Grey Screen of Death at boot

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Downloaded the 11.3 .iso from the open Suse web page, installed quite ok on my Toshiba T110 laptop with Win7 Pro, 4 k ram. Gave the warning that I read about here that Grub was installed above 128k, but this was not an issue as far as I am concerned.

Did a Yast update, part of which included a new kernel.

Rebooted, Grub comes up, select Suse, a couple of lines of dialogue flash on and of the screen, and now, despite previous successful boots before the Yast upgrade, the screen then hangs in the GSOD (grey screen of death). Laptop not responsive to any action at all except pushing the power off button.

Any way to get Suse to boot beyond the GSOD? Win7 boots ok from Grub.

(Apologies if this issue covered before, my search for this may have overlooked same.)

#2

Hi
Are you able to boot into failsafe mode? (you can select this from Grub, its usually right below the “Suse” line)

Welcome to the forums!

#3

Downloaded the 11.3 .iso from the open Suse web page, installed quite ok on my Toshiba T110 laptop with Win7 Pro, 4 k ram. Gave the warning that I read about here that Grub was installed above 128k, but this was not an issue as far as I am concerned.

Did a Yast update, part of which included a new kernel.

Rebooted, Grub comes up, select Suse, a couple of lines of dialogue flash on and of the screen, and now, despite previous successful boots before the Yast upgrade, the screen then hangs in the GSOD (grey screen of death). Laptop not responsive to any action at all except pushing the power off button.

Any way to get Suse to boot beyond the GSOD? Win7 boots ok from Grub.

(Apologies if this issue covered before, my search for this may have overlooked same.)
You might need to add the kernel load option called nomodeset. When you start or restart openSUSE and you are in the Grub OS selection menu, file named /boot/grub/menu.lst, you have the option to enter a command before you press the enter key. Now you can try failsafe just as pimanac has suggested, and it already includes the **nomodeset **option, but you want to use as few failsafe options as possible and this one change (adding in nomodeset) works a lot of the time. You may also want to describe your video hardware setup on this PC.

Thank You,

#4

Also what is the video on that machine

#5

If you don’t know details of the graphic chipset/card you can post results (in code tags) of running this command in a terminal as root (su -):

lspci -nnk

The first few lines including graphics devices will do.

#6

Thanks for the welcome.

Unfortunately failsafe fails.

#7

Err … wish I could get ito a terminal, howver Device Manager in Win 7 shows the Display Adapter as “Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family”

#8

Thank you (and everybody) for the help.

The argument nomodeset is already in Failsafe boot line by default. Failsafe also does not work.

Windows device manager describes the display adapter as "“Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family”

#9

Try booting into runlevel 3. Specify 3 as the boot option just like You did with nomodset. If it is successful please use the already mentioned lspci -nnk command.

Best regards,
Greg

#10

Ok. Try what @glistwan suggested.

Several forum users have that same intel chipset working on 11.3, including me. I note from your op the following:

Did a Yast update, part of which included a new kernel.

Was that an official kernel update from openSUSE’s Update repo, or did you manually upgrade the kernel from another repo? What kernel level are you booting with (see grub menu)?

#11

Sorry, dumb when it comes to this, and most things! :wink:

Do I just type the numeral “3” on he command line? Regular boot or failsafe.

Reason I ask; tried that in both boots, and also “runlevel=3”, made no difference.

Last night (too much timne on my hands) I did a re-install (in this case an “upgrade”.

Then ran all the Yast updates, excluded the kernel.

Noticed that there was a desktop update there, ran that and all worked ok…

After I updated the two kernel updates (together - tried to exclude one but the box wouldn’t lose the tick) same issues again.

Also may not have mentioned that when I first installed, an error message came up that the boot couldn’t be placed below 128k and that this may cause issues. I asked on the suse ng about this and the consensus seemed to be not to worry as my laptop pretty new.

#12

Kernel 2.6.34.7-0.7 loaded by Yast.

#13

What I just did was to clear out all the arguments in the failsafe boot, and just inserted the numeral “3”.

A little more progress, went a bit further then locked up again with a "call trace’; screen full of lines; last one was "o.484778 {<c0203826>] kernel_thread_helper 0x6?0x18

#14

Apologies, typo, the last “?” should read “/”.

#15

Later, see my comments elsewhere in this tread re runlevel 3, thanks!

#16

Apologies, didn’t answer this one clearly; from a Suse default repo; I have not added any sources.

#17

It seems to be some sort of kernel bug. Could You try reinstalling again but before You do the upgrade enable kernel multiversion. This way You will have the old kernels to choose from as well not just the latest one.
Latest Kernel Update killed my iPhone Tether
Then after the upgrade try booting with the kernel that came with your openSUSE default install.

Best regards,
Greg

#18

Before you try the kernel update, do you have a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf?
If not look in the files /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf.

Which driver is being select via the statement?

Section "Device"
	....
	Driver      "??????"
        ....

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "??????"
        Device "??????"
	....

If you do not have time for a re-install you can access these file/s via a terminal session directly from the boot .iso or a liveCD.

#19

Thanks Greg,

Sorry, have to ask dumb questions; so I accept the YAST updates, but not for the kernel?

I notice that there are two kernel upgrades; if I don’t install there seems, from description of same, to be some security issues?

Of course, if I do install, nothing works! :wink:

Would you suggest that I install one first and see which one may be the culprit? I can always re-install Suse; so far nothing of value to me there. My concern is twofold - if I can’t solve this issue I should
ever install any kernel upgrade, and if the issue re-occurs, how do I fix without losing anything?

As a matter of interest I cannot install Ubuntu or Redhat (Fedora?); similar issues except iso will not even run; gives a similar traceback error message immediately; Mandriva does install.
Must admit though that I have not fully installed Mandriva to see if it crashes.

Could it possibly be a BIOS thingy on my laptop?

#20

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:ffe0]
Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:ffe1]
Kernel driver in use: i915
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:ffe1]

Does this help?