Ah well, now it won't boot.

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Opensuse 12.3 KDE 4.10 and freshly installed since yesterday.
I had it working last night, then powered it off and was all ready to abandon Windows today.
Alas, twas not to be.

This morning when I booted up, I get to the green background screen with the gecko and that’s as far as it gets.
I did the “e” at boot up, and the Linux command has nomodeset.
F10 at that point goes back to being stuck.

What can I do to see where it is stuck ?
Maybe one of the safe modes and see how far it gets ?

I am off to take some friends to the airport so I will dig into this later today.

Deep sigh. :’(

The last thing I did last night before powering off were these commands in an effort to improve my Nvidia display.

sudo zypper ar ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/12.3 nvidia
sudo zypper in x11-video-nvidiaG03 nvidia-computeG03 nvidia-gfxG03-kmp-desktop

#2

When booting, hit the escape key to leave the Suse graphical splash screen and see boot message.

If you are stuck at the boot splash screen, try ctrl-alt-f1 to get a virtual terminal you can log in to. (f1-f6 are vtys, and X runs on f7)

Once logged in you can address when is going on with the Nvidia driver.

#3

On 2013-08-14, hextejas <hextejas@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Opensuse 12.3 KDE 4.10 and freshly installed since yesterday.
> I had it working last night, then powered it off and was all ready to
> abandon Windows today.
> Alas, twas not to be.

I admire your patience.

> This morning when I booted up, I get to the green background screen
> with the gecko and that’s as far as it gets.

Is this openSUSE 12.2 or 12.3? Unless something’s changed, openSUSE 12.3 should have a black background with a green
vine.

> I did the “e” at boot up, and the Linux command has nomodeset.
> F10 at that point goes back to being stuck.

As a matter of interest, what sound card do you have?

> sudo zypper ar ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/12.3 nvidia
> sudo zypper in x11-video-nvidiaG03 nvidia-computeG03
> nvidia-gfxG03-kmp-desktop

Did you ever do a…


sh-4.2$ sudo zypper up

… since your original install as along the lines I suggested a few posts/threads ago?

#4

Fly, you’re correct. It is a black background and green vine and lizard.

Lews, I did the esc and the listing got as far as this, then stopped.
[OK] Reached Target Graphical Interface.

I think it is also trying to connect wireless which we did ok yesterday.

The Ctl-Alt-F1 opened a terminal window.
I tried to run the “sudo zypper up” and it looks like it needs an internet connection, so abotred.

It left me in linux-qq35:~

What now ?

I am going to see if I can manually connect to the WAP.

#5

Maybe the G03 nvidia driver is not working with your gfxchip either? Bad advice from me then, sorry!:shame: (those integrated chipsets are not listed in the driver’s supported products list…)

Actually if it fails to load, another driver should be used instead, but anyway.

Does recovery mode (under “Advanced Options” at the boot menu) work now for you? It should, after you installed all updates.
If not, do the following in text mode.

Try to remove the nvidia driver again:

sudo zypper rm x11-video-nvidiaG03 nvidia-computeG03 nvidia-gfxG03-kmp-desktop

And for further advice regarding the driver (maybe G02 works?), please also post the output of the following run in Konsole:

uname -a
#6

If you have to do that in text mode, where you apparently don’t have an internet connection, better use this instead:

sudo rpm -e x11-video-nvidiaG03 nvidia-computeG03 nvidia-gfxG03-kmp-desktop

zypper may try to refresh the repos…

#7

And it just got weirder !!!

I did a reboot and, by accident picked the option about safe booting Windows.

OOPS !!!

No problem, or so I thought, but even though I did nothing except exit, the SOB messed up the boot menu and now all I get is straight into Windows.

Sheesh.

So, can I do a partial re-install from the LiveCD ? I only want the Grub2 menu and links to Linux.

#8

So Windows recovery seems to have overwritten your bootloader.

Boot from the LiveCD and try: (in Konsole)

sudo grub2-install /dev/sda

Provided that sda is your hard disk which it should be.

No guarantees though! I never had the need to do that yet with grub2. And I don’t have any Windows after XP on any of my systems either.
Maybe other people have more experience in that case and could answer?

Maybe open a new thread for that as well? :wink:

#9

On 2013-08-14, hextejas <hextejas@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> So, can I do a partial re-install from the LiveCD ? I only want the
> Grub2 menu and links to Linux.

http://forums.opensuse.org/content/128-re-install-grub2-dvd-rescue.html

  • if you’ve had problems installing openSUSE using Live CD, you might want to consider installing from the full DVD:

http://software.opensuse.org/123/en (select 32/64 Bit PC) then click on Download DVD and burn the ISO to DVD.

#10

Wolfie, is there a way to determine from where it booted ? I want to make sure it is sda before I proceed.

#11

How many drive do you have?

fdisk -l

will list the drives and tell you

#12

sda 1~7 with sda1 having a * under boot
If the make-grub is successful, will it create a new file somewhere that I can take a look at ?

Here goes.

#13

It reinstalls grub

#14

And apparently not quite well. I got a
“Entering Grub rescue”
> Entering rescue mode

oops

#15

On 2013-08-14 21:06, hextejas wrote:

> sda 1~7 with sda1 having a * under boot
> If the make-grub is successful, will it create a new file somewhere
> that I can take a look at ?
>
> Here goes.

Just a very wild guess:

On some installs, like mine, what you have to do is change that boot
mark to where grub is - perhaps sda3 or 4.

It is a wild guess from my part, I don’t know if this is the case, and
if it is, what is your layout. And if it is the case, I also guess that
reinstalling grub will not work.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

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

#16

Being a total Linux newbie, there is something that troubles me.
If I boot from a LiveCD, go to a terminal mode, and run Grub2 commands, would that work correctly ?
Isn’t the LiveCD awareness of disk drives and operating systems limited by the way he is configured.
This might not make sense but LiveCD knows about his psuedo disk drives (RAM) and not the real disks that result from an install.

Does that make sense ?
Anyway, I am still puzzling what to do.

#17

So at least you have grub2 back now.
Try to enter “ls” and “ls /” there.
What does that show?

You could try to enter “help” as well, maybe there is some “setup” command as in grub legacy.

#18

I see there are some rescue commands within Grub rescue and they require me knowing from where Grub boots.

How can I tell that from looking at all the partitions ?

I have SDA 1~7

thanks

#19

The LiveCD knows about your hard drives (because the kernel recognizes them), but grub2-install didn’t know where the other files were installed I guess.
I’m new for this as well.

Maybe you have to specify “–directory” to grub2-install, and even mount the partition before.
But somebody else should comment on this before, I guess…

Or maybe this would help you? But you would need the output of what I wrote before I guess… (“ls” and “ls /” on that grub rescue prompt)
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85603

#20

By knowing you had Windows installed before and installed openSUSE afterwards, and assuming you did a default install, I would guess that sda6 is your root partition where grub2’s files are.
But that’s really just guessing now…

So try to boot the LiveCD again, run Konsole and enter:

sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
ls -la /mnt

And post back the output please.

Or, what does “ls /” at that grub2 rescue screen exactly say?
AFAIUI it should provide a clue either…