I’m trying to upgrade from Leap 15.1 (yes, I know…) to Slow Roll/Tumbleweed. I created a bootable USB stick using Etcher in Windows 10, but upon choosing the “Upgrade” option in the boot menu, I get the error
kernel panic not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on “” or unknown-block(0,0)
At first I thought it was the USB stick, so I bought a 2-pack, and both of them produced the same result. Then I thought it was the ISO, so I tried the Slow Roll image, but that also produced the same result.
Perhaps Etcher is at fault?
I also am considering upgrading manually: the Slow Roll page says you can upgrade to it from “any actual” Leap release by replacing the repositories (openSUSE:Slowroll - openSUSE Wiki), but I would want to verify that (1) this applies to 15.1 (since the Tumbleweed upgrade page says to upgrade from Leap without a USB stick requires at least Leap 15.2), and (2) the commands on the Slowroll page I linked are the only ones I need.
I am not sure about the meaning of “actual” here. When it means “supported” it is only Leap 15.5 In the Leap series) today.
And the using of “Upgrade” from the main menu of the installation image is only supported one step at the time. So for you that would be 15.1 > 15.2 > 15.3 > 15.4 > 15.5. And the same is true for “online upgrade”. I your situation I would prefer a fresh 15.5, or better Tumbleweed installation (I am not sure about Slowroll, direct or via 15.5). Were it only for the time needed because I would advice at least some basic functionality testing in each step. And e.g. the desktop software would probably upgrade some internal files with each new version of e.g. KDE and again that will not be supported over more then one step. So every desktop user should login at least once on each step.
And thinking of the desktop, even when you do a fresh install, but keep all user data (/home), then the new desktop programs may still have problems with old configuration files.
And I assume the same is true when you chanhge from Leao (particlary such an old one) to Tumbleweed.
Does 15.1 still boot? If yes, why try to create a USB from .iso using Windows?
I pretty much quit trying to create bootable USB sticks after discovering Ventoy. Once Ventoy is installed on a stick, you simply copy an .iso onto it as you would with any other file anywhere else. Ventoy boots to a menu that lists available .isos from which to boot. I have yet to find a PC from which I can’t boot Ventoy into an openSUSE .iso for installation.
If you have a compelling reason to upgrade rather than install afresh, it needn’t take terribly long to do a multi-step upgrade as hcvv described. Only needed packages get downloaded rather than full .isos that don’t contain any updated packages. I’ve had complete success doing triple and quadruple upgrades of Leap in short succession several times. The process can be hastened by removing big apps like *Office, web browsers and/or even whole DEs before beginning, then adding them back after the last upgrade step has completed.
Has it happened to you? Where are some of these “many” reports? Break how? Except on my old iMac, Ventoy usually works for me. All these booted as expected somewhere or other:
> mount | grep toy
/dev/sdg1 on /run/media/<filter>/Ventoy type ext2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)
> ls -gG .. .
.:
total 15959920
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502267904 Feb 10 11:44 debian-11.9.0-i386-netinst.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 627048448 Nov 1 2022 d-installer-live.x86_64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 4694753280 Feb 18 2021 KNOPPIX_V9.1DVD-2021-01-25-EN.iso
drwx------ 2 16384 Mar 20 2022 lost+found
-rw-rw-r-- 1 524648448 Nov 22 2019 memtest86-cdiso82.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 4287627264 Jun 26 2020 openSUSE-Leap-15.2-DVD-x86_64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 4413456384 May 23 2023 openSUSE-Leap-15.5-DVD-x86_64-20230731.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 622919680 May 13 2023 openSUSE-Leap-15.5-Rescue-CD-x86_64-20230731.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 645332992 Oct 1 16:10 openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Rescue-CD-x86_64-Snapshot20231001-Media.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 8867840 Jun 20 2012 seaToolsDOS223ALL.ISO
..:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 3 4096 Mar 5 21:51 Ventoy
I used Ventoy for a new LEAP 15.5 install and got a kernel panic VERY quickly. It was because the installer referenced the Ventoy initrd in the linux (rdinit= xxxx) command line in /etc/default/grub.
When I tried booting into recovery mode it successfully booted into the desktop, which is when I started looking at /etc/default/grub and noticed the rdinit=.
Basically you must do a unmodified binary copy of the ISO to the USB. openSUSE is boot ready and any modes made by any “installer” can break things. I use cp to the USB device some use dd or other pure binary copy methods
I tried doing a fresh install rather than an upgrade and got the same exact kernel panic error.
It sounds like Etcher is failing for some reason - I’ll exhaust the officially recommended options before trying something not recommended. It’s odd because Etcher is how I got Leap in the first place.
The reason for creating the ISO in Windows is because that’s my work machine and it’s easier for me to have that going in the background while at work than to find time at home.
I tried Rufus (which is what is recommended) and got the same exact error (on two different USB sticks), and then tried OSForensics, but all it did was display “GRUB” in the command line and then hung.
I’m not really sure what to do since I’ve tried two different ISOs, three different USB sticks, and three different image writing programs. I’ve also experimented with different USB ports on the PC itself.
I don’t see a pure binary option on Rufus. It does give me a boot menu, but then it can’t load the Linux kernel.
The hardware for the device creating the USB stick is a Dell Inspirion and the device to which I’m trying to install Tumbleweed is a Dell Optiplex. Nothing crazy, and, like I said, I was able to get this to work with Leap 15.1.
That doesn’t tell us anything meaningful. At least the years they were made is better. The birth of Dell’s Optiplex line was more than three decades ago. I have one with a Pentium III CPU @933MHz. The Inspiron line isn’t all that much newer, born in 1997. Specific model numbers sometimes help, but usually the “model” numbers we get provided for major brand PCs are line series rather than anything that can lead to discovery of specifically what hardware comprises it. Best to provide output from inxi when possible, -bz for basic, -Fz for a bit more, other options from its man page for more detail about specific components causing issues, like for GPU -Gaz or for CPU -Cxxz. Often the motherboard has a model stenciled on that can be useful.
Refuse in normal mode makes changes to the ISO image this is needed for some destros but not openSUSE. I don’t use it myself. It may have some obscure naming like dd mode which is a normal binary no change mode. But check the menus carefully. In any case OSForensics should work since it is designed to do exact copies. It is important to copy the image to the device not to a partition on the device.
Yes, for Rufus I have specified DD mode. Honestly, I’m making the least progress with OSForensics for whatever reason–the other two get me to the boot menu (but can’t load the kernel). Unless you mean OSForensics should be in DD mode?
