Hi all, hope someone can help with this issue.
I installed Opensuse 12.2 yesterday. After rebooting I installed a number of upgrades including the latest Kernel (3.4.6-2.10-desktop). On rebooting the pc the next morning, the pc loaded and got to ‘loading ramdisk’ on the monitor and then it rebooted. After this the pc again booted but was stuck at ‘loading ramdisk’. I had to reboot the machine at which point the machine booted as normal on the third attempt.
Over the last few days I have observed the pc only does this when cold booting after a number of hours off. If the pc is working normally and I reboot, the reboot is fine.
I suspect it maybe a kernel issue as I used to use Kubuntu. This same booting issue originally started after the Kubuntu kernel upgrade to 3.2.5. Prior to this there were no issues. I have had the same issue using PC Linux OS and LMDE. Whilst I have considered hardware issues, there were no problems prior to kernel 3.2.5 and there have been no changes to the hardware.
What do you mean by the “upgrades including a new kernel” line? After install of 12.2 there is no kernel-upgrade available, it’s already there. IMHO this could as well be some BIOS setting for harddisk access, since the other distros suffer from it as well.
Hi, having looked around other forums, I was advised to press ‘e’ upon the opensuse boot options appearing. This appeared to reveal more information on the boot process. Essentially it mentioned that the OS was looking for a non existent floppy drive ( this was set in the bios as existing though there is none ). Having disabled this, the boot boot process appears much faster, with none of the issues I previously described. Hopefully this has solved the issue but thank you for responding.
FWIW
I’ve had similar experiences but its not happening regularly enough to see a
pattern. It also sometimes happen after updating via yast and a warm re-boot
on the infrequent times it occurs, a quick cold-boot resolves it
bios floppy is disabled and no floppy sw is installed
kernels used
3.4.4-1.1 thru 3.5.4-2-desktop x86_64 (64 bit)
>
>Hi all, hope someone can help with this issue.
>I installed Opensuse 12.2 yesterday. After rebooting I installed a
>number of upgrades including the latest Kernel (3.4.6-2.10-desktop). On
>rebooting the pc the next morning, the pc loaded and got to ‘loading
>ramdisk’ on the monitor and then it rebooted. After this the pc again
>booted but was stuck at ‘loading ramdisk’. I had to reboot the machine
>at which point the machine booted as normal on the third attempt.
>Over the last few days I have observed the pc only does this when cold
>booting after a number of hours off. If the pc is working normally and I
>reboot, the reboot is fine.
>I suspect it maybe a kernel issue as I used to use Kubuntu. This same
>booting issue originally started after the Kubuntu kernel upgrade to
>3.2.5. Prior to this there were no issues. I have had the same issue
>using PC Linux OS and LMDE. Whilst I have considered hardware issues,
>there were no problems prior to kernel 3.2.5 and there have been no
>changes to the hardware.
>
>Hardware:
>Motherboard: GA-P35-DS4
>CPU: Intel Q6600@ 2.00 GHz
>8 GB Corsair DDR2
>AMD HD 3450 256 MB
>
>King regards.
I think you have a combo problem here. Memory that is marginal when cold
and fine once warmed up and the new kernel pushing it too hard.
updated the kernel twice yesterday with yast and ran into the same problem
trying to warm reboot and cold boot, the boot froze with a black screen
the problem appears to be the transition from grub2 to the splash screen,
if the green splash screen appeared within one second the boot would be successful
at the grub2 screen, selecting “Advanced options for openSUSE 12.2”,
and then at the next screen selecting the only installed kernel
“openSUSE 12.2, with Linux 3…” the boot never failed.
logically this should not make any difference
after doing this a couple of times the normal boot / reboot worked, coincidence?
this occurred on two machines with dissimilar; mboards, memory, cpu’s, graphics cards, …
the only similarity between the machines is the manufacturers of the cpu’s and graphics,
which are amd and ati respectively, which I do not think is significant
Just had the same problem occur to me today. The system wouldn’t boot, stuck at “Loading ramdisk”. It was a cold boot.
This has occurred a couple of times before, but a reset (via the button) always brought the system on track. Today it just didn’t want to boot. It only booted after I booted Windows and then restarted. Can you explain what you mean by “marginal” memory? My kernel version is 3.4.11-2.16-desktop.
I don’t know if this will help at all but I was having difficulty with my system hanging after I installed the 3.4.28-2.20-desktop kernel update. I downgraded the kernel and re-installed the update through yast and my system is no longer hanging on boot.
On 02/16/2013 09:56 AM, keellambert wrote:
>
> FWIW
>
> After increasingly running into this problem on one PC,
> decided drastic action was necessary
>
> changing memory cards made no difference
>
> in the end lifted the cpu from its socket, blew cold air through the
> pins,
> which looked very clean, and then re-installed
>
> no re-occurrence of booting problem during the last 3 months
> (can only assume a dodgy contact)
>
> this is NOT recommended unless absolutely desperate
> (take great care with the thermal paste, if its been applied, best to
> renew)
I do not believe that the CPU works without thermal paste. If it was applied
correctly, you should not be able to see it as it should only be thick enough to
fill the microscopic pits in the CPU and heat sink. I would never remove the
heat sink from the CPU without cleaning both and reapplying the paste; however,
it is your CPU, not mine!
Er, guys, I really don’t think it’s a CPU problem. First, we would probably get other symptoms as well. Second, at least in my case, the problem is only intermittent and I usually have at least a couple of cold boots per day but it may occur only once per 1-2 months. I haven’t had any other symptoms even hinting at a CPU contact problem, much less an overheating problem (although I run the CPU at max freqeuncy all the time).
Thanks keellamber. I definitely can live with it, and a few days ago there was a patch concerning the ramdisk I think and I haven’t had the problem since. I’ll wait and see.