The last round of updates available for opensuse 11.3 included the version 2.6.34.4-0.1 of the kernel. Being a good boy, I have accepted those updates. Since then, both Desktop and Failsafe boot processes ended up on a black screen.
This problem is reproducible after complete reinstall of opensuse 11.3 from the liveDVD and selection of the kernel as the only package to be updated.
Do I have any other options than reinstalling the system again and refusing the kernel update? How could I know in the future whether a kernel update will crash my system or not?
Confirmed here. A black screen when X starts. I can log in using ssh. The Xorg process is completely dead, and will not go away even with kill -9. Ctrl-Alt-F1 will not switch to a text terminal, so you are completely stuck unless you have another machine to log in from.
I have downgraded to 2.6.34-12 (using Yast2 over ssh -Y) and my system is now working again. (Note you have to edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to get X forwarding to work on 11.3. - make sure the line AddressFamily inet appears.)
Exactly the same result happens using the nvidia and nv drivers, even when the nvidia.ko kernel driver is not loaded.
Same problem here after this kernel update… black screen. Graphics card is Nvidia 8600 GT.
I can also boot into runlevel 3 and I can also ssh -X to this machine but that’s it! Not very practical.
Will revert to the previous kernel because I just have to work!
I am relatively new to Linux and don’t really know how to revert to a previous kernel. Would you mind explain to me how to do it through level 3 boot and yast?
I have tried to use software management to change my kernel but had 2 problems:
1 - I don’t see the same versions as your system seems to see
2 - when I tried to switch to 2.6.34-13.3 (the only other version available to me) from repo-oss, yast seemed to be unable to install the package after downloading it and I could nbt abort the installation…
Yep, that is exactly what I have done. After clicking on Accept, Yast downloads the kernel but seems to get stuck on the install (actually, it does not seem to event start the install).
I ended up reinstalling opensuse 11.3 and refusing the upgrade to the new kernel… I wonder what I am doing to do next time a new kernel becomes available…
Yast/Zypper will update the video drivers automatically, provided that you used Yast/Zypper to install them in the first place - e.g. using the recommended one-click install. It should also re-install the drivers automatically after a kernel downgrade, otherwise the drivers will be “orphaned” with unmet dependencies (i.e., drivers depends on the corresponding kernel).
Of course, if you installed them from a package downloaded from the card manufacturer, then you will have to re-install manually after any change to the kernel.
I have a related problem, using the radeon driver installed automatically by the openSuSE installer. In my case, however, accepting the kernel upgrades wiped out my grub bootloader to the point where the only choice available was “Windows”.
There is something seriously wrong with this kernel update, or with openSuSE 11.3 and it’s interaction with it.
Two or three years ago, SuSE was the best linux distro out there, head and shoulders above the rest in terms of stability, package selection and ease of installation and use. Since switching to the open source model, every release has gotten steadily worse, with old bugs reappearing and new one being added. Things that once worked perfectly well are now broken, and there is little in the way of help other than hundreds of posts saying “Yeah, I’ve got the same problem” or “It works fine for me”.
The switch to 11.3 has once again sent my blood pressure soaring, as the hours I spend wasting time trying to get the simplest, formerly rock-solid features to work mount into days of lost time.
I’d happily pay for a stable Linux distro; I used to pay for SuSE, until I got a fast Internet connection that made downloading DVDs feasible. Does anyone know of one that works out of the box, the way openSuSE used to?
Video drivers were installed during the base installation, so I did not download any specific package from the manufacturer. How can I know what it the name of the package containing the video drivers?
Same here! It seems not possible to revert from 2.6.34.4-0.1.1 to 2.6.34-12.3: Yast is downloading fine but als pomchip states: Installation never takes place! The solution for me seems to be to perform a clean install, after that you’ll have to lock the kernel to 2.6.34-12.3…
(This is all on my desktop system with Nvidia 8600 GT using either nouveau or the NVIDIA 256.53 driver, same issue. On my old HP-laptop 2.6.34.4-0.1.1 is working fine, videocard ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955, using the radeon 2D driver and R300 classic 3D driver (7.8.2.). Both systems are x86_64)
I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but to me this seems to be short of RAM for KDE 4.4. For me, 2G is a bit mean, 3 is fine and 4 is about right. 1G just seems too little to have a system run smoothly.
You may just be running out of memory. Do you have any swap configured? If not, you might find that the installation fails. If so, it might proceed, but VERY slowly with lots of disc activity - it could take hours if swapping madly!
I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but to me this seems very off-topic.
For your information, and I will repeat myself, my old HP-laptop “flarktop” is working fine with KDE 4.4.4 & kernel 2.6.34.4-0.1.1 with just 1 GiB of RAM and a bit of patience. It’s the flarkbox, that was causing the trouble.