After updating online Opensuse 11.3 KDE is not working anymore

I want to bring to your attention this strange problem.

After a lot of work I succeeded in making my Icon 225 Mobile Broadband working under Linux, so I immediately took advantage of this by updating my system.But unfortunately not everything went well.

I have to say something:in Linux when you solved a problem another one pops up. And this is what happened to me.

The first problem was the following error message:

**PackageKit Error repo-not-available: File ‘/repodata/repomd.xml’ not found on medium ‘http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3/repo/non-oss/
**

It seems that in the Online update system there is a error: or the address is wrong or something is not working as it should be.

Anyway I got over it and the system started to download the updates and so on.
At the end the system asked me to reboot and I did it. Unfortunately a cold shower was waiting me : the KDE interface did not work anymore, the only thing I could see was something like a fog all around the video. The mouse cursor was a dark square.

I was still able to hear the welcome sound so I deduced that only the graphic interface was corrupted.

I rebooted again and when the system show me the booting choices:

  1. Desktop opensuse 11.3-2.6.34.7-0.3
  2. Failsafe opensuse 11.3-2.6.34.7-0.3
  3. windows 1
  4. windows 2
  5. Floppy

I chose this time the second one (I think it is like a safe mode)and fortunately it worked but the system looked like having lost brightness (I think this choice change the card driver).

Now I do not know why the KDE inrface got corrupted, because I download everything from the opesuse website, so no strange repository has been installed.

I checked in the little manual supplied with the DVD and I found the following suggestion:

**If the KDE interface got corrupted please try to remove the cache files of the KDE desktop using the following command

rm -rf /tmp/kde-user /tmp/ksocket-user**

I do not know if it is a good advice.

Any idea?

Thank you in advance

Definitely not a good advice, no way on a running system

Something else is going on, my guess is the driver for the videocard. Which is the videocard?

If you installed a driver for it, reinstall it.

Thanks for your response

My video card is the following:

  1. Yast=> Hardware => Hardware Information

PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.318]
Unique ID: VCu0.7ujfWsZYN42
Parent ID: vSkL.otYOtR+CIvC
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: “ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650”
Vendor: pci 0x1002 “ATI Technologies Inc”
Device: pci 0x9591 "Mobility Radeon HD 3650"
SubVendor: pci 0x1028 “Dell”
SubDevice: pci 0x0256
Driver: “radeon”
Driver Modules: “drm”
Memory Range: 0xe0000000-0xefffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0xee00-0xeeff (rw)
Memory Range: 0xf6df0000-0xf6dfffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xf6d00000-0xf6d1ffff (ro,non-prefetchable,disabled)
IRQ: 30 (76725 events)
I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
Module Alias: “pci:v00001002d00009591sv00001028sd00000256bc03sc00i00”
Driver Info #0:
XFree86 v4 Server Module: radeonhd
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #15 (PCI bridge)

The drivers are the opensource one.

Frankly I do not know what went wrong.

Please tell me if you need further info

Regards

Did you have ‘nomodeset’ specified in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to ensure the proper radeon ( ? ) opensource driver is loaded?

My experience with kernel updates is they will wipe out any special parameter (such as ‘nomodeset’) and you may need to again specify ‘nomodeset’ as a boot code in grub (this is just speculation on my part wrt your problem and my apologies if I am totally off the mark. … I’m just trying to help) to change from using the ‘radeonhd’ open source driver to use the ‘radeon’ open source driver.

Please do not apologize !!! I think you are right. When the downloading process was finished the OS asked me to reboot so as to the new kernel update could take effect.

I report below the what I found the /boot/grub/menu.lst file:

Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Oct 2 23:07:44 BST 2010

THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader

Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,1)/boot/message

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop – openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.3
root (hd1,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part2 devfs=mount,dall resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31A
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe – openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.3
root (hd1,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part2 showopts apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x31A
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows 1###
title windows 1
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows 2###
title windows 2
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader +1

The first option is the one that is not working, while the second one use the standard X11 graphic mode.

Please could you tell me which parameter I have to add? I can see that in the first option no “nomodeset” parameter has been specified.

**###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop – openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.3
root (hd1,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part2 devfs=mount,dall resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31A
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop
**

Thank you for your help so far

Mind, you put all the output there as text, I know where the lines stop and end, but we cannot see it. Put output between [noparse]

 and 

[/noparse] blocks, then it will be monospaced, i.e. spaces will be visisble, each char the same space, lines will not be wrapped.

You need to change the first one…

Boot in failsafe, open a terminal window and do:
On Gnome:


gnomesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst

On KDE:


kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst

Now change this line:


kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part2 devfs=mount,dall resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31A

to this:


kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.3-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part2 devfs=mount,dall resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS543216L9A300_081002FB0240LCDSRK6B-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a nomodeset

Save the file, reboot and let us know if it works now.

If you make any kernel parameter changes via Yast the changes should survive an update.

On 2010-10-04 17:06, oldcpu wrote:
>
> FabrizioS;2232936 Wrote:
>>
>> The drivers are the opensource one.
> Did you have ‘nomodeset’ specified in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to
> ensure the proper radeon ( ? ) opensource driver is loaded?
>
> My experience with kernel updates is they will wipe out any special
> parameter (such as ‘nomodeset’) and you may need to again specify
> ‘nomodeset’ as a boot code in grub (this is just speculation on my part
> wrt your problem and my apologies if I am totally off the mark. … I’m
> just trying to help) to change from using the ‘radeonhd’ open source
> driver to use the ‘radeon’ open source driver.

A recommendation then would be to enable multiversion for the kernel.

And, to keep the kernel options across upgrades, there is a variable or two in sysconfig to keep
them. Let me see…

/etc/sysconfig/bootloader

DEFAULT_APPEND


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

On 2010-10-04 13:06, FabrizioS wrote:

> I have to say something:in Linux when you solved a problem another one
> pops up. And this is what happened to me.

Problems happen when you do things :slight_smile:

> The first problem was the following error message:
>
> PACKAGEKIT ERROR REPO-NOT-AVAILABLE: FILE ‘/REPODATA/REPOMD.XML’ NOT
> FOUND ON MEDIUM
> ‘HTTP://DOWNLOAD.OPENSUSE.ORG/DISTRIBUTION/11.3/REPO/NON-OSS/

I would have stopped there. If one repo doesn’t work, don’t try to update or install things.

> I was still able to hear the welcome sound so I deduced that only the
> graphic interface was corrupted.
>
> I rebooted again and when the system show me the booting choices:

Instead, you could perhaps have switched to text mode.

> Now I do not know why the KDE inrface got corrupted, because I download
> everything from the opesuse website, so no strange repository has been
> installed.

Video driver, wrong options on kernel line… I think they are guiding you on the way, so be
patient :slight_smile:

> I checked in the little manual supplied with the DVD and I found the
> following suggestion:
>
> IF THE KDE INTERFACE GOT CORRUPTED PLEASE TRY TO REMOVE THE CACHE FILES
> OF THE KDE DESKTOP USING THE FOLLOWING COMMAND
>
> RM -RF /TMP/KDE-USER /TMP/KSOCKET-USER
>
> I do not know if it is a good advice.

Yes, provided that you are not logged-in. Ie, you do that in one of the virtual terminals (text mode).


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

They should, but my experience is they do not always. I’ve seen the ‘nomodest’ removed during a kernel update.

Typically BEFORE a kernel update, I backup my /boot/grub/menu.lst. Then after the kernel update, BEFORE I reboot, I compare the new updated (with kernel) /boot/grub/menu.lst with the backed up version. As noted, I’ve seen the ‘nomodeset’ removed.

Thank you Knurpht and oldcpu your advice worked perfectly!!!

Adding the ‘nomodeset’ option fixed the issue.

**Carlos E. R.

On 2010-10-04 17:06, oldcpu wrote:
>
> FabrizioS;2232936 Wrote:
>>
>> The drivers are the opensource one.
> Did you have 'nomodeset' specified in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to
> ensure the proper radeon ( ? ) opensource driver is loaded?
>
> My experience with kernel updates is they will wipe out any special
> parameter (such as 'nomodeset') and you may need to again specify
> 'nomodeset' as a boot code in grub (this is just speculation on my part
> wrt your problem and my apologies if I am totally off the mark. ... I'm
> just trying to help) to change from using the 'radeonhd' open source
> driver to use the 'radeon' open source driver.

A recommendation then would be to enable multiversion for the kernel.

And, to keep the kernel options across upgrades, there is a variable or two in sysconfig to keep
them. Let me see...

/etc/sysconfig/bootloader

DEFAULT_APPEND

--
Cheers / Saludos,

**

So there is a parameter to specify that can prevent this issue from happening? And it should be:

** /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

DEFAULT_APPEND**

Am I right??

Thank you for your precious help!!!