I got a new ASUS EeePC 1015PEM with Windows 7 with the intention to install OpenSuse 11.3 onto it for having a dual booting netbook with enough disk space.
I’m installing from an external DVD drive, the checksums of the ISO were ok as well.
However, the OpenSuse installer fails at starting up after selecting the action. It hangs, no matter what menu entry I chose, at “loading basic drivers”, forever.
Because this isn’t necessarily an unknown problem I’ve tried some of the predefined kernel options of the main installer menu. Then I tried some manually entered kernel boot options that helped me in some other installations:
acpi=off, apm=off, CPUFreq=no
None of them seem to have an effect on the installers behavior.
I hope that there is people who managed to solve this problem with an actual EeePC model… because I really don’t know what I could any more. It’s kind of frustrating to not even get past the kernel launch
I haven’t tried any other distros installation discs, but I don’t even intend to. I want OpenSuse because I’m running it on our firms machines as well and don’t like shifting between systems.
Wild speculation, but what graphic resolution is it proposing ? 1024x768 ? 800x600 ? Try some different resolutions and see if that makes a difference.
You may also need to specify the boot code “nomodeset”.
The point is: that can’t be done just the same as the installation doesn’t work. It hangs at “Loading basic drivers…”.
This changes nothing. It hangs at “Loading basic drivers…”. I highly doubt this is a graphics issue, as both, the loading screen and the text mode screen, appear normally.
To ‘oldcpu’: BIOS access is like usual, well, simply what a netbook BIOS can offer to change and work with.
BIOS info: ASUS 1015PEM ACPI BIOS Revision 0701, build date 09/07/10
My Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo 7400M laptop is a Linux ‘killer’. If I try to boot it to the liveCD (or installation DVD) with 1024x768 resolution (with ‘nomodeset’ boot code to disable KMS) it freezes while trying to load non-graphics drivers. If I try to boot it with 800x600 resolution it will boot to the (rather poor quality) FBDEV driver.
So sometimes this is more complex than what your consideration appears to suggest. I concede the probability is small, but sometimes it only takes a few minutes to try. So why not try different resolutions ? Note those resolutions in grub are not the GUI resolutions, but rather those are the text mode resolutions and those text mode resolutions can on rare occasions be affected by the loading of other drivers (such as what I experienced in my Fujitsu-Siemens laptop).
Back in the old SuSE-9.x days, and also early openSUSE-10.0/10.1 days, sometimes connecting an external monitor on a laptop would allow the install program to boot. If you have an external monitor handy you could try this.
Sometimes there are plug-and-play or drive settings or SATA/RAID or other settings that one can tune. So it might be worth your while exploring what options are available.
You could check to see if Asus have an update for this.
On 12/21/2010 09:06 AM, oldcpu wrote:
>
> KovuTN;2268527 Wrote:
>> However, the OpenSuse installer fails at starting up after selecting the
>> action. It hangs, no matter what menu entry I chose, at “loading basic
>> drivers”, forever.
>
> Wild speculation, but what graphic resolution is it proposing ?
> 1024x768 ? 800x600 ? Try some different resolutions and see if that
> makes a difference.
>
> You may also need to specify the boot code “nomodeset”.
>
> How much control do you have over BIOS settings?
This problem is NOT one of graphics. Those troubles happen much, much later in
the boot sequence.
What wireless device do you have? I suspect that it is a Broadcom BCM4312 with
PC IDs 14e4:4315. To test this, either look in the Device Manager in Windows, or
add ‘brokenmodules=ssb’ to the boot line. The bug for this device affects only
netbooks. It has been fixed, but not on the 11.3 installation media.
On 12/21/2010 10:36 AM, KovuTN wrote:
>
> lwfinger;2268624 Wrote:
>> This problem is NOT one of graphics. Those troubles happen much, much
>> later in
>> the boot sequence.
>>
>> What wireless device do you have? I suspect that it is a Broadcom
>> BCM4312 with
>> PC IDs 14e4:4315. To test this, either look in the Device Manager in
>> Windows, or
>> add ‘brokenmodules=ssb’ to the boot line. The bug for this device
>> affects only
>> netbooks. It has been fixed, but not on the 11.3 installation media.
> Bingo. Well, the Windows device manager says Broadcom 802.11n, but
> brokenmodules=ssb gives me no output (unless I simply missed it).
It does not produce any output.
> So, you’re suggesting to get 11.2, or install 11.3 from alternative
> media? Is there any chance this is corrected in 11.3 in near future?
It is openSUSE’s policy never to change the installation media for a given
distribution. Once it is released, all the warts remain for the lifetime of that
release. The bugs are fixed, but only in the update process.
Rather than 11.2, I would suggest one of the Live CDs for 11.4 M5. Although
technically an alpha release, it is pretty good - there are no killer bugs for
any of my machines, including a netbook. If you want to stay away from
pre-released software, then boot any Linux that you can and post the output of
the ‘lspci -nn’ command. Alternatively, boot Windows, use the Properties part of
the Device Manager for the Display Adapter and anything in the Network Adapter
portion. Look under the various sections until you find a string that looks like
“PCI\VEN_XXXX&DEV_YYYY…”. The values of XXXX and YYYY are what the lspci
command would provide.
Oh well… thanks. I’ll look what I can do with 11.4 then. It’s probably the solution.
PS: for testing purposes - I’ve used another PC to boot the installation DVD, works like a charm, and the installation media test confirmed everything’s alright.
On 12/21/2010 11:36 AM, KovuTN wrote:
>
> Oh well… thanks. I’ll look what I can do with 11.4 then. It’s probably
> the solution.
>
> PS: for testing purposes - I’ve used another PC to boot the
> installation DVD, works like a charm, and the installation media test
> confirmed everything’s alright.
If you used that same external DVD reader to boot that other PC, then the media
are OK. If not, then that DVD and reader combination might not work together.
That said, I still think the problem is a faulty driver on the 11.3 media.
If you have a relatively fast Internet connection, the Live CD or NET install
work pretty well. Whne doing the installation that way, you only download about
2 GB of stuff, rather than 4 GB with the DVD. Of course, if it takes 24 hours
for 2 GB, then the DVD is the only way.
Yeah, to be honest, I think an internet based installation is the best for a netbook anyway, considering the fact that when travelling one hardly ever has the DVD-drive in the backpack, and the install sources are automatically configured the right way in Yast. I just downloaded the 11.4 Live CD and will test it tonight.
