I have been trying to Install either Opensuse 11.4 or 12.1 on my Dell XPS M1210 for the past three days but to no avail.
Firstly It seems as if the installation proceeds very slowly from the start.
The installer seems to get stuck quite a lot at various stages.
After selecting the type of installation whether live or dvd the system appears to take a huge amount of time to get to the install screen where initially is nearly impossible to use cursor or trackpad.
After several minutes but always in a slow manner the installer starts performing actions but always very slowly.
In the las instance it took nearly 10 minutes to proceed from language selection screen to the portitioner.
I tried to several kernel options at boot level such as NOMODE Set etc, basic video, noacpi etc but nothing seems to make any difference.
Once the installation get going on a live install it takes approximately 10 minters jus tho carry out formatting of hard rive (260GB sata).
Presently the system is been installing 11.4 for approx 20 minutes and has not yet reached 30% of installation.
I thought for a while soothing might have been wrong with my Hard disk or cd/dvd drive but I managed to install Fedora live and dvd and windows 7
without any major efforts or glitches.
I have been googling several issues but have not yet come across any viable solution.
Can anyone help on this.
Any type of help would be very much appreciated.
My exact specs are:
Dell XPS M1210
Intel Core Duo 2 - 2Ghz
Memory = 4 Gb.
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce Go 7400
What comes to my mind is a bad installation cd. Either iso download was corrupted, or cd burned to poor quality media and not to high quality +R/-R (not an RW) at slowest speed burner allows.
But thats only speculation and what comes to my mind at first.
thanks a lot for your reply
That was one avenue I explored as well testing several, and in saying several I mean probably 20/30 in between original dvds from magazines and ones i burnt myself, and the all produced the same effect more or less.
The only one that doesn’t seem to be having any problems installing is either windows 7 32bit dvd or fedora 16 32 bit dvd which unfortunately is having problems with nvidia cards and cannot use the full potential of the laptop.
I don’t find commercial DVDs from magazines have any superior quality.
Also, if one’s PC’s CD/DVD drive is slightly out of calibration, then even a good CD/DVD can give problems.
Installing from USB is IMHO still hit and miss and no conclusions can be drawn from that.
You did not specifically answer my questions about checking the md5sum of the iso, nor burning at a slow speed to a +R or -R (and not an RW) but rather you gave a general answer. Also, did you burn the CD/DVD (at the slowest speed to a high quality CD/DVD +R or -R at slowest speed) using the burner on this same PC ? (from your Fedora or Windows7 partition) ?
yes I did burn several cds/dvds with same optical drive that I am using for installation from win7 at the slowest speed possible. I still haven’t managed to install a linux distro properly enough to burn cds.
I also partitioned the hard drive into 2 logical drives one with win 7 and attempted installation on second partition as I sometimes do but never managed to get opensuse totally installed.
The discs I am using, besides the ones from Linux format magazines or others, are quite good Verbatim discs.
I also attempted burning discs with my brand new macbook pro dc/dvd drove but to no avail.
I am now back to using Win 7 on the dell laptop as I was totally exasperated about not being able to use the laptop for nearly three days.
I confess I hate having to use windows but as a last resort …
I’ll try again burning a disc from it and attempting installation.
I’ll let you know.
Oh and sorry yes I have carried out the md5sum check with no errors and the cd/dvds are +R.
Well that reads like you exhausted the possibilities there. Did you check the BIOS settings to see if there might be an explanation wrt an unusual BIOS setting ?
Thanks again for replying and for helping out.
As a matter of fact I did flash the bios with latest dell upgrade (via windows 7) and reset it to its default settings then tweaked it a bit and also tried to install using usb optical cd/dvd burner thinking the problem could have been a faulty internal dvd drive.
Initially the bios would not at all pick up the external drive. I then proceeded to remove the internal drive and attempted again to boot from usb device.
It looked as if the drive was running a bit faster than the internal one but then it stopped loading the linux os and had to revert back to internal one.
I tried also to remove memory modules (2 x 2gb) one at a time but with no different results.
The only other option I thought of was a possible faulty hard drive but unfortunately the previous owner of the laptop had replaced original hard drive with current one and messed with one of the 3 screws holding it into the chassis/case and I am not currently able to take the item out to test a different one.
I am downloading again as we speak via bit torrent another version of opensuse 12.1 iso dvd via vuze on installed win 7 and then I’ll burn on verbatim DVD +r medium hoping it will make a difference.
On 01/24/2012 08:06 AM, beakerbeetle wrote:
> yes I did burn several cds/dvds with same optical drive that I am using
> for installation
the “burning” part and the “disk reading” part of DVD burners are two
different things…and, those two different ‘heads’ might be just far
enough out of alignment that . . .
or, if the burn lens or the read lens is just a little bit dirty (any
smokers around? how about frying potatoes or fish without a strong vent
pulling out the oily steam?) then . . .
so, i suggest you try a different burner and/or reader…some folks have
two different usb burners, and use one only for burning, and the other only for reading…because they found that if you do a lot of
reading, eventually it won’t burn true…
read around…cd/dvd burning drives are down to like $40 and throw away
inexpensive…and, they do not last the several years that they used to…
or, you might try a disk cleaner gizmo, they are pretty inexpensive–be
SURE to always use it according to directions and never use it without
the included liquid cleaner!
and yes: one disk my read fine and the next not (because they came from
two different burners, or were burned weeks apart, or the unburned media
had just enough variation or or or) and a disk might check good on one
reader and not on another…and etc…
On 2012-01-24 10:06, beakerbeetle wrote:
>
> Thanks again for replying and for helping out.
> As a matter of fact I did flash the bios with latest dell upgrade (via
> windows 7) and reset it to its default settings then tweaked it a bit
> and also tried to install using usb optical cd/dvd burner thinking the
> problem could have been a faulty internal dvd drive.
I’m not sure if you tried booting from USB?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Just an update on how things are evolving!
It appears to be a problem with the graphics card and the driver that Opensuse is assigning automatically for it.
I have tested the latest versions of Fedora (15/16) and I was only able to perform a smooth installation with no hiccups by selecting the basic video driver for installation.
I tried to perform the same operation with Suse by selecting the VESA driver but it did not work yet.
Is there any other kernel options I could optionally select to overcome/jumpstart this issue?
Text mode install tried and tested and had the same sluggish results;
It actually drove me so mad waiting to go from one screen to another that I aborted the whole thing without even getting to the partitioner.
I’m giving fedora 15 a go at the mo hoping to get nvidia driver working and then I’ll try opensuse again.
I’ll keep updated…
Check also wht the openSUSE release notes have to say:
Booting with systemd or sysvinit
By default, openSUSE now boots using systemd. In case of trouble, you can switch back to the old way using sysvinit by pressing the F5 key on the boot.
If you want to switch to sysvinit permanently, install the sysvinit-init package. To switch back to systemd, reinstall the systemd-sysvinit package.
So if you have not done so already, try booting the oldway to sysvinit.
The machine has only one graphics card and it’s an Nvidia GeForce Go 7400.
A question to OLDCPU:
to boot the old way do I have to add a kernel line for sysvinit at boot time?
I looks like the release notes (for 12.1) that I quoted above were the ‘draft’ (not released) version, and the actual version is here: 12.1 release notes which makes no reference to the F5 selection - so I am at a loss here.
I know it used to be that if you want to switch to sysvinit permanently, one would install the sysvinit-init package. And to switch back to systemd, one would reinstall the systemd-sysvinit package. But I do NOT know how it is setup now. Unless one has the actual problem (which I do not have) one does not nominally pay attention to such things.
So while sysvinit may be an option, I do not know enough to provide further guidance on that. Some one else who DOES know needs to ‘chime in’ here.
On 01/25/2012 02:26 AM, beakerbeetle wrote:
> to boot the old way do I have to add a kernel line for sysvinit at boot
> time?
at the first green screen during boot press F5 and select to boot with
systemV
HOWEVER: i’ve never used 12.1 either (waiting for it become stable) and
i do not know if the install disk itself can be F5 switched, so it might
be necessary to add into the Boot Options line type (on that first green
boot screen, after selecting “Installation”) this:
init=/sbin/sysvinit
on the other hand if Fedora installs, what is the problem with using
what works on that machine?
i mean, i can see (here http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfb/notebooks/xpsnb/cp.aspx?refid=xpsnb&cs=QTO28&s=dfb)
that no Linux is not mentioned as any of the operating systems/versions
supported on that machine’s hardware…so, any Linux will run is a
good-luck gift given to you by the tireless Linux programmers who have
figured out how to force some hardware specifically engineered to work
with one family of operating systems, to also run open source software.
and, there is enough variation in the broad selection of available Linux
distributions that one distro might be better than another on any given
machine not engineered for Linux…
On 2012-01-25 07:46, oldcpu wrote:
>
> beakerbeetle;2433763 Wrote:
>>
>> to boot the old way do I have to add a kernel line for sysvinit at boot
>> time?
>
> I’ve never had to use sysvint myself on 12.1.
>
> I looks like the release notes (for 12.1) that I quoted above were the
> ‘draft’ (not released) version, and the actual version is here: ‘12.1
> release notes’ (http://tinyurl.com/73pvvyu) which makes no reference to
> the F5 selection - so I am at a loss here.
I think both are for 12.1, but with errors in the title. I’ll try to report
that when I can. Busy now.
You can select one system init or another with F5. You can make the
selection permanent by installing certain package, or, you can change the
kernel command line to get the same effect as F5, but permanently. That is
what I would do, but I don’t have the change in biological memory.
But I fear that nothing of that would help the OP, as the problem is during
install. It is the DVD which is extremely slow, and I have no idea why.
Perhaps Mirco can switch to a text console during install and issue dmesg
to see if there is something weird going on, like a repeated message.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)