I’m using SuSE 12.3, 64 bit on my desktop. The online update in YaST told me that there was a kernel update available, so I told the pooter to do it. The update screen informed me that it would also get an xorg update.
When finished with the update it said I needed to reboot, which I did.
When the pooter restarted I got the following 5 line message just after the screen that tells me how to get into BIOS (sorry that I have to type it here – can’t put the output into the nice box like everyone else does as this is NOT coming from the konsole).
GRUB loading.
Welcome to GRUB!
error: this ELF file is not of the right type.
Entering rescue mode…
grub rescue>
I also had a desktop update that crashed my computer on 31 Dec 2013.
It would not load ramdisk.
I managed to get it to boot using using advanced boot options, but I still need to fix the issue.
>
> I also had a desktop update that crashed my computer on 31 Dec 2013.
> It would not load ramdisk.
> I managed to get it to boot using using advanced boot options, but I
> still need to fix the issue.
>
>
I had a failure also on the kernel update, but was left with the old kernel
to boot with. Look at the last few lines of /var/log/zypp/history and see
if there were any errors. In my case I needed a lot more temp space than
before.
tail -20 /var/log/zypp/history
The annoying part was that the window with the error message closed while I
wasn’t looking, so didn’t notice the error before rebooting.
You may have run out of space on /boot. Boot with rescue DVD or any live media and check for free space first. Mount your / and /boot and post output of “df -h” here.
Many thanks for this reply and to all the others who replied. The problem is fixed, but not as you might have expected/hoped.
Prior to posting my request for help last night I spent a couple of hours working with a friend who is very well skilled in SuSE. Coincidentally he had me do all the steps in the link you reference above to reinstall Grub. We also tried the various mount and unmounts suggested by others who replied to my request. But nothing worked.
After giving the reboot command the pooter would come back to the screen with the Gekko on the curvy green branch, and then the screen would go black. No flashing of the hard drive light, no sound at all from the hard drive, and nothing changed on the screen no matter how long we waited.
I went through all the commands a second time just on the chance that a “gremlin” might have been in the pooter and had decided to leave. No such luck. No matter what we tried we could not get past that Gekko screen.
This morning I found all of your comments about having a crash after installing the same December 31st kernel update. It seems as if something there just did not like my system, particularly it did not like my GeForce 8200 video which gave me a scrambled picture with the update to the latest nvidia driver.
In the end after many hours of frustration with nothing else working I decided to reinstall 12.3 and, in the process, carefully avoided installing the latest kernel and nvidia updates. The pooter is running fine again as you’d expect it should.
Unfortunately reinstalling did not get to a creative solution (i.e. a repair) I can share for this problem that seems to have affected others. Certainly something seems to be in that new kernel update that is acting like poison, at least for some of us.
Thanks to all who offered help. I only wish I could have confirmed that your suggestions worked for me. I would much rather have fixed the problem with a few lines of code than to do a clean install. But it is what it is.
I updated an old machine from 12.2 to 12.3 on Dec 31,2013. Everything went fine but then I got to update the system and got into exactly the same situation described in this thread. Black screen and my assumption is the old video card i have in that machine (All In Wonder 9600XT). I will try to follow the steps in the thread and let you know if successful. i had some issues with the video drivers over the years on this old machine but with the help from the forum everything was restored. So I will update hopefully today this thread in case someone else encounters this issue.
Hello, I was thinking that i have the same problem as bosdad but i realized now that is a completely different problem. but the description being very generic it was not that difficult to do it. if you think that i would need a different thread please move it. So far because bosdad fixed his problem in one way i will try to fix a different version of the problem. i booted with a rescue disk and got an error message :
systemctl-status systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service failed (Recreate Volatile Files and Directories.
searching for solutions i tried to see if there is a problem with the space and df -l i got that
/dev/loop0 mounted on /parts/mp_0000
/dev/loop1 mounted on /parts/mp_0001
/dev/loop2 mounted on /mounts/mp_0000
/dev/loop3 mounted on /mounts/mp_0001
/dev/loop4 mounted on /mounts/mp_0002 are all at 100%
comparing to another system got that some parts are different. This is the /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf in a working machine
# This file is part of systemd.
#
# systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
# See tmpfiles.d(5) for details
d /run/user 0755 root root ~10d
F /run/utmp 0664 root utmp -
f /var/log/wtmp 0664 root utmp -
f /var/log/btmp 0600 root root -
d /var/cache/man - - - 30d
#these commands are not in the problematic system
r /forcefsck
r /forcequotacheck
r /fastboot
d /run/systemd/ask-password 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/seats 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/sessions 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/users 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/shutdown 0755 root root -
F /run/nologin 0755 - - - "System is booting up."
and this is in the problematic one /mounts/mp_0000/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/systemd.conf :
# This file is part of systemd.
#
# systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
# See tmpfiles.d(5) for details
d /run/user 0755 root root ~10d
F /run/utmp 0664 root utmp -
f /var/log/wtmp 0664 root utmp -
f /var/log/btmp 0600 root root -
d /var/cache/man - - - 30d
d /run/systemd/ask-password 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/seats 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/sessions 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/users 0755 root root -
d /run/systemd/machines 0755 root root - this file disappears in a working system
d /run/systemd/shutdown 0755 root root -
F /run/nologin 0755 - - - "System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8)"
#these are not in a working system
m /var/log/journal 2755 root systemd-journal - -
m /var/log/journal/%m 2755 root systemd-journal - -
m /var/log/journal 2755 root systemd-journal - -
m /var/log/journal/%m 2755 root systemd-journal - -
any ideea where to go from here?
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200107862016 bytes total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xad662d26
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 x x x 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 * x x x 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 x x x 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 x x x 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160862016 bytes total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xad662d26
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 x x x 83 Linux
i think some temporary space needs to be cleaned up but not sure which. Thank you for help.
no i put x’s as i had to manually input the data. so i guess there is hard to find someone to suggest something. I know it’s atough scenario but it seems that some temporary space is not enough. why would those directories get full? i will wait few more days and i will eventually rebuild the box with 13.1. I would have liked to understand what happened.
AFAIK this is a wrong architecture warning - you’re trying to run a 32-bit executable in a 64-bit system (without the -32bit libs, of course), or vice-versa.
ELF (Executable and Linking Format) is a binary format originally developed by USL (UNIX System Laboratories)
All I did was instruct Apper to install a new kernel update that it told me was available. When the pooter rebooted after the download that’s the message I got. And the problems began.
Perhaps what you’ll alluding to is the “poison” in the update that has caused so many to reply to my post with their own problems following the December 31st kernel update?
If something is “poisoned” or not I don’t know, as I didn’t experience this issue when updating (12.2, 12.3 and 13.1 64-bit). I was trying to point to the error message and what it means (something that has not been highlighted in the previous posts), not implying it was in some way your fault. I’m sorry if you got that impression.
