 10.2 onto my system (currently running SuSE 10.0) & thought I would tell how I got 10.2 to install on my system. Tyan MB, 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4 w/1MB L2 cache (single threaded), 1GB memory, Adaptec 2100S Raid controller with 2 - 36GB SCSI 320 drives in a mirror pair (tired of rebuilding after a drive blows), an Adaptec 2940 controller driving 2 - 18GB SCSI disks and 2 Plextor SCSI CD ROMs, one reader & one burner, misc peripherals.

Problem 1 - Unit would start to boot after reading the 10.2 Disc1. After the initial selection screen (Install, Install no ACPI, Safe Install, etc) the system would hang with a blank screen. Tried every combo of install options, no joy. After searching on the web forums, I found out that for some reason I have to tell SuSE it's a single CPU system, with either MAXCPUS=0 or good old NOSMP. OK, I do this & load process proceeds.

Problem 2 - SuSE 10.2 does not see my raid controller correctly. Load process seems OK. Looking at the screen messages, it seems that the I2OBLOCK driver is getting loaded. Hmmm. Didn't this stuff blow up on my previous 10.0 install too ? OK, it seems to be loading, it gets up to the point where the disk controllers are interrogated & SuSE 10.2 is going to start with the partitioning questions. I get the message "The partitioning on disk /dev/i2o/hda is not readable by the partitioning tool 'partd', which is used to change the partition table. You can use the partitions as they are. You can format them, assign new mount points to them, but you cannot add, edit, resize or remove partitions from the disk with that tool."

I click OK just to see what happens next. SuSE askes me if Update or New Install. Since I'm trying to upgrade my 10.0 system I choose Update & click Next.

Uhoh... The partitioning screen is blank, 10.2 doesn't see my root/boot mirror pair. I click the checkbox for Show all & up pops my two extra 18GB SCSI disks, & they're labeled SDA1 & SDB1. On the 10.0 current system it's SDA1 for the mirror pair, then SDB1 & SDC1 for the two extra 18GB drives. This will not work.

I check out the ALT-F4 screen to see messages & there are lots about can't assign memory & various I2OBLOCK problems & conflicts. From my 10.0 install I remember that I2OBLOCK & I2OCORE are not functional for my hardware setup, yet for some reason SuSE10.2 is loading them & trying to make them work. Hmmm, didn't the SuSE folks remember the problems with I2OBLOCK ? Have to use the DPT raid controller, I think, but how ?

After aborting the install quite a few times ( again I tried every combo of Install, Install No ACPI, Safe Install, etc etc ), SuSE drops back to the text mode install screen. I realized the conflict might be I2OBLOCK, or the combo of I2OBLOCK & 27xxx Adaptec 2940 driver, or the 27xxx might be loading first & blocking the load of the I2OBLOCK driver. So...

Selected the Modules item from the main text menu.
Selected Delete Module
Delete the module I2OBLOCK (they have some other name for it but it starts with I2O...)
Delete the module 27xxx (for the Adaptec 2940)
Delete 2 USB modules that seem to want to share IRQ11

Now install the DPT raid module
THEN install the 27xxx Adaptec 2940 moduie
Skip the reinstall of the USB modules, SuSE 10.2 will find them during the hardware interrogation later.

That was it ! Got to the partitioning section with no 'partd' error messages, update proceeded fine, successful update!.

Now on bootup the DPT raid module loads first, then the 27xxx Adaptec module, which is the way it has worked since SuSE 8.0...

Good luck, YMMV, opinions stated herein are the sole responsibility of the author, etc etc.