Hey guys, I’m pretty frustrated right now, I’ve been trying for over 2 weeks to get openSUSE 11.0 and 11.1 working on my computer - 11.1 since this morning. I’m not an idiot when it comes to computers, but now I’m feeling that I am - I can’t do anything, regardless of tutorials and doing what I think is intuitive. My Dell XPS M1530 doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to Linux distros on top of that - I’ve found countless Ubuntu forums on hardware problems, touchpad, bluetooth (just like me), which just adds to my frustration.
I made a partition, 30gig, using Vista’s partition tool. I boot to 11.1 Gnome LiveCD in Failsafe mode because if I were to boot it up regularly, my touchpad won’t work. So I’m in failsafe mode, with my 30gig partition, and I start the installation. I customize my partition using the LVM method, and go from there, click install and then get a 4004 error. And then installation stops. This is as far as I’ve gotten with trying to install 11.1.
I’ve had 11.0 on my computer before and uninstalled it because the touchpad problem was frustrating me, seeing that I couldn’t find anything that would fix it. I figured that I could install 11.0 and then install 11.1 over it. Installation of 11.0 with the same 30gig partition as mentioned earlier goes smoothly, and its installed. I still have the touchpad problem, but I just pop in the 11.1 CD to boot up. I go to install it, it says its going to write over / and /root or something like that, and goes for it. Then it says that GRUB won’t work because the “partition does not exist” and asks me if I want to reconfigure its settings… I have no clue what to do.
I say no, and it continues with the installation and says restart and the installation with finish when you reboot. Alright, great, everything is looking good. I restart, and after the Dell BIOS (A09 for the record) screen, it says that no operating systems could be found… Pop in my Vista CD, Bootrec.exe/fixmbr, and now here I am, frustrated yet still wanting to dualboot to openSUSE.
Is there anything I can do to get 11.1 to install? or is my M1530 doomed?
Thanks for any help, and sorry for that mini book.
If you let openSUSE handle the partitioning, it shouldn’t touch your Vista partition. The opensSUSE partitioning program has never clobbered a system in the many installations and upgrades that I’ve done. However whenever you make major changes on a PC, you should always backup any important data on the PC before you make the changes, just to be safe (and I make two backups, to be extra safe).
Also, I assume that when you get to the first install screen that you are using the “Safe” install mode.
You might want to also try adding these two kernel flags when you get to the first installation screen - you just type them and they will be added to the flags that are already used in safe mode. One or the other of them might help your problem on the Dell.
"Hard disc and / or CD not found during installation
Some systems need the ‘ide-generic’ module loaded before the Hard disc and / or CD can be detected by the installer. If you encounter such behaviour, try re-starting the installation with the following added to the boot line:"
insmod=ide-generic
pci=routeirq
I have had more trouble with Linux (and Windows) on Dell PCs than on any other brand name and I would suggest that you try to avoid them in the future. IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads work very well with Linux and, I think, are better in every respect. Plus, if you buy a “recertified” one from the IBM website, the prices are very reasonable.
Loader itself can be installed to one (or more) of following
* master boot record of the primary disk
* boot sector of primary partition on primary disk holding one of ext2 or ext3"
This means that you may have to install GRUB into MBR, then you can have /boot in a logical partition (inside extended), with the LVM stuff in a seperate logical partition.
If openSUSE 11.0 installs without problems, and you have a good internet connection then you can update using the command
sudo zypper dup
where the flag dup stands for distro update
Right now I’m in the 11.1 LiveCD with 3 primary partitions, Dell has one thats 97MB, my Vista’s with 288GB, and recovery with 10GB.
The “Partition Based” method just deletes everything and makes openSUSE the only OS i have on my PC, not an option.
The “LVM Based” shrinks Windows partitions (/dev/sda3) to 160.61GB, makes a boot partion (/dev/sda4) with 70.6MB. Then it has:
• Create volume group system from
• Set mount point of /dev/sda2 to /windows/C
Would this setup work? When I go to edit partition and try to resize my Vista partition (to make it a little bigger, I want to try openSUSE before I make it my primary), it says I need to set a /boot and a swap. However, when I don’t edit the partition setup, it just lets me go to the next step.
If I were to do this, would this method be just as good as installing the LiveCD?
The only reason I ask is that the touchpad doesn’t work at all in 11.0, with brief functionality in failsafe mode. When 11.0 is installed, I go to failsafe mode and get a text based version of openSUSE, think MS DOS… and I’m not savvy with that at all. Then again, failsafe with 11.1 is the only way i can get my touchpad to work too…
So you have Dell Utility, Recovery and Vista like on this PC.
Vista has it’s own shrink partition tool, which you might prefer to use, especially if you have Dell support. You shouldn’t need to shrink Vista quite so much if you think you might need the space.
Assuming you would rather not delete the Dell Utility or Recovery partition, then you have to use /dev/sda4 for an extended partition.
That will allow making logical partitions from /dev/sda5 a small boot (50-100MB) partition, and then using the LVM, or logical paritions for the rest of the setup. I have habit of making a FAT32 partition for shared data that’s writeable without hassle using both OSes, and saves mounting the Vista partition.
The drawback to having /boot in a logical partition, is that you shall need to install GRUB into the MBR, so you should check the Vista Multi-boot sticky.
You may also need to re-activate Vista using original media, which might also ‘repair’ your installation so GRUB is no longer used, in which case you’ll have to re-install GRUB using a Live (or recovery) CD.
So you’re saying that I should make a partition that’d be completely for openSUSE that I would divide up in the installation? Could you walk me through how to do this? I’ve made the 30GB partition before, but I never finessed it inside the installer.
This is what it’s proposing using the LVM Based partitioning:
• Create boot partition /dev/sda5 (70.60 MB) with ext3
• Create partition /dev/sda6 (14.97 GB) with id=8E
• Create volume group system from /dev/sda6
• Create logical volume /dev/system/home (7.78 GB) for /home with ext3
• Create logical volume /dev/system/root (5.18 GB) for / with ext3
• Create swap logical volume /dev/system/swap (2.00 GB)
• Set mount point of /dev/sda2 to /windows/C
• Set mount point of /dev/sda3 to /windows/D
Will this work? Should I change anything? The last time I’ve done this, I get either a 4004 or a 1012 error. I don’t wanna try this time before I get an okay from one of you guys…
You need more than 1 partition if you want to use LVM, therefore you must make a Win extended partion, and then create DOS ‘logical partitions’ in that. Whether you have them purely of Linux, or make windows data ones there is your choice. Similarly the size of it.
The graphical partitioner tool is fairly self explanatory, click on the hard disk you want to play with, and chose the partition type in the free space.
The problem is,that you need to read up some HOWTO on the MS designed partitioning concept.
It’s more complicated than under UNIX systems, because M$ thought 4 were more than enough for anybody early on, and then later had to make compatible extensions.
You’re far better off finding a properly written explanation of the concepts, and then re-reading what I’ve explained. Once it makes sense, using the Partitioner will be simple.
I made a partition and divided it into four subparts. I made two subpartitions around 14GB for / and /home, a 100MB for /boot, and a 2GB for swap. I’ve assigned /, /home, and /boot, and am unable to assign the swap.
I figured that this would work, its the one that made the most sense. For those of you who dual boot with vista, how’d you do it?
This isn’t working. At all. =/
EDIT: When I attempt to set the 2GB to swap, YaST doesn’t seem to acknowledge it and asks me to assign one. On top of that, YaST doesn’t like my /boot partition either because it says its above cylinder 1024 or something like that, and that its unable to boot above that cylinder… any ideas?
