I am trying to boot from a DVD of openSUSE 13.1 KDE Live -
I have searched these forums and google now a bit, for a problem that comes up for others as well -
“Failed to find MBR identifier
reboot in 120 secs.”
I* have *been able to add boot options splash=verbose
along with kiwidebug=1 to at least get past the reboot in 120 sec. and into a shell
Just now, I went into my installed Fedora and it turns out the burned DVD image has the config.isoclient file that reads :
So is that probably why “Searching for boot device in Application ID” comes up after a couple seconds
before the much later, well into splash screen for 50 secs message
“Failed to find MBR identifier” . . . It needs MBR ID for dev/loop7 ?
I will try nombridcheck but it will never find a loop7 device, since* that* is where the image is supposed to reside ?
With the DVD inserted (as well as the same image file mounted again to access the file above - loop0)(sda10 is a swap) I have:
I’m away from where I can check the live image right now.
As far as I know, the structure of a bootable DVD is different from that of a disk, so the “MBR identifier” message seems out of place. But I could be wrong.
When I boot the live media (this is from memory), I see the iso image being mounted on a loop device. Then I see another file system being mounted as squashfs (a compressed file system). And then I see the use of an overlayfs, to give some write capability either to a tempfs file system or an ext4 file system (if using a USB).
As far as I know, that unionfs that you see with Fedora is an older method for adding write capability. You should be seeing overlayfs in place of that.
If you have access to a different computer where you could try booting, it would in interesting to see if you get the same error message there.
But a BIOS problem would all be before the kernel is loading -
and the kernel loading includes any added parameter options, like nomodeset, splash=verbose and kiwidebug=1 -
kernel panic occurs about 50 secs in splash screen or with splash bar on bottom (nomodeset) with error then warns it goes to reboot in 120 secs.
(or will go to shell prompt # with the kiwidebug=1 parameter)
the UNIONFS_CONFIG line is from the openSUSE 13.1 KDE Live image iso config.isoclient file
(burned with K3b using Fedora 19 KDE - also with another copy burned with K3b using CentOS 7.0 KDE)
I do appreciate these suggestions, I think I’ll now be comparing the iso files of the Live versions of Ubuntu 14.04,
Fedora 19, and CentOS 7.0 that all boot and that all installed - in comparison to this openSUSE 13.1 Live.
I am surprised that it might be that the openSUSE 13.1 Live CD iso just doesn’t like a Hybrid MBR . . .
# gdisk /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.6
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): r
Recovery/transformation command (? for help):
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): "**(*gives a nonzero hexadecimal ID***)"
but ‘o’ recovery command printout lists my MBR id as " 0x00000000 "
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): o
Disk size is 976773168 sectors (465.8 GiB)
MBR disk identifier: **0x00000000**
MBR partitions:
Number Boot Start Sector End Sector Status Code
The problem appears to by with some EFI BIOS that don’t handle things by the book. So it can work on some machines and on others it does not. My advise is to just install via EFI mode to a EFI/GPT disk. You will then need to follow instruction for EFI installation.
with 3G ram on this hardware, tmp size available is the default half of ram, but used size is pitiful
and with blkid at shell prompt I could get the /dev/sr0: LABEL= and UUID= TYPE=“iso9660”,
so I may be able to direct this with another boot option parameter
fdisk -l also works at shell prompt from the openSUSE Live CD and sees all hard disk partitions and swap
And as comparison, I downloaded openSUSE-11.4-KDE-LiveCD-x86_64.iso
and loop mounted it . . . it has already a /boot/grub/mbrid file with value 0xd704f98b
I’ll burn it to a CD-RW and try to boot 11.4 as I did 13.1,
but this mbrid (in boot/grub/mbrid in 11.4 - and which in 13.1* is* getting a value in a /boot/mbrid file found in shell)
may after all have *nothing *to do with the actual mbr identifier - at least in opensuse 11.4?
Also, I can add the boot option nombridcheck on another attempt with the Live 13.1,
as another try at troubleshooting around this, or ?
# _