I don’t know how to describe this well. When I boot up (openSUSE 11.1), after the splash screen, I seem to boot into a terminal or something. It’s just a bunch of white text on a black screen. I tried re-installing openSUSE, which works for a couple boot ups, but eventually this problem starts again. What am I doing to cause it, and how do I fix it? Thanks in advance.
Your graphics hardware has not been recognised correctly. You can try using a basic generic video driver just to get started. You will need to be root first with this command:
su (enter root password when prompted)
The sax2 utility is used to set up your video config. Try using the basic vesa driver to start with:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
If all goes well, you can try launching desktop with
init 5
See how that goes. Post more details about your graphics hardware if you should require further help.
BTW, some useful sax2 info:
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:X_Server_Configuration_with_SaX2_(8.1_or_Higher)#Desktop
Have a read of this too:
SuSELinuxSupport: HowToGetTheGuiBack
Okay, I’ll try those out. It’s strange that it would suddenly stop recognizing my hardware, after working right for a month or so. But then again, I have ATI card. I read that everyone else had installation problems with an ATI card, and I had none. It worked fine out the box (figuratively), and I had to do nothing special to get it working.
I didn’t think I had something not working right, I thought I had changed a setting, getting rid of my gui. The only thing that I found searching was someone trying to make their system behave the way mine is now (The instruction were not reversable, to fix my problem).
It’s strange that it would suddenly stop recognizing my hardware, after working right for a month or so.
Probably due to an upgrade. It may be necessary to reinstall ATI driver. Have a read of this how to.
Well, trying to boot into failsafe didn’t work at all (The first step of the above suggestions required failsafe). The screen blanked mid-boot, and now that’s all that happens when I boot normally or through failsafe. I tried using the dvd to repair the install, but the “repair installation” only repairs a different OS on a different partition (It tries to repair my PCLinuxOS partition, not my openSUSE partition).
I’d have given up already, but I really like openSUSE. I think I’ll have to reinstall it again. Argh.