can only boot in safe mode

Suse 11.1

I had loaded Suse 11.1 and dual booted with Vista in the MBR.This has been working for a few months. After an update.

I get only suse and safe suse in the menu.

suse goes to the login text only.

Safe mode works with slight screen problems.

I have run the repair from the supply disk and it finds a problems in the boot area.

Any help would be appreciated.

I am only a newbie at this.

The partitions seem to be ok, with data, including the windows partition.

Suse works fine in safe mode?

I seem to have lost the boot up MBR and the X window config?

Thanks

Could you tell me if this happened after a kernel upgrade?

No not a kernel. I was having problems with the power management, the screen kept locking and dulling, it’s always happened, so I used YAST and updated anything that was to do with powersave and the screen that were in blue and when asking for updates had no conflicts. All ok till re-boot.

When it’s working - leave alone - a lesson learnt again.

Thanks

I can’t help with the xwindow problem but with the bootloader: you need to reinstall Grub using Yast to recalculate the entries for Grub’s menu. Do this after booting into openSUSE:

go to Yast –> System –> Boot Loader. The Grub configuration screen comes up with the Tab “Section Management” activated. In the lower right is a drop-down selector labelled “Other”. Select from “Other” the option “Propose New Configuration” and then wait for Grub to analyse your partitions and display a new configuration. This may take a while. Important: When that finishes, activate the tab labelled “Boot Loader Installation” and select to “Boot from the Master Boot Record”. [Yast will often default to booting from the root or boot partition rather than from the MBR but that’s for experts only – always choose the MBR.] Then click Finish to save the changes and install the reconfigured Grub into the hard drive’s MBR. If you get a message that "The bootloader boot sector will be written to a floppy disk … don’t bother with the floppy – just click OK to proceed and install to the MBR. Reboot and you should be able to boot to openSUSE using the Grub menu screen.

The quote comes from here: GRUB Boot Multiboot openSUSE Windows (2000, XP, Vista) using the Grub bootloader.

The new Grub menu should contain an entry for vista. If that entry has problems, make sure it looks like this in menu.lst:

title Windows bootloader menu
rootnoverify (hdx,y)
chainloader (hdx,y)+1

where x,y is most often 0,0 for vista on the first partition. If puzzled, post here the menu.lst entry that you find for vista together with the return you get in a terminal when you enter this command:


sudo /sbin/fdisk -l

What sort of graphic card do You have and how did You install the drivers for it?

linux-n2vd:~ # sudo /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2bab9524

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1306 10490413+ 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 1307 9237 63697725 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 9237 19457 82099747+ f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 9237 9499 2104080 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 9499 12109 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 12110 19457 59022778+ 83 Linux
linux-n2vd:~ #

The graphics card is the any one in the emachine below. I did not load any special driver.

Thanks

Hi

Done the above.

Windows . Suse 11.1 and 11.1 safe mode and another entry like a kernel.

Suse 11.1 boots up but only goes as far as the text login screen. does not pick up the Xwindow or KDE3.5? but safe mode does. I will just log out and check if windows is working?
Though more important to get this KDE3.5 working from the text log in screen.

Thanks

That’s one of the cases where the manufacturer puts a utility partition first up on the drive (sad1) and then the bootloader goes sometimes into sda1 and sometimes into sda2. So it might be one of two possibilities. But before I go on, what does the file menu.lst contain after you made the new bootloader as per my first post? To open the bootloader’s menu file and look at it, run this command:

in KDE it’s: kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst
in Gnome it’s: gnomesu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Windows works fine from the menu with the new bootloader.

Suse 11.1 stops at the login screen and does not go for the X window or KDE3.5
I can login to suse from safe mode and

also
linux-n2vd:~ # /boot/grub/menu.lst
-bash: /boot/grub/menu.lst: Permission denied
linux-n2vd:~ # /boot/grub/menu.lst
-bash: /boot/grub/menu.lst: Permission denied
linux-n2vd:~ # /boot/grub/menu.|st
-bash: /boot/grub/menu.: No such file or directory
-bash: st: command not found
linux-n2vd:~ #

Thanks

You need to do it as su

That means there’s nothing further required in changing the bootloader. It just works, now.

Regarding the xwindow, you said this in your first post:

suse goes to the login text only.
Is there any message at all before you get that text login screen?

And also, after you login at the text login, run this command:

tail /var/log/boot.msg

and post here the results

master Resourse Control: runlevel 5 has been reached

Skipped services in run level 5: nfs irq_balancer

Welcome to openSUSE 11.1 - Kernal 2.6.27.23-0.1-default (tty1)

linux-n2vd login:

Hi

I don’t know how to log in at the text log in

In safe mode,and booting into KDE3.5
using root

Password:
linux-n2vd:~ # tail /var/log/boot.msg
done
Starting smartd <notice>checkproc: /usr/bin/kdm 2337
done
Starting SSH daemon<notice>startproc: execve (/usr/sbin/sshd) /usr/sbin/sshd -o PidFile=/var/run/sshd.init.pid ], CONSOLE=/dev/console ROOTFS_FSTYPE=ext3 SHELL=/bin/sh TERM=linux ROOTFS_FSCK=0 powersaved=off LC_ALL=POSIX INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.86 apm=off ide=nodma REDIRECT=/dev/tty1 COLUMNS=124 PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin vga=0x317 DO_CONFIRM= RUNLEVEL=5 PWD=/ SPLASHCFG=/etc/bootsplash/themes/openSUSE/config/bootsplash-1024x768.cfg edd=off PREVLEVEL=N LINES=44 HOME=/ SHLVL=2 SPLASH=yes ROOTFS_BLKDEV=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0_WD-WXE708P7A660-part6 _=/sbin/startproc DAEMON=/usr/sbin/sshd ]
done
Starting Firewall Initialization (phase 2 of 2) done
done
Master Resource Control: runlevel 5 has been reached
Skipped services in runlevel 5: nfs irq_balancer
<notice>killproc: kill(1957,3)
linux-n2vd:~ #

This is well beyond me now. But: try running this as root:

sax2

that should reconfigure the video. What happens?

PS: ppl with ideas – step in.

is this logged in from safe mode or from text, if so what is the text to login from the text?

Thanks

from text mode and logging in as root
sax2 states that there is no X server

Then run as root this first:

startx

I don’t know how to capture the text and save

but it says
creating new authority file /root/ .serverauth.3056
same /root/ .Xauthority

X.Org X server 1.5.2

some text missing

module loader present

then

Backtrace:
0:
1:
to 9

all with text
then fatal error
caught signal 11 server aborting
giving up
xinit: connection refused (errno11): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3) server error

then the login text

I can type out the backtrace lines 0 to 9 if of any use?

Thanks