First let me start off by saying I am completely new to the Linux OS. Well, I played around with it a very long time ago but didn’t do much with it other than configure a desktop to use Samba services but soon reformatted and went back to Windows because I didn’t know what else to do after that. So I pretty much kn nothing except for what ‘how-tos’ I read on the internet. My background is 16 years of Windows. Maybe Open SUSE was not the distribution to start off with.
That said, I installed it on a Dell Latitude E6500 last week. Everything seemed to go fine with no issues. I repartitioned the 500GB drive so SUSE could use about 200GB. I don’t recall the sizes of the different folders SUSE suggested but I just went with them. Everything was going well. Through researching the net, I was able to find out how to install the firmware for the built-in wireless adapter. I was able to connect to an AP at my office with no problems. At home, however it was more difficult. It took some trial and error but once I learned the BSSID was the MAC address of myrouter, things started running with a wireless connection. I reflashed a Linksys router for WRT54. Although I think it kind of knocked out my router for a minute because I was able to connect for a few minuted then nothing. Not even my iPhone was able to connect. I had to reboot the router and reconfigure the wireless adapter in the laptop.
The next thing was to figure out how to mount a freenas share. On my Windows computers it’s a breeze. But getting the information for how to do it in Linux is not easy. I found a Wiki that appeared to have the right information but I realized after I began starting to enable certain things that I was probably enabling server services so I stopped in midstream. I didn’t complete the process. I guess I should have gone back and reversed everything.
I had to suspend what I was trying to do and shut down the laptop thinking I’d just pick up from where I left off. Now when I boot up the laptop, it freezes on the green screen and I don’t get a login prompt. When I boot in Failsafe, thinking this is similar to Windows ‘Safe Mode’, the last thing on the screen is some cryptic thing that says
[13.316802] NET: Registered protocol family 17
Starting Cleanup of Temporary Directories…
Started Cleanup of Temporary Directories.
It stays stuck at the point. What does this mean? I haven’t been able to find any information that explains what is happening. How do I get a login prompt back when I boot in normal mode? Keep in mind that you are corresponding with someone who knows zip about this OS. Keep things simple please and refrain from using a lot of Linux technobabble. I haven’t reached that level yet. Is this a possible hardware problem? Is there a problem with the OS? Did starting to enable partial server services cripple the boot process? Should I just reinstall rather than frustrate myself trying to troubleshoot something I know nothing about?
mmm maybe you have filed the system with temp files.
try booting to a console type 3 then enter at the boot screen
this should get you a command line log in
log in as root
type df
see is any of the partitions are near 100%
du directoryhere -bh | more
will give more detailed info on each directory
dir will show files
cd chages director
rm removes files ( care used here be very sure what you delete as root you are god and can erase the entire file system)
Hard to say what you did to it I never heard of freenas so I had to look it up. Not sue why this would be a problem and have no idea what you did to try and make it work.
I don’t know wht console type 3 is and what in what capacity it would be used. I’ll have to Google that term to see what it means.
As for FreeNas…it’s just a NAS server I put together from an old Dell desktop to have another share on my network to save things on. The only problem I had was trying to figure out how to connect to the share I had set up on the server from the laptop. With Windows, it’s just a matter of mapping a drive and in OS X, you just establish a SMB connection using using an IP address. I was not able to find any clear cut instructions on how to connect a SUSE client to a FreeNAS server.
But that’s secondary to the current problem. Since I don’t know squat about Linux, I’m baffled as to how I could fill the system with temp files when there is almost 200GB of space. What sort of temp files would these be?
When you startup openSUSE 12.1, you come up the grub (legacy) Operating System menu selector. You have the option to type in any kernel load command before you press the enter key to select that kernel version of openSUSE that is highlighted. If you type in the single number “3” (without the quotes) and press the enter key, the kernel selected will load but you will be sent to the run level 3, which does not start the graphical desktop, but leaves you at the terminal prompt. There you can type in the commands as suggested in gogalthorp’s message after you log in as root and you can even startup up a yast (command is just yast) session in text mode if you want.
On 2012-04-25 02:36, jamesd3rd wrote:
> But that’s secondary to the current problem. Since I don’t know squat
> about Linux, I’m baffled as to how I could fill the system with temp
> files when there is almost 200GB of space. What sort of temp files
> would these be?
That’s some thing you’d learn after finding those files
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
> When I was presented with the startup screen, I typed 3 on the boot
> options line but there was no logon screen to log in as root. What
> happens now?
You get a text screen. You type “root”, then enter, then the password.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I assume that nothing is going to appear after that so I type root then enter then the password but I’m just staring at a black screen with the root and password looking back at me.
I think something happened to the install. Clearly it’s not behaving the way it should.
If you can’t get into a terminal then you need to boot from a live CD. Basically you need to be able to look at the file usage on the partitions and be able remove overly large or numerous temp files most will be in the /tmp directory.
Looks like it is trying to resume from hibernate and it is failing. I don’t know how to break it out of trying to resume since I don’t use hibernate but maybe some one will jump in.
On 2012-04-25 23:26, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> You did the 3 right.
>
> Looks like it is trying to resume from hibernate and it is failing. I
> don’t know how to break it out of trying to resume since I don’t use
> hibernate but maybe some one will jump in.
No, I don’t think so. On recovery from hibernation there is no fsck, and
that is the last message he says it displays. I don’t know what is hapening
(that’s why I want to see a photo, or a video of the sequence), but it is
not a recovery from hibernation.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
That’s all that’s worth getting pictures of. As I said, that text screen sits there for minutes or hours. The only time anything else appears is if I do a ctrl-alt-del and reboot the system. Other than that, nothing. I guess I’ll either reformat and resize the Linux partition to reinstall or use the live CD to browse the drive. I just wish this OS was easier to troubleshoot. I’d like to learn more about it but if it’s this hard to isolate a problem, my time is better spent elsewhere.
> What is that last line saying?
>
> That’s all that’s worth getting pictures of.
No, that line alone is not enough to know what is happening. I know very
well what that line means, but I don’t know how you get there, or why it stops.
My guess is that you are not entering runlevel 3, but a crashed level 5.
You could, perhaps, start in systemv mode. F5 at boot screen, select
systemv. Be sure to type a 3 at the prompt as well.
> I just
> wish this OS was easier to troubleshoot.
It is easy enough - but we are not there and we don’t see what you see, and
we can not do there what we would on our machines.
You can, if you want, install again. As we are not progressing, you can try
that. Lacking photos…
Or you can start a live CD and have a look at the messages log.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I got there by doing what people suggested. I types ‘3’ at the ‘boot options’ line at the bottom of the startup screen. Since you know what that ‘fsck…’ line means, can you tell us? I don’t know what you mean by ‘crashed level 5’. Are you suggesting that the system is booting into something called ‘level 5’ and crashing?
You could, perhaps, start in systemv mode. F5 at boot screen, select
systemv. Be sure to type a 3 at the prompt as well.
What is systemv mode? What is it used for?
> I just
> wish this OS was easier to troubleshoot.
It is easy enough - but we are not there and we don’t see what you see, and
we can not do there what we would on our machines.
You can, if you want, install again. As we are not progressing, you can try
that. Lacking photos…
Or you can start a live CD and have a look at the messages log.
As for photos, that’s all there is. The laptop boots, there’s the green screen, I type ‘3’ and I wait to see what happens. I get the black text screen and nothing else. There’s nothing else to take pictures of. What else would you like ot see
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
systemV is the old boot method. since 12.1 things are moving to systemD which is now the default in OpenSUSE.
The suggestion is to try that and see what happens.
To be honest the system seem really messed. If you are an expert you might be able to get things working again. Maybe you might want to tell us where you got the instructions you followed that got to this point. There may be a clue there. But you do have a very unusual situation and is difficult to do this remotely because of the delays in the communications. .
If you decide to reinstall. at the partition scheme screen be sure to mark your home partition to mount as /home but not to format. This will preserve any personal settings or data you might have. You still have to reinstall any programs you may want or need that you had installed before.
Just as a reminder, the installation was working just fine until I started configuring the WiFi adapter to use my WRT54g router. It took a couple tries but I got it to work. Then when I wanted to connect to the FreeNAS server share on my network I had to spend some time researching how to mount a share. What I think I ended up finding though was instructions in how to enable server services. So when I realized what I was doing was not what I wanted to do I stopped. I didn’t reverse my steps though.
When I shut things down and rebooted, that’s when all the problems started.
On 2012-04-26 05:26, jamesd3rd wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2458463 Wrote:
> I got there by doing what people suggested. I types ‘3’ at the ‘boot
> options’ line at the bottom of the startup screen. Since you know what
> that ‘fsck…’ line means, can you tell us?
It doesn’t add any information. The init scripts check the consistency of
the filesystem, and don’t find any error. It is not an error message,
unless there is something above that line which I don’t know and you don’t say.
> I don’t know what you mean
> by ‘crashed level 5’. Are you suggesting that the system is booting
> into something called ‘level 5’ and crashing?
Perhaps.
>> You could, perhaps, start in systemv mode. F5 at boot screen, select
>> systemv. Be sure to type a 3 at the prompt as well.
>
> What is systemv mode? What is it used for?
Just do it.
> As for photos, that’s all there is. The laptop boots, there’s the
> green screen, I type ‘3’ and I wait to see what happens. I get the
> black text screen and nothing else. There’s nothing else to take
> pictures of. What else would you like ot see
I’m sure there are more text lines than that.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
