Important problems in a new installation

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello everyone!

I’ll try to be as brief as I can.

I have bought a new desktop computer and I have installed dual boot with Windows 7 and OpenSUSE LEAP 42.1 and a lot of problems have occurred to me. I’ll put here a list with the main problems I have. Also I specify my hardware and partitions:

-) 16GB RAM
-) NVidia GForce GTX 1060
-) Intel core i7
-) 480 GB SSD
-) 1TB HDD

The partition scheme is as follows:

SSD:
-) partition of 400GB with WIndows 7
-) partition of 80GB with linux /root (ext4)
HDD:
-) 500GB for Windows data
-) 32GB swap
-) rest for /home (ext4)

OpenSUSE installed with GNOME enviroment.

With Windows I have no problems, but with LEAP I encountered 4 main problems:

-) Boot time is excessively long, between 1 minute and 2 minutes, and it’s installed in a SSD! Also WIndows booting time has increased since installed opensuse (+10~20 seconds).

-) Difficulties on installing NVidia drivers and updating packages. At first, it was impossible to update. I found that this happened to several people and I found that the solution was incompatibility between repositories. Finally I reinstalled everything without include add-ons packages and update it by my own, manually. I don’t like the solution because I’ve disabled the main OSS repository due to incompatibility with nvidia codecs and packman.

-) Each time I log-in I encounter a problem saying: " Oh no! something has gone wrong… " ( A lot of people have this problem both Gnome and KDE, I’ve searched and tried the solutions in all posts I’ve seen and no one worked for me, but it seems to be something related with Nvidia drivers.)

-) I CAN’T shut down the system from linux! When I do (with both via terminal and graphical UI ) it turns in a black screen and It gets stuck forever and can’t do anything but press power-off button in the computer tower. The last text I can read on that black screen is: “System halted”.

At this point I would like to add that my old computer is a 7-year old laptop and has both WIndows 7 and OpenSUSE Leap 42.1 installed on same HDD, and never had these kind of problems with OpenSUSE. And the booting time is even faster that the one in the new computer with SSD!! Also, I’ve been using linux for several years and tried different linux distros doing dual install shared with Windows. Of course I’ve encountered several problems, but always I’ve been able to fix them all, but not this time :frowning:

My guesses are: something related with NVidia and Grub/MBR with SSD, because in old laptop I have Radeon and never had problems with drivers.

I’ve been searching and working on it for a week and formatting several times, but no solution was found :confused: I’ve though on installing a new distro, but Opensuse is the most durable, stable and confortable distro I’ve tried and I LOVE it, so I want to keep using it.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to include everything in order to be clear, and I don’t know how to be shorter than that.

I hope you can help me.

Thank you very much!! :slight_smile:

2

A few questions/thoughts
#1 your partition setup didn’t mention a boot partition as that is a new PC I’d expect it used efi boot and that needs a boot partition, did you install win7 (I’d assume so as it’s not sold any more) if so did you enable legacy mode in bios if not it looks like a bad install on both 7 and leap
#2 i7’s come with a build-in gpu did you disable it in bios, if not you’re using intel’s gpu not nvidia, disable it then install the nvidia drivers, installing them while intels gpu is active can cause a lot of issues

I think you didn’t enable legacy and installed both 7 and leap in mixed mode (a kind of forced mbr), another issue is intel’s gpu which I assume you didn’t turn off, try that and your issues should be gone.

3

Yes, I installed windows 7 because I had my old CD installation and I don’t need windows 10 at the moment. But I don’t have any EFI partition, I don’t know how to make one neither if it’s has to be in there created by the SO.

You were right, I was in UEFI mode and had intel’s gpu enabled. Well, I did what you told me, but the problems remain, but I suppose it’s because I did the installation with the old wrong configuration. I’ll try to reinstall everything and let’s see if it works.

One last question before reinstall, should I make a /boot partition appart from windows one and linux " / " ? or install /boot in MBR partition (is an option available at installation)? And which SO should be installed first? I always install windows first.

And, is something else that I should know before reinstall everything? as EFI partition or other stuff?

Thank you very much for helping :smiley: !!!

4

Do not need an EFI boot partition if you are using the old MBR/legacy boot method. If you install in legacy mode no EFI boot will be used. If in EFI mode the default should make the EFI boot partition. Note that a EFI boot partition is special and is formatted as FAT.

All OS must use the same boot method in order to chain at boot. If you mix they won’t see one another

5

what you are saying is you installed in legacy mode without enabling it in bios, that may work but see your motherboards manual and enable legacy (mbr) mode in bios, from what you are describing your issue is intel’s build-in gpu, here’s an old video about how to set your external gpu as the preferred one

that’s an old video your bios will be different but follow those steps and all should work

6

Your i7 is of which generation? It’s known that Intel “forgot” to contribute some stuff for Skylake processors to the kernel.

7

There is a method which could possibly placed into the “well-known” category of methods to be used when dealing with Linux system boot behaviour: " # systemd-analyze".


 # systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 2.118s (kernel) + 1.692s (initrd) + 12.466s (userspace) = 16.276s
 #

With one of my Leap 42.2 Beta 3 installations I have noticed that, “wicked” was chosen by the installation routines and, it exhibited the “default - factory” ‘wicked’ behaviour at boot time – the ‘systemd-analyze’ above is a 13.2 system with a “tuned” ‘wicked’ behaviour – please search this forum and the openSUSE BugZilla for for information regarding this issue.

This has been discussed in the main Leap 42.2 Beta 3 “Discussion Thread”:

  • There is possibly an issue with the Btrfs initialisation routines following a “fresh - clean” installation – I have not yet investigated if Bug Reports regarding this issue have been raised or not . . .

[HR][/HR]@Rawkul:
May I suggest that you inspect Beta Test Operating System versions and releases in a Virtual Machine before you consider helping out with Beta Testing on “real” hardware.
Also, please read this Leap 42.2 Beta 3 News article: <https://news.opensuse.org/2016/10/05/beta-3-release-updates-firefox-kde-applications-virtualbox/&gt;

8

Hello people!

In the end, I set the BIOS in Legacy Mode and also disabled the Intel graphic card. After that, I reinstalled everything from 0 equally as I described in the first post and… EVERYTHING IS FIXED!! No more issues found!! :smiley:

Thank you all so much for your help !! I really appreciate it and I love you people!!

PS: Should I edit the post from normal to [SOLVED] ?

9

It’s good that you fixed it, we don’t tag threads with solved here, just enjoy your LEAP and prepare for the upcoming upgrade to 42.2