13.1 DVD says welcome & dies

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Quite simply, I can boot the 13.1 DVD image, see the welcome message, but selecting anything but boot from HDD and memory test fails. Even firmware test ends in failure. The “Loading Kernel” bar moves as expected but when the kernel’s loaded (I assume), the system simply reboots and brings me back to the 31.1 Welcome splash screen again. The install is on an HP desktop with an Athlon 4-core CPU that’s been running 12.3 successfully for well over a year.

I tried two two different downloads (same file, of course, different sources) - the checksums check out. I just can’t get past the initial startup kernel load.

2

On 2013-12-04 23:46, RBEmerson wrote:
> I tried two two different downloads (same file, of course, different
> sources) - the checksums check out. I just can’t get past the initial
> startup kernel load.

Are you using a DVD, or a usb stick? In the first case, you have to
verify the burn.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

3

The verify worked on both burns. Unfortunately, the BIOS in this box won’t let me boot from a stick. So I have two ISO files, one from a mirror and one from direct link, that have good checksums and which verify after the burn. Kinda leaves me wondering what’s in the kernel that my desktop doesn’t like. As I said, it’s fine with 12.3.

4

How confident are you that your DVD/CD reader is good ? I’ve seen such behaviour with a failing DVD/CD reader. Can you borrow someone’s external DVD reader and try from that?

5

That thought occurred to me, too. The answer is to date there’ve been no problems with reads or burns, and the two DVD’s I burned for 13.1 verified correctly. Finally, using two diffent DVD brands, I still got exactly the same results (boots, says welcome, starts to load the kernel, fails).

My current theory is there’s some obscure incompatibility issue at work here. But what? Of all the Linuxs I’ve installed, none have ever failed outright. some were slow, some had to be stripped down to fit, but none simply refused to run. And this goes back to the pre V1.00 days.

[/headscratch]

6

On 2013-12-05 03:46, RBEmerson wrote:

> My current theory is there’s some obscure incompatibility issue at work
> here. But what?

Possibly.

> Of all the Linuxs I’ve installed, none have ever failed
> outright. some were slow, some had to be stripped down to fit, but none
> simply refused to run. And this goes back to the pre V1.00 days.

Try booting in failsafe.

Get into the bios, and make sure that the entry for the floppy is
disabled. Just in case.

There is a trick to boot the image.iso file directly, not the DVD, from
grub. There is a recent thread about that. I would try to see if the
live test system runs, no much use installing 13.1 if the kernel doesn’t
run.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

7

Thanks - I’ll run those suggestions down.

There is no floppy drive in the box; I’ll make very sure that entry in the boot table is disabled. It should be, and I assume it is, but, as we all know, “‘assume’ is the mother of FU’s”. [/LOL]

8

On 2013-12-05 17:16, RBEmerson wrote:
>
> Thanks - I’ll run those suggestions down.
>
> There is no floppy drive in the box; I’ll make very sure that entry in
> the boot table is disabled. It should be, and I assume it is, but, as we
> all know, “‘assume’ is the mother of FU’s”. [/LOL]

Many computers do not have floppy, but despite that, the bios has an
entry for floppy. Not the boot table, but the list of available devices,
near the sda, sdb, sdc list.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

9

On 2013-12-04, RBEmerson <RBEmerson@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Quite simply, I can boot the 13.1 DVD image, see the welcome message,
> but selecting anything but boot from HDD and memory test fails. Even
> firmware test ends in failure. The “Loading Kernel” bar moves as
> expected but when the kernel’s loaded (I assume), the system simply
> reboots and brings me back to the 31.1 Welcome splash screen again. The
> install is on an HP desktop with an Athlon 4-core CPU that’s been
> running 12.3 successfully for well over a year.
>
> I tried two two different downloads (same file, of course, different
> sources) - the checksums check out. I just can’t get past the initial
> startup kernel load.

I had this once happen on a DVD burn in which the md5 checksum was fine and burn apparently verified - but YaST’s Media
Check reporting the disc as unusable. I’m not sure whether it was the drive or disc or the combination.

10

This is an important distinction robin_listas makes.

On a couple of my machines, I have no floppy drives, but I have to go into the BIOS and disable both the floppy drive and the floppy drive controller to get a happy system. Check your BIOS for the same entries and, if they are there, disable them.

-fb

11

On 2013-12-06 05:06, Fraser Bell wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2605593 Wrote:
>>
>>
>> Many computers do not have floppy, but despite that, the bios has an
>> entry for floppy.

> This is an important distinction robin_listas makes.
>
> On a couple of my machines, I have no floppy drives, but I have to go
> into the BIOS and disable -both- the floppy drive -and- the floppy
> drive controller to get a happy system. Check your BIOS for the same
> entries and, if they are there, disable them.

Yes. This has been irrelevant for a long time, but with recent releases
it is a big problem, because the kernel sees that the bios reports a
floppy driver and tries to see if has a floppy inside or something - and
hangs or takes a huge time thinking about it. Not nice.

Nothing to do with booting order.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

12

I’m inclined to think something is borken in the box. I’ve done as much as I can to make the floppy drive cease to be but the BIOS won’t make it completely disappear. Worse, sometimes the DVD’s refuse to boot at all (remember I burned two DVD’s with two different downloads of the .iso - same name, different sources and d/l modes). In those cases, the box starts up as if there was no disk in the CD/DVD drive, even though I can hear it spin up.

And I’m now condemned to seeing that **** arctic scene with penguins marching around. It’s displaced both the original SUSE splash screen for 13.1 (“Welcome” in a bunch of languages) and the splash screen that was the default without the DVD(‘s). I can’t make the effin’ thing go away. Talk about malware… [/looking to grab some fool by the neck and squeeze until it’s eyes pop out of its head]

13

Oh wait. The cute l’il penguins are an Easter egg. [/face palm] Sheesh!

BTW, the 4 splats above should read [/Delta Alpha Mike November] - God save us from censors!

14

On 2013-12-06 22:26, RBEmerson wrote:
>
> Oh wait. The cute l’il penguins are an Easter egg. [/face palm] Sheesh!

Of course they are. A very cute and lovable one, that I miss sorely :-))

(there is a petition to reinstate it on grub2)

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))

15

You’re welcome to mine. [/grin]

16

Back to the topic… safe mode made no difference in the “start the 13.1 kernel load and BANG!” problem. I can’t think of a way to log what happened at the time of explosion. Also, when launching 12.1, there’s a single boot entry: vga=0x31a (the actual value may be slight different, I’m working from memory, but it’s close). Anyway, I tried that, too, with 13.1. Nada.

In desperation, I’ll burn yet another coaster by downloading a fresh .iso image via a Win7 machine and burning it with the machine’s optical drive, which is know to work well on playing video and burning audio CD’s.

It’d help my general sense of sanity to think I’m not the only person seeing this problem…

17

On 2013-12-07 15:36, RBEmerson wrote:
>
> Back to the topic… safe mode made no difference in the “start the 13.1
> kernel load and BANG!” problem. I can’t think of a way to log what
> happened at the time of explosion.

Try this:

Boot installation with logs on usb stick

> SDB:YaST logging to USB stick during installation

I have followed the procedure on a vmware player virtual machine. Just
boot the dvd, and you get a menu to boot from the hard disk, run the
installation, rescue system, check media, check firmware, check memory.
And there is a line to enter boot options.

Well, in that box i simply type what the help page says: “startshell=1”.
Just like that, and press enter. Boot proceeds, and you get to a linux
shell, where you can mount the usb stick in “/var/log”, following the
instructions to the letter (of course, if you have several hard disks,
the usb stick might not be sdb). My stick was formatted as ext4 previously.

Then you enter “exit”, and the installation continues, with logs being
written to the stick. At some point I aborted (I got again to that
initial shell, just enter “exit” again), and power off when told.

Then I connected the stick to the main computer and I could read the
logs just fine.

It is not difficult at all.

However, I do not have a UEFI system to try how different it is there.
I’m unsure if vmplayer can emulate it.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

18

I’ll try the stick logging thing. It would be nice to find out at least where the wheels fall off.

I’ll let vmware slide. I haven’t messed with it at all, so introducing it would, in all likelihood, just add one more level of chaos.

In truth, this upgrade isn’t a make or break thing, although I’d like to get at least any relevant security updates12.1 will not see. Otherwise, this box acts as private mail server and occasional browse and mail box. Thus I have a fairly low threshold of “basta - it ain’t worth it”.

19

Using “startshell=1” as a boot option is a non-starter. The results are exactly the same: the kernel appears to be loading (little bar expands to the right as the percent loaded increments) and then the machine reboots. Letting things continue after rebooting is just an exercise in “wash, rinse, repeat”. I’m going to burn a 12.3 .iso I grabbed before seeing 13.1 was on its way. It may boot, it may be YAC (Yet Another Coaster).

20

On 2013-12-07 22:56, RBEmerson wrote:
>
> Using “startshell=1” as a boot option is a non-starter. The results are
> exactly the same: the kernel appears to be loading (little bar expands
> to the right as the percent loaded increments) and then the machine
> reboots. Letting things continue after rebooting is just an exercise in
> “wash, rinse, repeat”.

Too bad :frowning:

> I’m going to burn a 12.3 .iso I grabbed before
> seeing 13.1 was on its way. It may boot, it may be YAC (Yet Another
> Coaster).

let’s hope. If it works, please report the issue for 13.1 in Bugzilla.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)