need help in booting OpenSuse 11.1

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi,

Need your help - in Opening OpenSuse 11.1.

In my new (4 months old) Lenovo 3000 G530 laptop : Intel Core2 Duo, 250GB, 2GB Ram :

I have 100GB - C Drive - XP,
50GB - D Crive - for XP datas
50GB - OpenSUSE 11.1(intitally E drive for XP).
50GB - Ubuntu 9.04

I had installed XP first, then after a month installed Ubuntu, and was able to run - in fact it was a beauty. Except for certain applications, I hardly had to use XP.

Last month got a Linux For You (india) magazine (Jan or Feb Issue)- and OpenSuse 11.1 was bundled. OpenSuse was highly rated, installed and found it was good. But sadly I could not open anyother - No XP, and No Ubuntu - and all datas were in them.

Then later installed Ubuntu (after taking the datas using Ubuntu LiveCD) - and could open OpenSUSE for a day.

But, for no reason - after that could not open it, when using GRUB - it always says No Software (or something) and asks for any key to press to go back to GRUB.

Sorry for the full narration, but, I liked OpenSUSE (fantastic green theme with KDE 4.1 (I think)).

  1. I need to get back to OpenSUSE and
  2. also need to install gnome instead of KDE

can you help me.

I am not a Linux man (was using windows for more than 10 years).

thanks

sivakumar
chennai

#2

It’s likely that the kernel version for openSUSE listed in the Ubuntu Grub’s menu.lst file has changed due to openSUSE online updates. This common problem and remedy is discussed here:
HowTo Multiboot openSUSE from Ubuntu using the GRUB bootloader

Essentially, you create an entry in the Ubu bootloader for openSUSE that is never obsoleted by online updates in openSUSE. The focus goes to symlinks that always point to the contemporary vmlinuz and initrd.

#3

:expressionless:

Dear Sir,

I did as what you have guided me - opened the web page, did as per the instructions, changed the grub menu, now I could go into OpenSUSE.

But, the problem I face now is that it comes only in the command line mode. I want the GUI (KDE 4) which was installed originally.

Can you help me please…

sivakumar
chennai

#4

That’s a different problem. It could be one of these:

  • a partition named in the file system table (fstab) is misnamed or not mountable
  • you have proprietary video like Nvidia or ATI and the drivers aren’t loaded

So some questions:

  • Did you see any message about errors or difficulties at the end of the boot into openSUSE, just before the text login prompt?
  • What is your video card brand (is it nvidia or ati)? and if it is one of these, have you installed the drivers?
  • Check the boot messages for error messages towards the end – look at the log using this command:
cat /var/log/boot.msg | more