error occurred while installing grub openSUSE 12.1

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi! May be someone can help me. I have searched the forum and Google. But haven’t seen exact problem as mine. It is my first install ever of linux. I have searched about different flavors and decided that opensuse was the best for me. I have older Dell inspiron 1150. 60 GB hdd. pentium 4 was 512 of ram, but one stick went bad, so now only 256MB. But I will purchase a Gig stick. I did a clean reinstall of Win XP Pro. Took Paragon Disk manager and resized Win partition after that to about 26 GB. Made 3 more primary partitions. 2.1 GB for swap because I will buy a 1 Gb of ram. Around 18 for /home and around 9 for /. I didnt format them in Paragon. Downloaded Opensuse 12.1, burned DVD. Went thru install, had to mess with it a bit - was following instructions here - http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/advanced-how-faq-read-only/393933-installation-opensuse-11-0-win-xp-dual-boot-2.html I did thru the “expert” way of setting up, so I could specify what partition is what. Somehow my windows partition ended up being on /dev/sda2. I dont know if that matters or if the fact that I made those partitions primary had a negative impact. So in the end everything was good. I clicked to install. during the install it kept giving me ‘failed to install’ this package and that package errors. I kept hitting ‘ignore’ In the end it gave me a list of packages that failed to install. I will attach pictures I took with my phone. Then as an icing on the cake it said ’ Switching to the installed system failed ’ ( trying to chroot… Failed ) and after - ’ Error occurred while installing Grub ’ ’ unable to install boot loader '. So just to follow thru the instructions that I found and linked to above, I installed GAG. However I couldnt do this part -

Install GRUB to your root partition. In a terminal type

grub-install /dev/root_partition

where root_partition is your root partition, and press ENTER.

An example: if /dev/sda7 is your root partition, just type:

grub-install /dev/sda7

Close terminal

Because I couldnt “switch to the new system”… and use terminal. Anyhow, GAG install went smoothly. And I listed both 83h Linux , since I wasnt sure which one is root. But of course GAG couldnt boot either of them. I expected that. XP is still booting up ok. Well, before I do anything else I wanted to explain my issue. And may be someone can help me and tell me why did it have a problem installing so many packages, Why Grub failed and chroot failed. Also I dont even know how do I get the YaST logs now, I cant open openSUSE. I wasn’t expecting so many issues :frowning: Btw I chose the Gnome.
How can I get my openSUSE to work? I was excited about trying it.

2

sounds like you might have a bad iso image, buring the iso did not go right or the disk is dirty.

id try re-downloading the iso and creating a new disk.

as for installing grub manually, you can boot into the resuce system from the installation cd and do it that way hoever if the installer is failing to install packages then that has more chance then not to be the problem.

3

Or here’s link to the album ImageShack Album - 10 images last image taken comes up as first

4

wow…

have you tryed re-downloading the dvd image and re-burning it? that to me is pointing to a bad dvd or dvd-image.

seems like it eather cant read the packages from the dvd or they dont exist

5

I will redownload from a direct link then. This image I downloaded with torrent. For speed. From the official link on opensuse.org
burned with Imgburn with verify setting on

6

md5 checksum of ISO I got thru torrent link is not matching with the one provided on the website… redownloading thru direct link

7

256 meg is not enough 512 is barely enough to install a modern GUI. I’d recommend that memory upgrade before you try the install. And after you get a burn a good image.

8

Ok turns out I used an outdated utility to check md5 before. MD5 & SHA-1 Checksum Utility - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com this one verified both torrent and direct link iso’s as having same correct sha1 checksum. Just burned another 2 DVDs. Doing installation media check after booting from DVD fails every time. I burn with Imgburn that is an excellent program.
It says sector XXXXXXX cannot be read. I just decided to go ahead and try install again anyway… how many DVDs do I need to burn… ?!

9

None. If you are connected to the net, download the net install image, burn to CD and install from network. It’s a tiny iso.

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Thank you for your suggestion. When I read it and got the net cd, I thought I was in the clear… It downloaded the 6 of 6 like that
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It goes through some initialization. Then this flashes
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11

There are only two iso files and you need one one, either the 32bit or the 64bit depending on your machine.

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/12.1/iso/openSUSE-12.1-NET-i586.iso
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/12.1/iso/openSUSE-12.1-NET-x86_64.iso

The other files are checksum that you should use to check if the download was OK.
What kind of computer do you have? Are there other OSes installed? We need more info.

OK, wait I’m reading your first post …

12

On 01/22/2012 02:06 AM, bmvik wrote:
>
> was 512 of ram, but one stick went bad, so now only 256MB.

that is one quarter of the recommended minimum for 12.1, see
http://en.opensuse.org/Hardware_requirements

and yes, you need more RAM to just install

> was following instructions here - http://tinyurl.com/7mnbk9o

that is 3 and a half years old, for openSUSE 11.0, which met its end
of life a year and a half ago <http://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime>

this is not your grandpa’s operating system…thing move fast here–that
is, some information for 11.4 (released in March 2011 and still
supported) is totally out of date…just like you can’t use XP
documentation with Win7, you have to pay attention here also…

> during the install it
> kept giving me ‘failed to install’ this package and that package errors.
> I kept hitting ‘ignore’

never do that. the error message said “Ignoring a package failure may
result in a broken system.”?

> How can I get my openSUSE to work? I was excited about trying it.

-bring the RAM up to minimum recommended 1 GB (before installing)

-you can download, burn and run a Live CD from the CD–but, do NOT try
to install it until you have more RAM…it will run slower than if
installed…

-there is no great advantage to install from the DVD rather than the CD
or network install–all of them give you full access to all the
software (if the DVD is Ultimate-Professional-TipTop-Best-Ever, so is
the CD)

-read:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/new-user-how-faq-read-only/407184-multi-media-restricted-format-installation-guide.html

-then read:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/new-user-how-faq-read-only/467087-new-users-opensuse-12-1-pre-installation-please-read.html

-then read:
http://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/html/openSUSE/opensuse-startup/art.osuse.installquick.html

-before burning a disk check iso md5 (any error is too many)

-self test install disk http://tinyurl.com/3qde66h (any error is too many)

-after installing the new memory run Memory Test overnight–one hour is
NOT enough, let it run at least 12 hours (pick “Memory Test” at bottom
of above image–any error is too many)

-before you begin the install, read the caveat in my sig

-do not ignore errors during install–if you get an error during
install, ask about it here…

-do not guess about partitioning choices during install…

-tip: do not be so excited that you make mistakes–this is not a game
nor a game system, it is industrial strength software which (with some
learning and patience [and luck] will out perform anything you have used
before…

–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

13

Oh, I see… Hmmm. 256MB of RAM. I don’t think it’s enough. Even in virtual machines, I put 1 GB. You should buy as much RAM as you can afford and put in your computer. RAM is totally cheap at the moment (unlike hard disks). Even 1 GB is not that much, you know. It will work, but 2 GB would be better. You should install the NET-i586 on this machine. The other won’t work. I think you have a 32bit CPU. Not 100% sure though.

14

Yes I will buy ram. But did you see the pictures I just posted? I already got the 32 bit ISO. And was installing it. But even network install gave me error … do you see anything that you can recognize on the picture number 2? I just posted a few minutes ago.

15

and yes, you need more RAM to just install

that’s the only explanation I can see, that it needs more ram to install. Since even network install errors out …