Dell XPS L702X hangs before booting to GRUB screen

English Hardware
#1

I realize all the issues with the latest Nvidia graphics card and Linux, but I never expected not
to get the GRUB prompt.

The only option for getting the GRUB screen, after installing OpenSuSE 12.1, is to boot off the
DVD.

So, I will layout the sequence so the picture is more clear.

  1. reboot

  2. POST

  3. Quickly choose F2 or F12

  4. Hang

  5. All I see is the hard drive lit and a blinking cursor

  6. I never see the GRUB boot screen

help …

#2

If the PC will boot from a CD/DVD but just has a flashing cursor when you boot from the “hard drive”, it does not sound like the boot is working at all. How many hard drives do you have in this computer? Where did you place the Grub boot loader (MBR or partition 1, 2, 3 or 4)? As I understand it, this laptop can be Optimus enabled, meaning dual graphic system. This can have a problem as to what graphic driver to load, but should not stop Grub at first. When I see a flashing cursor, I say the actual boot drive either has nothing in the boot sector or the active partition has nothing in it to boot. I have see this before when USB was enable to boot and a USB thumb drive was left plugged in, with nothing on it to boot from. Here is some more info. You did not indicate if this includes Windows or not for a dual boot.

When you install openSUSE and the boot target is Not the first drive, you must make sure the installer knows how it will be when it boots the openSUSE hard disk. This can not be guesed when you boot from a CD or DVD first.

Each hard drive can have up to four PRIMARY partitions, any of which could be marked active and bootable. No matter what you might hear, only one of the first four primary partitions can be booted from. That means you can boot from Primary partitions 1, 2, 3 or 4 and that is all. In order to boot openSUSE, you must load openSUSE and the grub boot loader into one of the first four partitions. Or, your second choice is to load the grub boot loader into the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the start of the disk. The MBR can be blank, like a new disk, it can contain a Windows partition booting code or generic booting code to boot the active partition 1, 2, 3, or 4. Or, as stated before, it can contain the grub boot loader. Why load grub into the MBR then? You do this so that you can “boot” openSUSE from a logical partition, numbered 5 or higher, which is not normally possible. In order to have more than four partitions, one of them (and only one can be assigned as extended) must be a extended partition. It is called an Extended Primary Partition, a container partition, it can be any one of the first four and it can contain one or more logical partitions within. Anytime you see partition numbers 5, 6 or higher for instance, they can only occur inside of the one and only Extended Primary partition you could have.

What does openSUSE want as far as partitions? It needs at minimum a SWAP partition and a “/” partition where all of your software is loaded. Further, it is recommended you create a separate /home partition, which makes it easier to upgrade or reload openSUSE without losing all of your settings. So, that is three more partitions you must add to what you have now. What must you do to load and boot openSUSE from an external hard drive? Number one, you must be able to select your external hard drive as the boot drive in your BIOS setup. Number two, you need to make sure that the external hard drive, perhaps /dev/sdb, is listed as the first hard drive in your grub device.map file and listed as drive hd0. I always suggest that you do not load grub into the MBR, but rather into the openSUSE “/” root primary partition which means a primary number of 1, 2, 3 or 4. If number one is used, then that will be out. You will mark the openSUSE partition as active for booting and finally you must load generic booting code into the MBR so that it will boot the openSUSE partition. I suggest a partition like this:

  1. /dev/sda, Load MBR with generic booting code
  2. /dev/sda1, Primary NTFS Partition for Windows
  3. /dev/sda2, Primary SWAP (4 GB)
  4. /dev/sda3, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for booting (80-120 GB)
  5. /dev/sda4, Primary EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of the disk)

<OR>

  1. /dev/sda, Load MBR with generic booting code
  2. /dev/sda1, Primary, booting NTFS Partition for Windows (small < 500 mb)
  3. /dev/sda2, Primary, NTFS Partition for Windows (Main / Large Partition)
  4. /dev/sda3, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for booting (80-120 GB)
  5. /dev/sda4, Primary Extended Partition (Rest of Disk)
  6. /dev/sda5, Logical SWAP partition(4 GB, inside Extended)
  7. /dev/sda6, Logical EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of the Extended partition)

<OR>

  1. /dev/sdb, Load MBR with generic booting code
  2. /dev/sdb1, Primary, booting NTFS Partition for Windows (small < 500 mb)
  3. /dev/sdb2, Primary, NTFS Partition for Windows (Main / Large Partition)
  4. /dev/sdb3, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for booting (80-120 GB)
  5. /dev/sdb4, Primary Extended Partition (Rest of Disk)
  6. /dev/sdb5, Logical SWAP partition(4 GB, inside Extended)
  7. /dev/sdb6, Logical EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of the Extended partition)

If I had Windows installed on /dev/sda and openSUSE installed on /dev/sdb and I wanted to boot from openSUSE and select openSUSE or Windows from the Grub OS selection menu, I would have to do several things to make that work:

  1. Select /dev/sdb as my boot device in the PC BIOS.
  2. Install openSUSE onto /dev/sdb, making sure ALL (Grub, / root, /home & SWAP all on /dev/sdb) of openSUSE was installed there.
  3. In the openSUSE install section, before I allowed the installation to begin, make sure that /dev/sdb is listed first before /dev/sda other wise the Grub menu and device.map files will not be constructed properly.

For an all openSUSE drive setup, you could use this:

  1. /dev/sda, Load MBR with generic booting code
  2. /dev/sda1, Primary SWAP (4 GB)
  3. /dev/sda2, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for booting (80-120 GB)
  4. /dev/sda3, Primary EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of the disk)

Thank You,

#3

On Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:06:03 +0000, ldbthesource wrote:

> I realize all the issues with the latest Nvidia graphics card and Linux,
> but I never expected not to get the GRUB prompt.
>
> The only option for getting the GRUB screen, after installing OpenSuSE
> 12.1, is to boot off the DVD.
>
> So, I will layout the sequence so the picture is more clear.
>
> 1. reboot
>
> 2. POST
>
> 3. Quickly choose F2 or F12
>
> 4. Hang
>
> 5. All I see is the hard drive lit and a blinking cursor
>
> 6. I never see the GRUB boot screen
>
>
> help …

Don’t you already have a thread going in the install-boot-login forum on
this? Let’s keep the discussion in one place or the other so there isn’t
a duplication of effort to resolve your issue.

Thanks,

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C