I’m trying to install Opensuse 13.1 from a live dvd purchased from osdisk. It is going on a gateway NE56R41u laptop with 4 gb ram, 4 ghz dual core processor, and 500gb. It is 64 bit, and has uefi boot. I already have windows 8.1 and mint on the laptop. I go right thru the installation, and it reboots fine, does the installation bit, then a command window pops up saying
directory:/home/bill>
Fri Aug 1 13:06:11 PDT 2014
bill@linux-imjq: ~>
What do I need to type in? Password does not work, neither does screen name, real name, enter, or any key, likewise for doing nothing for 45 minutes. I know I should search the forum first, but I’m sort of stumped with the installation now, and I didn’t see a thread like this on the first page. I have tried 3 installations so far, and the installations always stop right here. I told my wife I’d get this installed, have programs added, and be usable today. Assistance will be greatly appreciated.
I’ve never seen that.
I would guess that you are at a command prompt, already logged in. You can use command line commands at that point. Maybe:
date
whoami
who am i
ls
My guess is that you have a graphics problem, and possibly need to install proprietary drivers. Can you tell us which graphics card you have?
Try booting again. At the boot command, hit ‘e’ to edit the boot line. Scroll down to the line that begins “linux” (it may actually begin “linuxefi”. Hit the END key to get to the end of the line. Add " nomodeset" to the end of the line. Then hit the key to continue (the screen will say which key). That should get you in and bypass graphics problems, though you will still want to install the proprietary driver for better graphics.
On 2014-08-01 22:56, heyyou325 wrote:
>
> I’m trying to install Opensuse 13.1 from a live dvd purchased from
> osdisk.
No idea what they are. You can just download openSUSE absolutely free of
charge from opensuse.org, the official site.
> It is going on a gateway NE56R41u laptop with 4 gb ram, 4 ghz
> dual core processor, and 500gb. It is 64 bit, and has uefi boot. I
> already have windows 8.1 and mint on the laptop. I go right thru the
> installation, and it reboots fine, does the installation bit, then a
> command window pops up saying
> directory:/home/bill>
>
> Fri Aug 1 13:06:11 PDT 2014
>
> bill@linux-imjq: ~>
> What do I need to type in? Password does not work,
You are already in. Type commands. Text mode, but “in”.
It is a bit strange, though. If graphics fails, you would get to a text
mode prompt to type your name and password. But you instead get
automatically logged in…
I don’t know if that DVD you bought is the real openSUSE, or you got
something else instead. That it is modified somehow.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
I had to manually go to the end of the line. The line says:
linuxefi /boot/vmlinuz-3.33.6-4-desktop root=UUID=efd7e970-531a-42c2-98b1-2e04b252a160 ro resume=/dev/d\isk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5000BPVT-22HXZT3_WF-WXC1A92C7040-part7 splash=silent quiet shoeopts
There are two line below this. But this is where I added “nomodeset” without the quotes. Nothing happened, and the screen didn’t tell me anything. Under the box, it says
Minimum Emacs-like screen editing is supported. TAB lists completions. Press Ctrl-x or f10 to boot, Ctrl-c or f2 for a command line or ESC to discard edits and return to the GRUB menu.
I pressed f10, and the computer rebooted to the same spot again. The 2 lines underneath say
echo ‘loading initial ramdisk …’
initrdefi /boot/initrd-3.11.6-4-desktop
Should I do it again, and press a different key? Or say I don’t want to try opensuse? O, I have gnu grub version 2.
> I’m trying to install Opensuse 13.1 from a live dvd purchased from
> osdisk.
My internet is fairly slow, and sometimes things get messed up. I figured purchasing the disks were the best way. A lot of times I download the iso files from distrowatch if they are not real big. Anything over about 1.5gb and the internet times out. I type the word in in the first command box when it stops installing, and it says -bash: syntax error near unexpected token ‘in’. On the second box, I don’t get a change in anything typing in either at the end of the linux efi line, or at the very end, except in shows up there.
Hi heyyou325 !
There is a live system available from download.opensuse.org
which once was the live CD, but which now doesn’t fit on a CD anymore.
Probably you got that one.
One thing that you could do is to try to check the DVD that you got at startup
(usually accessible from the boot menu).
bad.
distrowatch ??
Why didn’t you use download.opensuse.org ???
The latter is the original source - although your download will take place from a mirror.
If you want to have an explicit address of a mirror, see mirrors.opensuse.org.
That doesn’t sound good.
I anyway think you should try to download the 64bit installer DVD (about 4.5 GB).
Start downloading that in the morning, not in the evening.
If you are able to download that, first install without running online updates during the installation
(because of your slow internet connection).
The updates can be done after the installation, update by update (or better a few updates at a time).
Good luck
Mike
I hope that was “vmlinuz3.11.6-4-desktop”. And I hope it was “showopts” at the end. Those were probably data entry typos by you in making notes. That looks okay. I hope you left a space before the “nomodeset” at the end (without quotes is fine).
I pressed f10, and the computer rebooted to the same spot again.
Then I suspect that there is something strange about your install. I’ve never seen autologin at a text command prompt for opensuse.
It might be better to download and burn the iso yourself. Or get help from a friend with a faster internet connection, if possible. That way you can be surer of what you have downloaded.
Distrowatch is probably okay. Their download links are usually links to the official distro download page. He probably purchased his disk from OSdisc.com, which advertises on distrowatch.com. As far as I know, they are okay. But I have no experience with them. They offer several different DVDs for opensuse, and it is not clear which he purchased. It is possible that he purchased the install DVD, but did not install any desktop. That would give a command line system (but I would not expect auto-login to work).
At this stage, we know too little about what he purchased and how he installed.
I bought the opensuse KDE 13.1 Install/Live 64 bit disk. Yes it was osdisc I purchased it from. I have had several downloads that have had problems, the right number of bytes, but some things wouldn’t work. I figured this way, the would check the md5sum and check out the disc before it left. I already had the hard drive partitioned, with sda2 being a fat32 boot file system, which windows 8.1 and mint 17 worked fine on. Now I can’t get into mint or opensuse, but windows still works fine. So something probably went wrong with installing the grub. I did try 3 times, trying to follow both the instructions here, and a youtube video. Fairly straightforward. Where I live, cable internet is not very common, only a few people nearest being over 15 miles away. Used to have satellite, but that was worse, both in speed and bandwidth usage. There is one (broadband I guess) provider, using towers and repeaters that can get to me. I have mountains on all sides of me.
Yes, there was a space before nomodeset. I’m not sure what else I could have pushed other than f10 I could have pushed after the nomodest. I suppose the ctrl-c for the command line, but I’m unsure what command to give. I can try to download an iso file tonight. If I try in the morning, my wife and I would have to stay off line then. Evenings we have about 7 hours with no usage to download. And I can try opensuse.org.
I’ve tried to run both boot repair, and system rescue, but keep getting the message that the security policy won’t allow me to boot from my atapi dvd player. It would with mint in, or with opensuse in. It seems to allow it for some discs, but not others. I do believe it is something wrong with the grub, as I can see files written in the partition I have for root. As I say I can run either mint or opensuse on a live disc and get into their respective partitions.
Okay, that fills in some of the details. And with the live KDE, there weren’t many choices to make during install (mostly just the partitioning). So there shouldn’t have been much to go wrong.
Can you tell us anything about your video card?
With a live KDE disk, you should have been able to boot into a live KDE session without installing (unless there are video problems). Did you do that? Or did you hit the “install” entry on the boot menu for the DVD?
If you have not yet done so, I suggest you at least try to boot the DVD to a live KDE session, and see if there are any problems with that.
I’m not sure about the video card. I bought the computer used off ebay for putting different linux systems on. Supposed to be about 1 1/2 yrs old (in actuality manufactured in March 2012, and the first programs were installed dec 27 2012. A gal used it for “a couple college courses”. After I got it I discovered it had a broken earphone plug.
The live disc worked fine for 3 nights. Only problems, it ran slow, and with only 4 gb ram, and a full dvd of 4.7 gb, I kept getting a message stating I was running low on disk space. I can, or at least could last night, still boot from the disk. Still does. That’s how I installed it 3 times. I haven’t been able to get online from the live disk, but I’ve been able to do everything else I’ve tried, including bringing files up from the home partition on the hard drive. I suppose I could try re installing it a few more times. It would be nice to get the grub straightened out so I could boot into mint and use the programs there too. I can reinstall it also, but the I’d have to remember how I had it set up and the programs I put on it. I see I have opensuse installed on both the root partition, and the home partition. I have a desktop in the home partition, files, with nothing on yet, on home. On the root partition, I don’t have a desktop in the home file, but in the boot file, I have config-3.11.6-4-desktop , initrd, initrd-3.11.6-4-desktop, memtest.bin, message, symvers-3.11.6-4-desktop.gz, sysctrl.config-3.11.6-4-desktop, system.map-3.11.6-4-desktop, vmlinux-3.11.6-4-desktop.gz, vmlinuz (it is a z instead of an x), vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop. As someone who knows nothing, I think it isn’t finished installing. I have files in the lib64 folder, the run folder, the sbin folder, the tmp folder, and the var folder. The other folders are either empty, or won’t open. This is on the root partition. Any suggestions for what to do. While I have a network folder on the root partition, with folders in it, I don’t think it’s been configured yet, and I did not give the password yet for my wirelessrouter in my house. I’ve had to do that with every distro I’ve installed before I could get online. Again, I don’t think I’ve finished installing it, but it always hangs up at the same place. If I need to do anything, I will probably need directions so I don’t mess up. Thanks for all the help so far. I guess I have unique problems.
I just noticed looking thru the mint live disk since I know it better, there is only 3.5 gb installed on the root partition for open suse, out of 4.361gb compressed to download. Says 4.7 on opensuse.org. Again this tells me the computer needs to do more installing. I know the commands aren’t all just plain text, but I can’t help thinking there is a command to finish the installation.
On 2014-08-02 05:26, heyyou325 wrote:
> Where I live, cable internet is not
> very common, only a few people nearest being over 15 miles away. Used
> to have satellite, but that was worse, both in speed and bandwidth
> usage. There is one (broadband I guess) provider, using towers and
> repeaters that can get to me. I have mountains on all sides of me.
…
> I can try to download an iso file tonight. If I try in the
> morning, my wife and I would have to stay off line then. Evenings we
> have about 7 hours with no usage to download. And I can try
> opensuse.org.
At home I have a 1 mbit/s ADSL connection, so downloading the full DVD
takes at least 13 hours. But it is no problem to do a partial download
and continue another day, or download at half the pipe speed, so that I
can keep working during the day. I can download at 1/3 speed during the
day, and full speed during the night, for instance. If it takes 4 days
to do it, fine! 
I use aria2c, a command line Linux utility, and feed it the metalink
address, never the direct download link. On Windows, I have used a
plugin described on our download page, perhaps the name is downthemall
or similar.
Using metalinks ensures that the download is 100% correct. It does
automatically repair download errors, so that the final result is perfect.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
I will have to try that aria2 . It is in mints synaptic package manager. I don’t know a lot about programs, or computer stuff yet, just trying to learn. just an old newbie I guess. I can’t get into opensuse yet to find out if it’s there, nor can I get back into mint til this gets straightened out, or I re install. Thanks for the info.
If you have Windows or Mint, either of those should be able to tell you what video card you have.
The live disc worked fine for 3 nights. Only problems, it ran slow, and with only 4 gb ram, and a full dvd of 4.7 gb, I kept getting a message stating I was running low on disk space.
That actually sounds okay. It runs slow because a DVD is slow compared to the hard drive, and because what is on the DVD is compressed and needs to be uncompressed on the fly.
The low disk space is because you cannot write to a DVD. So the live system allocates a small RAM disk. But it is easy to fill up that small RAM disk.
If it can run okay from the DVD, you should be able to have an installed system run better. Maybe something went wrong in the install.
If the DVD boot menu has a “media check” option, try that to test your DVD. I don’t recall whether that option is available with UEFI booting the live media.
On 2014-08-02 14:26, heyyou325 wrote:
>
> I just noticed looking thru the mint live disk since I know it better,
> there is only 3.5 gb installed on the root partition for open suse, out
> of 4.361gb compressed to download. Says 4.7 on opensuse.org. Again
> this tells me the computer needs to do more installing. I know the
> commands aren’t all just plain text, but I can’t help thinking there is
> a command to finish the installation.
No, no.
The full DVD instal is flexible, you can choose what to install. First
you select the main pattern: minimal server, text install, minimal
graphical, KDE, Gnome, other (xfce, lxde, and some other), etc. Then you
can customize further by adding or removing more packages.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
On 2014-08-02 15:06, heyyou325 wrote:
>
> I will have to try that aria2 . It is in mints synaptic package
> manager. I don’t know a lot about programs, or computer stuff yet, just
> trying to learn. just an old newbie I guess. I can’t get into opensuse
> yet to find out if it’s there, nor can I get back into mint til this
> gets straightened out, or I re install. Thanks for the info.
>
>
This is an example, that I used to download 11.4 years ago:
aria2c --check-integrity=true --summary-interval=300 \
--max-overall-download-limit=90K --continue \
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/iso/openSUSE-11.4-DVD-x86_64.iso.meta4
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
It has a media check option, when I click it, it just boots up in live disk. I go to media check in settings, and for cd/dvd drive it says md5sum does not match the media should not be used. And it has a number 0xa893698d it says the size is 963902 kb. And the video card should be listed under hardware information, then display I think, but I can’t find it. It says it has shared video memory UMA. And in the uefi/bios it says there is 128mb memory. It has intel graphics, I find out in windows. When I get into control panel and search for video card. I have a view name of video card, the computer says it has intel graphics and media control panel, chip type is intel graphics, and BIOS information says Intel Video Bios, and the driver is provided by intel corporation. That’s all I could find in opensuse, mint and windows 8.1.
I guess I should start to reinstall mint, and get that aria2 from mint synaptic package manager, then download a new opensuse iso and burn it.
I see there were more posts while I was getting frustrated trying to find a video card. Does aria2 work with windows? My wife wants to know.
No but there are programs that let you start and stop dowloads available for WIndows
On 2014-08-02 10:16 (GMT) heyyou325 composed:
> I’m not sure about the video card.
You can find out via any live media boot whether any GUI desktop opens or
not. Just use Ctrl-Alt-F2 (actually any of F1-F4 or even more usually will
work, usually all, so you can use more than one at a time and not have things
scroll away whilst figuring something else out).
According to your subject line, you’re already where you need to be, at a
shell prompt. Anyway, once on a shell prompt, simply:
lspci
should be all you need, but with some live Linux media you might need to
login first or do:
sudo lspci
instead.
The gist of the output line(s) that include(s) VGA should be plenty
information about your video card(s) for any who care to know.
To get a satisfactorily checked installation media to boot with a problem
video card you can from the first screen try both the F3 option (1024x768
usually works) and the F5 “kernel” option to select safe settings. The
simplest safe setting you can simply type in while "installation is highlighted:
nomodeset
If you already have a Linux installation on the system, you don’t need any
media downloaded in advance or burned. You can do an HTTP installation by
simply downloading the installation linux and initrd from a mirror:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.1/repo/oss/boot/x86_64/loader/
and using your existing bootloader to load them to start the installation.
Installing this way means you don’t waste any bandwidth on package you won’t
ever need or install.
https://en.opensuse.org//SDB:Network_installation
The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/