I’m attempting to install LEAP 15 onto a Dell Precision 5530 laptop.
However, when I boot to the USB stick (I’ve also tried an ISO burned to DVD-R) I get a black screen with a little cursor in the upper left. The system is completely unresponsive at this point. I’ve seen lots of posts about setting “nomodeset” as a paremeter in GRUB, but… I never get to GRUB.
I’ve been able to install LEAP 15 onto an older laptop with this same USB stick.
Fedora Workstation 28 will hang before it gets to the installer screen (but after GRUB). But, If I edit the parameters to include the option nomodeset it loads without error to run live.
Specs I found for Precision 5530 indicate it has Optimus hardware, which seems to be more often problematic than not. Searching for Optimus may provide better clues, but I would start by using the laptop BIOS to try to disable NVidia gfx. If that doesn’t do it, use the F12 key during POST and see if you can select specifically the boot media in UEFI mode.
when you see the boot menu, hit the ‘e’ key. This will give you an edit window.
Scroll down to find the line that begins “linuxefi”.
Hit the END key to get to the end of that line.
Type in " nomodeset" (without the quotes)
Hit CTRL-X to resume booting.
This gives you an alternative video driver, probably poorer resolution. But it should be enough to install. You can work on configuring the video setup after you have an installed system.
How old is the laptop you had the success with? Does it also have Optimus? If I had them here I’d try a TW stick instead of 15.0 first. If no joy I’d probably try to put the SSD from the newer into the older, install there, then return SSD to the newer and see if it boots. Alternatively, clone the older’s storage to the newer’s SSD. Or, I’d go ahead and install Fedora multiboot, then use Fedora’s installed bootloader to load the 15.0 installation kernel and initrd.
I’ve been able to install LEAP 15 onto an older laptop with this same USB stick.
Can you boot of this stick at other computers at this moment? In other words is the stick still Okay, or maybe damaged?
It looks as if the stick is found during boot and the computer wants to boot from it, but there is no boot-able system on it.
Does the older laptop boot in Legacy/MBR mode (the GRUB menu has 8 “buttons” for F1-F8 at the bottom) or in UEFI mode?
If Legacy/MBR, can you set the Dell Precision to boot in “CMS” mode (or Legacy or whatever it might be called in its BIOS)?
If it can boot in Legacy mode, maybe the USB stick was burned the wrong way and cannot boot in UEFI mode?
If this is really a timing problem, then a different installation method could be a solution. Is Grub already installed on that laptop? If yes, you could add a stanza to it to load the installation kernel and initrd to do a NET install. Other methods include a different stick with the NET install instead of full DVD, as well as PXE.
I’ve run into a similar problem with Leap 15.0 on an Asus UX433. The Tumbleweed NET install image worked, so I think it is indeed that Grub got updated in the meanwhile.
setparams 'Installation'
set gfxpayload=keep
echo 'Loading kernel ...'
linux /boot/x86_64/loader/linux splash=silent. <-- ### Notice the difference here ###
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /boot/x86_64/loader/initrd
This was the line to add
setparams 'Installation'
set gfxpayload=keep
echo 'Loading kernel ...'
linuxefi /boot/x86_64/loader/linux splash=silent nomodeset <-- add the space and text in this line
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrdefi /boot/x86_64/loader/initrd
to the end. This got me to the installer GUI. I hope this helps someone.
