I can't install Leap 15.5 - error message on starting up

geppino · March 13, 2024, 10:20am

Hallo Suse community!

I’m used working with OpenSUSE at least since the 9.x version from 2005 (?) , but now I became bit by bit (and byte by byte) crazy! https://forums.opensuse.org/images/emoji/twitter/crazy_face.png?v=12
Actually I’m trying to install openSUSE Leap 15.5 on my PC, but after apparently succeeded install I get every time the same error message on starting.

But wite a moment - it is better to describe the PC and how I worked.
Until Thursday on my desktop PC I had Windows 10 and OpenSUSE Leap 15.4 installed in dual boot on two drives (an Intel solid state and a Western Digital hard disk). As the hard disk drive went mechanical damaged due an accident, I decided to install Leap 15.5 instead.
So I bought a new hard disk (Seagate) and formatted it with GParted (live CD) in same manner as the Western Digital was:

sda => Solid State Drive – Intel SSDSA2BW12

/dev	Size	     used	File System   Label                    Mount point       Flags                     Comment
/sda1	100,00 MiB	33,57	fat32	      EFI system partition     /boot/efi		boot, legacy_boot, esp
/sda2	 16,00 MiB		? 	unknown	      MS reserved			                    msftres
/sda3	 74,16 GiB	57,43	ntfs	      Basic data			                    msftdata                   Windows 10
/sda4	522,00 MiB	 3,07	ntfs					                                hidden, diag
/sda5	 35,00 GiB	 0,06	ext4		  Leap			           /
/sda6	  2,00 GiB			swap			                       swap		        swap

Hard Disk Drive – Seagate ST2000DMZ08

/dev	Size	     used	File System   Label                    Mount point       Flags                     Comment   
/sdb1    80,00 GiB	     	ext4		 LINUX_2                                                               for eventual linux test
/sdb2    80,00 GiB	     	ext4		 LINUX_3                                                               for eventual linux test
/sdb3    45,00 GiB	     	ext4		 HOME_1	                   /home                                       home to running system
/sdb4    45,00 GiB	     	ext4		 HOME_2                                                                home to text linux
/sdb5   110,00 GiB      	ext4		 DOCS	                   /DOCS                                       my Documents
/sdb6  1490,24 GiB          ext4         ARCHIVES                  /ARCHIVES                                   for archives and internal backups

Then I tried to install Leap 15.5 (NET-iso CD) like the Leap 15.4 (partition configuration shown above) but with negative result. After the PC boots, the typical Grub menu appears and it seams 15.5 has been installed (GParted shows also suitable used sizes in the correspondent partitions), but the system stops running up with this follow text on black screen:

You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode.
Give in admin password for maintenance purpose
(or press Ctrl+D to continue):

typing “journalctl -xb” gives a list of more than 100 lines, which I have absolutely not understood.
Pressing Ctrl+D generates the same error message.
typing “systemctl default” generates the same error message; also
typing “exit” the same.

Until now I executed more install attempts - each one with little changes on system partition configuration, i.e. root partition = sdb1 (instead of sda6), with or not another added EFI system partition (100 MB) on second drive. But I got every time the same result.
So I thought yesterday that it could be another hardware PC damage, i.e. drives controller. In order to exclude this I tried another distribution (CutefishOS 64 - stand September 2023). The install programm Calamares gave me the message the EFI partition on sdb has to be set to at least 300 MiB. After done this change it was possible to install CutefishOS 64 successfully! But not Leap 15.5 under the same partition configuration.

Something strange to me: the system partition proposed by YAST installer reads /dev/sda5 (35 GiB) as /dev/sda2 and vice versa. The other partitions are red correctly.

Now I do not really know what causes the issue, what others I can try and I would gratefully appreciate any suggestion.
Please help me!
More information needed?

hui · March 13, 2024, 10:28am

Instead of using external tools for preparation of disks, did you try to use the openSUSE expert partitioner?
I would start with a blank HDD (Seagate) and let the openSUSE expert partitioner let do the magic (it is part of the openSUSE installation medium). In this case you should also get warnings when something with the partition layout is wrong…

According your output, there is no EFI partition on sdb (Seagate).
So there seems a massive mixing of sdb/sda in addition to using external tools and mountpoints…

It seems like the bootloader does not find either your home or root partition due to the above mixing…

arvidjaar · March 13, 2024, 10:38am

After logging in in emergency mode capture the full output of

journalctl -b --full --no-pager

and upload to https://paste.opensuse.org/

geppino · March 13, 2024, 2:41pm

Thanks for replay!
Actually I hoped a suggestion like yours!
Now Leap 15.5 have being installed again. After that I can post the result.
But how can I collect / capture the command output ? By smartphone photos ?
Is there something as “print to” a file ? eventually USB drive, if recognized …

Thanks hui!
That is a good test idea! If the command journalctl -b --full --no-pager does’t bring something interesting, I’ll tray it as test. Anyway it cannot be a definitive solution.

Obviously not. The second EFI partition was only added after many tests with different partition configuration. My partition output shows, how I initially formatted the drive (identical as the damaged one)

Yes, maybe is this the problem. But why can Leap it not and CutefishOS yes?

arvidjaar · March 13, 2024, 5:16pm

journalctl -b > some.file

Then boot from live Linux, mount you root filesystem and copy/upload some.file.

geppino · March 13, 2024, 6:45pm

that is
journalctl -b --full --no-pager

I think, without colors as in screen output is it now very difficult to find the grave error lines.
Should I maybe better upload it with option –priority=3 instead of –full ?

As I saw the output I was only able to understand, the partitions named DOCS , MYREPOS , DATABACK were not mounted, even if they are listed in /etc/fstab.

arvidjaar · March 13, 2024, 6:49pm

Mar 13 11:26:05 localhost systemd-fsck[716]: /dev/sdb6 has unsupported feature(s): FEATURE_C12
Mar 13 11:26:05 localhost systemd-fsck[716]: e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!
Mar 13 11:26:05 localhost systemd-fsck[716]: DOCS: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********
Mar 13 11:26:05 localhost systemd-fsck[710]: fsck failed with exit status 12.
Mar 13 11:26:05 localhost systemd-fsck[710]: Running request emergency.target/start/replace

As was already mentioned - do not use third party tools to pre-create filesystems. Whatever you used created “too new” file system format which is not supported by Leap tools.

hui · March 13, 2024, 6:55pm

The reason is, they are formatted with the new ext4 FEATURE_C12 (this feature exists from e2fsprogs-1.47 onwards). But this new feature is incompatible with the fsck used by openSUSE Leap 15.5 ( e2fsprogs-1.46).

Another reason to use the partitioner coming with openSUSE…

geppino · March 13, 2024, 7:16pm

Now I have understood!
I did not know about the new ext4 feature.
Is it only implemented in Leaps from 15.5 upwards or is it a kernel feature and consequently presents in all new Linux OS?

Now I install Leap 15.5 rebuilding all the partitions in sdb with YAST partition tool.

Many many thanks for helping me!

ovidiu · March 13, 2024, 7:24pm

I think geppino wants to install both systems on ssd, so it boots faster.
It works but is not recommended.

First you need to install Windows. It will have it’s own efi partition. In your case, if I remember correctly /boot/efi
Make space for your Linux partition. 320 GB should be enough for your both system as long as you will have /home in a separate partition on your hdd.
efi, swap and root can stay on /ssd.
Install OpenSuse and do the partitioning with the installer. I would suggest the offline installer. Don’t forget to do a efi boot partition! That’s important. Do this partition first, then swap, root and home. It seems is missing now, as I see and other people suggested.
Normally the installer will make the grub with Linux as the first option. Make sure that in Bios it boots from OpenSuse because bootloader is installed on Linux now.
If it boots in Linux but you don’t have the grub menu with boot options then:
Enable dualboot in grub:

Detect Windows OS:
$ sudo os-prober

Enable dualboot în grub:
$ sudo nano /etc/default/grub

and set or uncomment:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=“false”

At the end make sure grub has an updated source list:
$ grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Reboot.

Normally it shouldn’t happen, but just in case.

hui · March 13, 2024, 7:37pm

MS Windows and Linux use the same efi boot partition…

ovidiu · March 13, 2024, 7:39pm

Is it possible? If is possible then Windows is the master boot and it won’t recognize the linux system, I think.

hui · March 13, 2024, 7:40pm

It is possible because you install grub and directly tick “Probe other OS” in the linux installer (that is the standard setting in openSUSE). No need of altering the grub configuration like you showed afterwards, because it is already set to probe other OS when installing openSUSE.

malcolmlewis · March 13, 2024, 7:53pm

@ovidiu that relates to Legacy boot, disks need to be of type gpt and use UEFI. You also need to ensure when installing openSUSE to use the system boot menu AND select UEFI…

I normally pre-configure from a Live rescue USB as follows;
partition 1 type ef00 260M for all systems (format to vfat)
partition 2 type 0c01 16M for windows
partition 3 type 8300 XGB for openSUSE
partition 4 type 0700 XGB for Windows

Then install Windows, use custom and point at the 0700 partition…

ovidiu · March 13, 2024, 8:38pm

Yeah, probably I have to clarify myself. But it my little experience in Linux, whenever I created a separate boot partition for Linux system, doesn’t matter if I boot from the same drive or other drive I never had problems dual boot. I always considered having different boot partitions as a good practice. I don’t know if is OK or not, to be honest.

geppino · March 13, 2024, 9:06pm

Not really! The reality is quite different.
When I bought the desktop PC (a HP Elite, B-Ware) with Windows already installed, I added the Western Digital hard disk drive and installed Leap 15.3 on this drive, but I omitted to set a mounting point fhttps://forums.opensuse.org/t/i-cant-install-leap-15-5-error-message-on-starting-up/173076or the EFI partition, because I had absolutely no idea, how SUSE worked/handled with UEFI.
Result: Leap 15.3 worked well, but each rare time I needed Windows, I had to activate UEFI and deactivate legacy boot in BIOS and vice versa, when I wanted “switch” to OpenSUSE. Ergo, it was a particular dual boot PC …
Because that, when I upgraded to Leap 15.4 , I decided to let YAST installer to choose the partition configuration. Thus Leap 15.4 choose to:

mounting the EFI partition on sda (SSD drive)
set the root partition on the SSD drive (here sda5) after downsized the windows partition (where I let made that by Windows)
set /home on a partition of the other drive.
I only added the /DOCS and the other “personal” partitions and preferred ext4 to Btrfs.

Otherwise in the past I have always preferred to install openSuse on a different drive as Windows.

mrmazda · March 14, 2024, 6:33am

Since the advent of EFI booting, the meaning of “boot” partition has become complicated. The old way you’re used to is still valid for Linux installations, but with EFI, each PC needs at least one special purpose FAT-formatted system partition, named ESP, for ESP System Partition. It does not directly overlap function with the purpose of a Linux “/boot/” partition, but instead plays host to directory or directories that contain initialization files for whatever bootloader(s) is/are needed for the installed operating system(s). One or more of such files are read as POST completes by the UEFI BIOS according to the saved setting in NVRAM that sets one particular directory on an ESP to have top priority. Since with EFI, specification of boot priority has been moved from storage media to NVRAM, Windows has no reason to overwrite anything on any disk or filesystem created by installing or running Linux. The most Windows can usurp is the priority setting in NVRAM, which is easily reverted in UEFI BIOS setup or via a software tool such as Gnu/Linux’s efibootmgr.

ovidiu · March 14, 2024, 8:11pm

Ok :). I thought there should always be different partitions for Legacy boot or UEFI boot. Thank you all for your explanations! I apologize if I wasted your time.

geppino · March 16, 2024, 9:10pm

Hello!

at first I’d like to correct my last post. I’ve just noticed, I had added some words, which are total not to do with this theme. Maybe I used accidentally Ctrl+v …

I don’t know how to edit to old post. So here is the correct one:
. . . .
Not really! The reality is quite different.
When I bought the desktop PC (a HP Elite, B-Ware) with Windows already installed, I added the Western Digital hard disk drive and installed Leap 15.3 on this drive, but I omitted to set a mounting point for the EFI partition, because I had absolutely no idea, how SUSE worked/handled with UEFI.
Result: Leap 15.3 worked well, but each rare time I needed Windows, I had to activate UEFI and deactivate legacy boot in BIOS and vice versa, when I wanted “switch” to OpenSUSE. Ergo, it was a particular dual boot PC …
Because that, when I upgraded to Leap 15.4 , I decided to let YAST installer to choose the partition configuration. Thus Leap 15.4 choose to:

mounting the EFI partition on sda (SSD drive)
set the root partition on the SSD drive (here sda5) after downsized the windows partition (where I let made that by Windows)
set /home on a partition of the other drive.
I only added the /DOCS and the other “personal” partitions and preferred ext4 to Btrfs.

Otherwise in the past I have always preferred to install openSuse on a different drive as Windows.

geppino · March 16, 2024, 9:25pm

@arvidjaar,
your suggestion was correct!
The installation run without issues and after restored documents and some settings into the new Leap I only have to adjust something yet.

I have now only a question:
How to change the computer name?