Fixing vista multiboot with openSUSE

[mingus725]

This thread just lives on and on and . . .

Welcome @tripcat -

I don't know what you are referring to about getting to a generic logon screen which varies each time??? Has the installation completely finished? If you could be more specific, as specific as possible, that would help a lot. And, what are you installing from, CD or DVD? Which version? And what window manager did you request (KDE, Gnome, other) - the logon screen sounds like it might be xdm.

Can you get into however much is installed using a live-CD or Rescue mode in the DVD? The error you are getting from EasyBCD (that was smart to choose that tool) suggests that grub was not installed to the sdb2 boot sector. We can probably do that if the installation has gotten far enough, and if we can boot from CD or DVD (that is, we can do it from the command line).

[tripcat]

mingus725
1st - thank you very much for responding.

My apologies for leaving off the info. But the screen is very difficult to describe. I'm at work and will follow-up when I get home.
- openSuse v11.0
- iso burn of DVD installation
- desktop - other/XCF ( I think I have the correct)
- not sure what xdm is but the screen is a basic GUI screen (not a command line). It says login. I enter my root ID and then it wants the password. I type but no graphical icon of action is shown (like an asterick). I press enter and it says invalid login, it's very odd. It does appear to be around the time it's validating my ethernet connection, but that's a guess watching the installation steps go by.

- I will try it again tonight. I think you might have answered my question thought about /sdb2 and the boot sector. That makes sense, but I get gun shy around my Vista boot and not wanting to hose that up. I have image backups but just an overly anal neat freak and having to do the work again :-)

I apologizie for the newbie-ness of my questions, but needed your expert help. Thank you for your patience.

-tripcat

[mingus725]

Glad to help, although we may need assistance from others before we're done.

Sounds like you chose XFCE, a lightweight alternative to Gnome and KDE (with a Vista machine, you should very easily be able to use Gnome or KDE). I'm pretty sure that the setup with XFCE is to use Gnome's login manager, which is gdm. The login screen you are seeing is definitely not gdm. Likely it is xdm which is the old X-server login manager that the system defaults to when gdm is not working. The reason it might not be working, and could also be why you are having a problem logging in, is that the installation setup was not complete. We can't be sure what yet what pieces are still not done.

I suggest you try to set up the booting first. Using Vista and EasyBCD, there should not be any risk to Vista unless you do something to change the Vista bcd entry. Even if the openSUSE entry doesn't work, doesn't hurt Vista.

To get the boot working, boot from the DVD into Rescue mode. I don't exactly remember at the moment, you will either be taken to a text prompt at root or prompted for a login, in which case you type "root"; no password is required. Now you want to do:

grub

This will start the grub shell. Now do:

find /boot/grub/stage2

grub should return (hd1,1) which indicates in grub-speak sdb2. Then do:

root (hd1,1)

You should get a message returned about grub seeing the filesystem. Then do:

setup (hd1,1) (hd1,1)

That tells grub to install itself in the sdb2 partition boot sector. Then

quit

The quit is important. Then do:

shutdown -r now

which will reboot the system. If you still can't boot openSUSE from the Vista menu, run EasyBCD to delete and re-add the openSUSE entry. Then reboot. When you get the login screen, don't use root, use the user name you created. Report back.

[tripcat]

mingus725-
That looks good I will try that. I attempted the re-install to get the messages again.

I liked the XCFE interface over the KDE4... I don't know why it just looked really good. I will take your advice on the KDE. Not big on GNome (used Ubuntu and didn't like it much).

Yes I have a 1Gig of RAM in SLi or 512Mb on single mode and they are 8800GT nVidia cards - some horse power not top-of-the-line, but good horsepower.

Here is what I get - I was right it is failing on the eth1 config. I have two ethernet ports on my Gigabyte board and I think it sees both. eth2 is what is plugged in. Just so you have it, here is the other information I jotted down this evening (note I was writting fast so I could have wrote it down incorrectly):
It is a basic logon screen at some basic level just above command line:

Title is Linux-PAL5:
Logon:____________
lfup No Configuration found for eth1

At the bottom left it says in a little "window"/box

ronlevel5 has been skipped

I found if I he CTRL-C I get back to a command line prompt with virtually the same information.

Bootpart 2.60 Bootsector
Loading new partition
Bootsector from C.H. Hochstatter
Cannot load from harddisk
Insert Ssytem disk & press any key

and that takes me back to the BCD screen.

I will try your steps above and report back

Can't thank you enough.

tripcat

[mingus725]

1st, the system RAM. Prev post you indicated 4GB; I assume the 1GB you last mentioned is the graphics RAM. This is important because I didn't see that you created a swap (virtual memory) partition? With 4GB you will rarely have a need for swap, but you will with certain types of apps. I suggestion shrinking one of the Vista partitions with Vista, creating a new partition in the unallocated space. Don't need to format it. Set that partition up for swap in the YaST Partitioner. You can do this later.

2nd, Re KDE. If you are new to linux and/or KDE, I strongly recommend staying with KDE 3.5.9 for now rather than KDE 4. 4.0 is on the DVD, and you would need to immediately upgrade that to 4.1 but it won't be until 4.2 that it's really stable.

3rd, your boot/start description. This does not sound like any graphical login. You are being dropped out of Runlevel 5 (which starts the X server) because the startup is failing. Can you login at all, with your user name or with root? If you can as root, then use this command to start the gui: startx

4th, from "Bootpart 2.60 . . .", that is the Vista bootmgr message. You need to get logged in to openSUSE, or boot from the DVD Rescue mode as I described above. If you can get into the gui, go to YaST Boot Loader and install grub in the Root Partition. If you are in Rescue mode, use the command line instructions I posted previously to run grub in its shell. Either way will set up grub as needed for Vista bcd to work.

[tripcat]

@mingus725:

- Yes I have 4Gig of RAM and 512 of VRAM on each video card and 1Gig running in SLi mode.

- I will stick to 3.x version of KDE

- No I cannot login with my user ID or root. So I will try your command line options tonight when I get home and see how it goes. I will keep you posted.

-tripcat

[mingus725]

Originally Posted by tripcat

. . . No I cannot login with my user ID or root. So I will try your command line options tonight when I get home and see how it goes. I will keep you posted.

If you are sure that you cannot logon, then the installation did not complete. Since you tagged onto this already long thread which shows a lot of replies, I suggest you create a new thread with a title something like "user and root logon fails after installation". I'm pretty sure there is a way to solve this, but I just don't remember it. You need to be able to logon to continue; getting the booting to work from Vista won't help much if you can't get in.

[swerdna]

Hi everyone -- this seems to be a hot topic.

Please post your questions re dual or multi booting in separate threads to stop this thread from becoming endless and endlessly confusing.

Thanks
Swerdna