Boot hangs after loading initial ramdisk

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

I’m very new to Linux. Recently installed OpenSUSE 13.1 alongside Windows 7. Installed without problems and quickly. Then the system prompted me to install some updates and, apparently upgraded itself to a new kernel version. This new version does not boot and hangs at “loading initial ramdisk”. The previous version does boot without a problem. I did a quick search on google and it seems that this problem exists for users of other distributions as well: Arch Linux, Debian etc.

My guess is that there may be not enough space on my hard disk after the update. I have two partiotions, aside from swap etc: 20Gb and about 200Gb. I was thinking about merging them. Would this be a good approach?

Thanks for any advice on this.

Ivan

2

When the graphical loading screen appears, press F4 and choose Safe Settings, then press Enter.

3

Did you install any video driver for you video card? If so which driver and card??

4

So …
You can boot to the earlier kernel from the Grub menu? (If I understand you correctly.)

If so, can you boot to the new kernel using Advanced Options and choosing Recovery Mode?

Try that, and if you can boot into the new kernel that way, run Yast updates again to make certain everything is updated to match the new kernel. Could be – as gogalthorp infers – you might be using a graphics driver that needs to be updated after the kernel is updated.

Report back here.

5

Thanks Gogalthorp,

No, did not install any drivers

Regards,
Ivan

6

Thank you for your replies,

F4 at bootloader doesn’t give anything. I tried recovery mode, but that doesn’t load either, or rather - sometimes it loads - sometimes no.

Also, interestingly enough, I tried installing Ubuntu some time before - it also froze at loading.

Regards,
Ivan

7

Ok so what video chip/card

It sounds like a video card problem

If ATI/AMD or NVIDIA you may need to install the propritary driver for the chip

8

It is NVIDIA. Will I find the drivers in YaST? It is a bit confusing. There seems to be no separate category for drivers there.

Regards,
Ivan

9

Ok, I got it. Looks like I was looking at the control centre, not the installation utility. But again, a bit confused, the nvidia driver there is marked with a black checkbox, so I would take it, that means it is installed. Should I look for something else?

Regards,
Ivan

10

Ok, that was a stupid question ) Sorry. Found the drivers )

11

Still a question, though. I have an NVIDIA GT520 M (notebook chip). Found the driver on the nvidia website, which is generic for x64 Linux systems. Should I install that?

Kind regards,
Ivan

12

You can but it is better to get it from the repo. If you install manually you must reinstall each time a kernel is changed or patched But from repo it will auto update4 when a kernel is installed

Here is a nice easy way

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers

13

On 2014-07-19 23:06 (GMT) imartynau composed:

> Still a question, though. I have an NVIDIA GT520 M (notebook chip).
> Found the driver on the nvidia website, which is generic for x64 Linux
> systems. Should I install that?

None of my openSUSE installations with Nvidia chips need the proprietary
driver to work good enough for me. They’re all using nouveau, and KDE3 and/or
KDE4.

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

14

Some chips don’t like nouveau and need the propritary

15

Also, some features will not work with the nouveau driver, such as S-Video out …

But, note, you also need to make sure you get the proper version of the NVIDIA driver to match your card. You should be able to look up whether your card is G02, G03, or?

16

G03 is essentially “everything that isn’t ancient” (> GF8 (Geforce 8100 or higher))
G01 is “How does this thing even work today?” (< GF8 (Geforce 7950 or lower))

:slight_smile:

17

That chip is Optimus capable, so it could be an Optimus system. What’s the output of this?

/sbin/lspci | egrep 'VGA|3D'
18

Thank you, Hank. The output is as follows:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF119M [GeForce GT 520M] (rev a1)

19

I am concerned that the proprietary drivers in the repository don’t seem to fit GeForce GT 520M. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Regards,
Ivan

20

You are quite right. Uninstall everything nvidia related and remove the nvidia repo. If you at any stage also have tried to install the nvidia driver “the hard way” you have to reinstall the package xorg-x11-server.
After having done the above follow this guide.
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_Bumblebee