my friend just seems to have experienced a catostrophic opensuse leap 42.3 system failure.
yesturday she called to tell me the system seams very slow to boot. when she tried to open dolphin file manager she got an error
CAN NOT WRITE TRASH.CONF followed by CAN NOT WRITE MARY.CONF. Home was just a blank screen without folders or files. Using the root display and navigating to ./home/mary showed all her files but click home returns with the error messages. I told her to try to restart maybe something got messed up and we might see a clue during reboot. Reboot was even slower than before and halted with no message just a winking cursor on a line saying starting xwindows. Forced a power off and retried with same results. Also she told me of a line saying recovering from hibernation which doesn’t make sense.
when I did up her machine some 3 yrs ago and sent it to her she had opensuse 11.2 which we eventually got live upgraded to leap 42.3 in stages. So she has no media to work from and no working system now. Her grub has only two entries leap 42.3 and leap 42.3 recovery but as I recall the later recovery mode needs an image file. It would seem that the xwindow system is corupt but then again kde-dolphin indicated corupt configs which I would presume would mean even dropping to command line would be useless if the system doesn’t know who she is.
She does have a live gecko-linux USB stick so was thinking that if she uses it and boot from usb and mounts the linux partition so she can rename the /home/mary folder to /home/mary2 so she doesn’t loose it’s contents (namely 4 virtual 20GB drives) maybe I can figure a way to install leap 15.0 with fresh home folder and recover the VMs Docs etc from /home/mary2
Sounds like freespace may have exhausted. Does the login screen appear? If yes, Ctrl-Alt-F2 and
root login instead of an X session. If no, try appending S or 3 to the default grub stanza’s kernel
line before proceeding, then root login may succeed. Check for freespace. Make some if needed. /tmp
may need cleaning, as might /var/log/journal/*, but it could be /home is filled, or if the upgrade
to 42.3 involved reformatting / to btrfs, snapshots may have over-accumulated and need culling.
Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
Still no joy getting to runlevel 3. Her grub boot screen is different than mine (she is running leap 42.3, I am running Leap 15) Hers has 2 entries leap 42.3 default & leap 42.3 recovery. Mine has leap 15 default , Leap 15 advanced , Leap 42.3 Leap 42.3 adanced. Hers has no mention of any special keys where mine has two options c:command line & e:edit.
On hers : choosing default halts part way through the process, choosing recovery prompts to insert back-up media or install media
On both systems there is no way that 1 can find to change to runlevel 3 all tried methods result in kernel panic and halt. What ever happened to ‘kiss’ keep-it-simple-stupid Last time I used switch to runlevel x was maybe 15 years ago and it was simple move to boot line to try, press f8 type runlevel = 3 press F10
So how exactly do you force a runlevel at boot on our two different systems!!! c: - gives a useless command line & e: opens a useless edit box that doesn’t make sense since it’s unclear about the syntax
Ok I just tried this on my system and it worked … thanks!
on my friends system she says pressing ‘e’ does nothing . Could it be that her grub coming from 11.2 originally functions different than mine even though we did live upgrades all the way to 42.3?? I know her screen and my screen for grub look totally different.
Also I perish the though of trying to configure her system over a 3000 mile spread so here is what I am thinking.
Get her into runlevel 3 and test free space with df command or alternately use the gecko live usb to mount / clear for some free space looking to achieve about 100gb
shrink volume ‘/’ so there is about 10gb free and 80 to 90gb unallocated (‘/’ is formated ext4)
create new drive of 80 to 90gb ext4 (don’t like btrfs file system)
move all the configuration source (iso’s & back-up vdi’s) and content of documents, downloads, music, video’s also to new partition
link the new partition folders back to coresponding home folders.
We can then be free to install a new linux onto ‘/’ or if freeing space restores operation we can upgrade live to leap 15 and all we would have to do is remake 5 links
Did this last night on my system and it almost worked. shrank the ‘/’ to 120gb, created new 80gb back-up, moved 60gb of home/bin, home/picture home/video home/documents home/download home/music to the new partition formated ext4. created the links back into home but upon next boot I have to remount the new partition and use root password on it before the links work. I did chown rick:user and properties show owner rick , group user but I missed something. Point is that a new or updated linux can be put on ‘/’ and everything to restore virtual guests, & setups wont be lost when home is remade.
Yes, she is probably still using grub legacy (sometimes called “grub1”, which was the default at the time of 11.2. And if she upgraded, the she would have kept grub legacy. But if she upgrades to Leap 15.0, then grub legacy will be replaced by grub2.
Also I perish the though of trying to configure her system over a 3000 mile spread so here is what I am thinking.
Get her into runlevel 3 and test free space with df command or alternately use the gecko live usb to mount / clear for some free space looking to achieve about 100gb
That sounds like a good suggestion.
It is so long since I last used grub legacy, that I have forgotten how to get to runlevel 3. But I think there was a place where you could add boot options (on the boot screen), so just putting a " 3" at the end should do the trick. Alternatively, using a live USB is another good way.
Exactly what to do then, will probably depend on what you find out.
As I recall there is a entry field at the bottom of a grub 1 screen where you can simply type a 3 which should bring you to run level 3 and you can log into the terminal
Technically it doesn’t have to be so. I have more than a dozen 15.0 installations, both those installed fresh and those upgraded, all of which, except for two using UEFI, like previously releases, still boot from and have Grub Legacy installed. Grub Legacy is still in the repos even for TW and 15.1. All my Grub Legacy installations, use openSUSE’s user-friendly, installed-by-default with Grub Legacy, Gfxboot, a primary reason why I still use Grub legacy.
The basic part of how to keep Grub Legacy in 15.0 is
zypper al grub*
then upgrade otherwise normally, live via zypper.
To append a 3 to the cmdline for the highlighted/selected Grub Legacy Gfxboot stanza, nothing more is required than to type a 3. To then proceed, press enter.
Ok I was finally able to talk her through booting with the ‘e’ to edit the linuxefi line to include a number 3. However this also made no difference it still booted till it got to plymouth display and halts. Using a gecko linux usb start-up we were able to see the system on the hdd which reports sda1 through sda5 are healthy at less than 2 % fragmentation. /tmp is full of stuff and folders to numerous to list. /home is on same partition as ‘/’ and ‘/’ has 51% free space at 49Gib.
So here is what I had her do: 1) shrink the ‘/’ partition by 35GB to 65GB, 2) Format 35GB ext4 3) Move .iso’s and virtualbox .vdi’s and all sett-up files and private stuff out of /home to the 35GB partition. Plan now is to either try to recover ‘/’ or just replace fresh.
On the latter, I recall I made the gecko linux usb with the command that went something like: dd if=geckolinux.iso of=/dev/sdb
probably missing some steps on this but the question is can I overwrite a usb with the dd comand or do I have to reformat as blank then use dd???
OK even trying to fix the broken linux 42.3 has failed to resolve the problem. Just tried to use her usb 42.3 install but something is really wrong as it comes up linuxrc 5.0.104 is not compatible with installed version leap 42.3. What is the functionallity implications of writing over the leap 42.3 linux with geckolinux. I seam to remember someone saying geckolinux works on a very long term cycle but without security updates. She basically uses the system to write with libreoffice, play music with amarok and uses virtualbox to run windows which she pends most her time with.
If there is some obstacle to booting original 42.3 installation media from DVD or USB, its kernel and initrd can be downloaded and be configured to be booted by the already working Grub, which would enable network rescue or upgrade installation. Virtually all my installations are done via Grub and Internet.
Things seem to be going from bad to worse on my friends laptop.
Regular boot to 42.3 halts with with no error message part way through the boot
42.3 advanced boot wont work at all
change to run level 3 on regular boot stops at the line that says plymouth display…
Boot 42.3 install media from USB says linuxrc 5.0… is not compatible with 42.3 install
Boot Gecko-linux from USB boots no problem
Shrank sda3 by 34GB to 65GB & created sda6 at 34GB with no problem
Moved files and folders from sda3/home to sda6 without issue
Tried to download leap15_x64.iso but geckolinux on usb wull only download to /hpme/download on the usb. Although the usb is a 16GB flash drive,
gecko linux occupies 4.3GB with 500MB available storage and mounted harddrive partitions are not available in firefox. cant seem to make space on usb to utilize the unallocated 11GB
Tried to partition & format 16GB USB drive which had the failed 42.3 install image on it but geckolinux says media not compatible.
Tried to shrink sda3 another 35GB to 30GB but geckolinux complained the partition can only be shrunk to 35GB.
Tried to shrink sda3 by 30GB to 35GB ended in “an error occurred trying to resize partition please run ‘e3fsck -fy /dev/sda3’ after aborting”.
Tried again and this time got device sda has no partition table sda3 does not exist. Shut down laptop and restarted but didnt hit f12 fast enough so regular 42.3 tried to boot and suceeded bring her to the kde desktop and kgpg screen came up which I thought we had gotton rid of kgpg months ago.
Dolphin shows all partitions are there and accessible. She tried to run firefox and entire screen went black and system locked up. She forced the system off with power button then restarted. When she got the desktop back she clicked the menu button and again the screen went black and locked up.
I am thinking that boot problems were due to corupt ext4 root filesystem and using e2fsck -fy /dev/sda3 fixed it enough to gain access but the xwindow manager and or KDE desktop are not working correctly. On a side note, baxk at step 8 when we tried to download leap 15 it said the download was going to take 53 days and stopped tthe download because 1) realized it was downloading to USB not the harddrive and 2) her adsl modem is increditably slow at 70b/s mine is snappy at over 9000000b/s. Recently she uploaded a file to me and it took 11 hours to send but only took 3 minutes to get thw 25mb file.
Where do we go from here:
Try to goto runlevel 3 again and see if that works? Then what? Can’t reformat the partition if I am using it, makes no sense to download leap15 from command line if the ext4 still has problems and her modem is so slow, can’t install geckolinux if it can’t see harddisk is UEFI using GPT and not EFI using legacy partition.
Try to attach external harddisk and remove 4 partitions then create 1 big partition and copy all her stuff off (500GB). She should still have 13.2 on DVD So feasibly she could delete sda3 and recreate 2 partitions in that space, 1 for linux 13.2 and one to place leap15.0. Questions become does 13.2 recognize GPT / UEFI or is it restricted to legacy / EFI and how to upgrade 13.2 to something more recent if we succeed.
while I understand in principal doing a network install, configuring and messing with grub is scarey since
I have never done it
have no clue where to get kernel and initrd
how can I direct her 3000 miles away when I can’t see her screen, and she seldom explains correctly what she sees in front of her. Recently in this problem I asked her to explain what she sees in front of her when we were trying to modify partitions. She said all I have is a list says harddisk, raid, and unused devices nothing else. I asked her to send me a picture with her cell. moving left to right it said Partitions / then a list with 9 entries of which 3 said harddisk, raid, and unused devices, and at the right was a list of all her partitions on the harddisk with add-edit-resize-format and much more printed below that
An automated install would be better but don’t know how to accomplish that
She has:
sda1 EFI. 300MB fat
sda2 swap 6GB
sda3 / 65GB ext4 where we want linux in slightly different way
sda4 mmdata 765GB xfat her data
sda5 kmdata 50GB xfat her daughters data
sda6 keep 34GB ext4 iso’s bin set-ups etc to restore virtual machines
sda3 currently has a failing Leap 42.3 on ext4 fs. would prefer a 6 to 10GB for emergency, 20GB (sda7) Leap 15, 35 to 39GB home (sda8)
Ideal would be a system where I could see her system remotely, administer updates and maintenance etc.
An automated install would be better but don’t know how to accomplish that
I don’t either, and my Google fu doesn’t seem to be working to find an example. SDB:Linuxrc - openSUSE Wiki lists the boot options from which it could be constructed.
I’m lost about why she can’t do a 42.3 “upgrade=1” installation. If her 42.3 media is bad, send her a good one.
It seems to me easiest would be for her to ship her HD or PC to you fix it. Migrating a Linux disk to a different PC is generally pretty simple, even plug & play simple, or at least, it can be, especially if both are the same basics, e.g. Intel CPU/GPU/chipset or AMD CPU/GPU/chipset. Do you have a spare PC you could put her disk in? Can you get her to provide us with output from
inxi -b or
lspci
to see how compatible her hardware is to yours??? It’s possible I might have a close match here if hers is more than 9 years old Intel CPU.
Easy answer is my machine and hers are 100% identical units. Both originally set up by me. What she did at her end has me puzzled because I have had no problems except for a few glitches when I upgraded leap 42.3 to leap 15.0