reboot hangs at many points

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Have openSUSE 11.1 and (AFAIK) KDE 4 on an older notebook; worked OK for weeks, then booting became a problem and the OS seemed to go to sleep between keystrokes: now the cursor stops blinking, the clock stops running, and nothing happens after clicking a radio button until the mouse moves. Am now 25 minutes into a reboot, hung at “Unmounting file systems” but it also hung for a while when changing run levels.
Is this related to the stability problems with 11.1 I’ve read about? Possibly KDE? Where would I adjust a config to use kde 3.5 rather than 4?

Thanks

2

It’s kind of complicated. But if you boot to runlevel 3, here is how to get there:

Pause the boot by moving the down arrow, then back up to the default boot. But now press backspace, it should delete any text where you can see VGA=…etc
Remove all text and now type just the number:
3
and hit enter
at the login type your user name and then password
now type:
su
then the root password

Now hit enter a couple of times just to make sure where we are:
Now type: yast

You have to navigate with the keyboard
Go to Yast Software Management - Patterns
Install: kde3-base, kde3-desktop

Also in Yast - if your machine normally logs in automatically, disable that
This is where to go but it’s a full graphical view, you have to use the keyboard
Disable Auto-Login - openSUSE Forums

Then select kde3 from the login screen - lower left corner.

However, first - before all the above try a reboot in failsafe and watch for errors in the scrolling text. it may even login better.

3

Thank you caf,

Rebooting in safe mode did produce an error message: the failsafe X.org config no longer exits. In fact, the message appeared twice, on either side of “starting rpcbind” near the end (all this remained on the last screen).
During boot to failsafe mode (text screen) the machine does not stop as often, but hitting the CTL key still produces a continuation of the boot process when it pauses.
This system normally boots to run level 5. Would that be the appropriate RL to choose before going to yast in text mode?
I did get to yast s/w management and was able to indicate that KDE3 should be installed, but have not yet done so. I could not change the status of KDWE4 to uninstall–is that necessary or do I just leave it?
Thanks

4

What RAM do you have
Have uninstalled all Beagle?

5

If KDE 3.5 is installed it is easy to change the login, provided you are able to login and then logout directly of kde 4. You come to the login screen of kdm. There below you find the menu: type of session. You choose kde 3.5. from then on you should login in automatic with KDE 3.5.

6

Have 500 MB RAM
There is no beagle component installed, according to yast.

7

If I select KDE3 to install in yast, beagle is also selected “to resolve dependencies.” I expect I can de-select beagle at this point, rather than having to install and then uninstall it. Right?

8

Yes, but you have to mark them all for delete. It will keep throwing errors until either you check the correct solver to delete them all or manually mark them all to delete.
Or just do it after, if that’s easier,

9

Thanks to all–I’m now running KDE3 on oS 11.1.
BUT :open_mouth: SeaMonkey email crashes and disappears (without a trace dialog box) when I try to open or delete a message. SeaMonkey appeared to download waiting messages from my ISP, which means that I can’t read them because they were deleted from the server on download. I was able to reconfigure SeaMonkey to leave messages on the server.
The Navigator window of SeaMonkey (the browser) opens and starts to display a page, but then it disappeaed. After re-installation, it completed a couple of pages, but crashed when I tried to download the update 1.1.17 (1.1.16 is installed).
Re-installed SeaMonkey with yast–SM still crashes. Sort of smells like a permissions problem, but suggestions most welcome.

10

Now please open a terminal and post the result of this:

zypper lr --details
11

As requested:

:~> zypper lr --details

| Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service

–±----------------------±----------------------±--------±--------±---------±-------±----------------------------------------------------------------±-------
1 | openSUSE-11.1-Updates | openSUSE-11.1-Updates | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /update/11.1 |
2 | repo-debug | openSUSE-11.1-Debug | Yes | Yes | 100 | yast2 | Index of /debug/distribution/11.1/repo/oss |
3 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-11.1-Non-Oss | Yes | No | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/11.1/repo/non-oss |
4 | repo-oss | openSUSE-11.1-Oss | Yes | No | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/11.1/repo/oss |
5 | repo-source | openSUSE-11.1-Source | Yes | Yes | 100 | yast2 | Index of /source/distribution/11.1/repo/oss |
6 | repo-update | openSUSE-11.1-Update | Yes | No | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /update/11.1 |
:~>

12

Change as shown in Bold
then run online updates

or in a su terminal:

zypper ref

then

zypper up

13

Changing the settings on the repositories triggered an update of the dbus package. Without rebooting, SeaMonkey email still crashes when trying to read a message.
So rebooted–in record time of about 3 min. but still found the process hanging (the text cursor underscore stops blinking) which started when a key was pressed or the mouse cursor moved. Again, SeaMonkey email crashes. [writing this in FireFox]

14

3 mins to boot
If you press Esc. during the green splash, you will see scrolling text. Check it for errors as the system loads

Also try Failsafe boot. Is it working any better.

15

Error messages caught when ESC removed the splash screen (some sections went by fast, might have missed something):

“Last log entry in the future: corrected.” <perhaps because the clock stops intermittently?]

“Retry device configuration: Done” <something wrong the first time?]

[long pause when switching from run level N to 5; next step is start syslog services]

The computer still pauses when there is no input from keyboard or mouse motion. Ksysguard, for example, stops updating the system load display and resumes without catching up when there is user input. Same with the clock display in the panel: it stops, then continues without adjusting for the pause.

KDE3 doesn’t seem to offer the option to “sync now” when configuring the NTP server. And just to put frosting on this cake, the firewall port for NTP won’t stay open: every time I go to configure it (right click on the clock to get to the KDE Control Module) the window says the firewall port for NTP is closed.
:frowning:

16

:shame: Oops. Resync for NTP is in yast, not KDE.

17

Hi. Thanks for the suggestion about a report, but it’s moot–I wandered off the res (installed SLES) then found it lacked an essential (to me) app in the SLES repositories. So re-installed openSUSE 11.1 – with the change of adding “noapic acpi=off” to the boot instructions. This seems to have cured the problem of the CPU apparently halting after a few seconds of user inactivity. My notebook seems to be the cause, as it is 6 years old and probably has one of the flawed implementations of acpi and/or apic that I read about.
To automate the instruction about apic/acpi, I intend to modify the sysconfig file. YaST2 has a kernel property called MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT which accepts any value. Would appreciate confirmation that this is an appropriate place to insert “noapic acpi=off”. Thanks.

18

noapic acpi=off

would normally be added to the boot arguments in /boot/grub/menu.lst

19

Thanks. Done.

20

Sort of SOLVED: the hang during reboot was resolved by adding kernel commands at the first openSuse screen: noapic acpi=off

The machine runs a bit hotter, but much faster. I assume the CPU is not halted.