I used the awesome new ability to dd the live openSUSE iso to removable storage, I created a second partition on the removable drive also so that the install became portable vs live. Life is good until I install sun java runtime.
I was not surprised to see that sun java was not installed, so at first I downloaded java directly from Sun and ran the installer they provide, I then created a sym link in /usr/lib/browser-plugins pointing to the java plugin so that java would work in Firefox - my system completely hung shortly after. I rebooted and the system hung again shortly after auto login. Next reboot I did ctrl-alt-F1, logged in as root and did init 3 then rpm -e to get rid of java as well as delete the sym link in browser-plugins.
I was concerned that maybe I hacked something prior to installing java, so today I took my removable drive and did a dd /dev/zero to it and then re-created the portable installation. The first thing I did was zypper install java-1_6_0-sun to be sure to get packages directly from SUSE instead of grabbing java from Sun like I did before, the system hung within minutes! Upon reboot the system stalled at auto login I got to runlevel 3 console like before, did zypper remove java-1_6_0-sun and then rebooted - system works a-ok now.
Any ideas? I am really surprized at the effect this normally routine install had on my portable system.
Did you try watching a verbose boot to see what errors it spewed out?
Once logged in, execute the following and post the output here:
su
fdisk -l
df
It wouldn’t happen to hang during the boot, would it? If so I know what it is 
I will recreate the problem and then post in response to some of the questions. Thanks!
fdisk output for usb disk:
Disk /dev/sdb: 8220 MB, 8220647936 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7839 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6de64dcf
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 693 709632 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 694 7839 7317504 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb1: 726 MB, 726663168 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 693 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6de64dcf
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1p1 * 1 693 709632 83 Linux
/dev/sdb1p2 694 7839 7317504 83 Linux
df output:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0 5601200 2573248 3027952 46% /
udev 510708 272 510436 1% /dev
If you mean hitting Esc to see console messages during boot, then yes. Nothing jumped out at me, it seems that the problems are started once graphical session is going.
Once Java is installed, see if the disk is almost full or not. I have a feeling that you don’t have enough (or have just enough) space to install Java.
I am seeing the same trouble after installing gnucash also 
has anyone else had this same experience? It looks like adding software onto the portable installation causes trouble.
I recreated the portable install using 64 bit flavor and everything works a-ok. I installed several packages without any issue at all. I used the 64 bit live KDE and then the 64 bit live GNOME and both worked, 32 bit hangs every time though when I install packages using zypper.