openSUSE Tumbleweed on HP Proliant Microserver Gen8

Hello,

About 3 weeks ago I bought a HP Proliant Microserver Gen8.
I want to run openSUSE Tumbleweed on it.

The entire installation went fine. The last step is the countdown from 10 to 0 to reboot the system.
After this final step, the system freezes. The server doesn’t reboot, the video screen is going “in standby” mode.

After cold boot the system the steps are:

  1. Welcome to GRUB
  2. Options menu: openSUSE Tumbleweed, Advanced options for openSUSE Tumbleweed, Start bootloader from a read-only snapshot.
    I choose openSUSE Tumbleweed
  3. Loading Linux…
  4. A green openSUSE screen lightens up.
  5. Some little harddisk activity.
  6. And then the system hangs. The only solution is power down the system.

I really like to have my HP Proliant work with openSUSE.
Does anyone have an idea what could be the issue and how to solve it?

Kind regards,
Philip

Hi
So this system has the “Integrated Matrox G200” GPU or something else?

Try booting with the nomodeset option (press the e key to edit and add the option), if you also press the esc key after you select the grub boot entry, it should show some more verbose info on the screen, you should also be able to press ctrl+alt+F10 to see kernel messages press alt+ctrl+F7 or F1 to get back.

Thanks Malcolm,
That did the job.
I didn’t no how to handle the “nomodeset” option.

This post helped me with that:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/456565-Grub-Nomodeset

“nomodeset” placed after splash=silent, than the system started up.
It started with a command-line, after an init 5, I had a graphical screen.

Once again, thanks.

Kind regards,
Philip

Hi Philip
Looks like we got you on your way :wink:

Still this means the proper driver is disabled (maybe), so lets find out what it is with the following command (as your user)


/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep -A3 VGA
[/COD]

Hello,

I had to add the nomodeset in the bootloader options (via Yast).
After starting up and loging in, I enter init 5.

Your question about: /sbin/lspci -nnk | grep -A3 VGA

Here is the output:

01:00.1 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200EH [102b:0533]
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company iLO4 [103c:3381]
Kernel modules: mgag200
01:00.2 System peripheral [0880]: Hewlett-Packard Company Integrated Lights-Out Standard Management Processor Support and Messaging [103c:3307] (rev 05)

Kind regards,
Philip

Hi
So it looks like the driver comes to life later on then, do you see the animated (plymouth) booting on the screen?

Do you want it to default to runlevel 5? If so then use (as root user);


systemctl set-default graphical.target

To set to runlevel 3 (console only) use;


systemctl set-default multi-user.target

I think it needs the vga= option set and can probably remove the nomodeset, look in YaST bootloader to set this, or can add as a kernel option (as in replace the nomodeset) with;


vga=0x791

This should set the display to 1024x768@16bit
More codes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions

Matrox graphics are always a problem They don’t supply Linux drivers and since they are not common OS drivers are iffy. If this is a server you can probably live with the the nomodeset drivers. But they are limited also maybe use a lighter weight desktop other then KDE or Gnome. If this is to be used as a desktop machine I’d put a AMD or NVIDIA card in.

I tried in “YaST2 - Boot Loader”, under Kernel Parameters the VGA Mode 1024x768, 16 bits (mode 0x317) and also tried Unspecified.
None of them with succes.
Since I want to use this HP Proliant as a server, I can live with the nomodeset option.

Thank you all for helping me with this issue.

Kind regards,
Philip

I have almost the same problem except my hp proliant dl360 g4 will have a black screen, show what tumbleweed boot is supposed to show, then glitch between the info screen you can see if you hit esc during boot and a console. I already tried the nomodeset thing but it doesnt work. Are there any other solutions?

disable or remove matrox video and put almost anything elses in and current NVIDIA AMD or Intel GPU willwork

After supporting openSUSE/SUSE since forever, I was disappointed for most of the past 5 years or so that Linux support had either terminated or become impossibly hard to find. There used to be Linux specific drivers and support software, and for the past 5 years or so I’d relied mainly on the HP support forums for tough situations.

Just looked around again, and found this which should be a “First Stop” for anyone installing Linux or openSUSE/SUSE on HP hardware

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/solutions.html?compURI=1501074

TSU

FYI - The link to Linux software on the HP Linux webpage I referenced is broken.
I’m pretty sure it should be pointing to the following page
http://downloads.linux.hp.com/

TSU