Some problems booting opensuse

awesome-guy · July 5, 2010, 11:22pm

Hello,

I am new to these forums and new to linux, and from what I gather at these forums I have a lot to learn. Now I have installed opensuse, but there are some problems booting it with GRUB.

When installing opensuse (11.2, x64, KDE) I made the following partitions:
sda1: Swap - 2GB
sda2: root - 20GB
sda3: home - about 270GB

Now when I open the system info i can see that there are only 2 partitions, namely sda2 and sda3. For some reason during install sda1 has not been created, but instead there was chosen to make a sdb1 on my USB stick. I have re-installed and the same thing happened again. Now my questions:

1) How exactly do I create a new swap partition (GB’s taken away from /home and made into a new partition). Also, I read the Swap needs to be 2x the amount of RAM, which means I will need to make it 8GB?

2) How do I make the system use the new swap partition?

3) I am planning to only run opensuse on my laptop, so no multi-boot. Does GRUB have any use for me this way? Can’t I just better get rid of GRUB and use MBR to load opensuse by default? If so, how exactly do I make this happen?

EDIT: unrelated to the above, would it be wise to wait for 11.3 to be released? I like to have everything as up to date as possible, but will there be enough supported software available in the first few weeks that 11.3 is out?

jdmcdaniel3 · July 5, 2010, 11:54pm

The first partition, which you listed as /sda1 or SWAP will not show up as something being mounted. When you open up the “My Computer” icon on your desktop, the information about the swap partition will be listed in the “Memory Information” section on the bottom left of your screen. It is only used if your physical memory starts to run short.

As for openSUSE 11.3, you will indeed what to download and install it. But that should not keep you from trying out openSUSE 11.2 to get the feel of this very fine Linux Distro.

By the way, Welcome to the openSUSE forum. Please come back often and ask for help anytime you need it.

Thank You,

awesome-guy · July 6, 2010, 8:07am

Thanks for your response. It wasn’t as elaborate a response as I had hoped for but it will do I’m now just gonna wait for 11.3. However I would still like 2 things answered:

Does GRUB have any use when I don’t have multiple Operating Systems? Does selecting ‘‘boot from MBR’’ in the installer prevent GRUB from being installed?
How big should my SWAP partition be? I heard recommended was 2x RAM, but that would mean I have to make it 8GB? Isn’t that a bit much?

hcvv · July 6, 2010, 12:27pm

Your system is fine as it is and the sizes are good to live with. With todays big memeory sizes you do not need to take twice that size for swap. Changes are big that swap will never be used (but you never know).

Also try to differ between your roles as system administrator (root and end-user (you normal login where you use your day to day applications). For the end-user things are shown that are of interest for an end-user. What interest is swap to the end-user?

As system administrator you use your system administrators tools (Mainly YaST and the terminal). When you use YaST > System > Partitioner, you will see the real partitioning of the disk (while the end-user sees some storage places).
And seeing the partitioning information from a terminal:

sudo fdisk -l

hcvv · July 6, 2010, 12:33pm

Better do not ask manny questions in one thread. The threadd title will not cover them all and thus lure no knowledgeble ppl to such a thread.

Question 1: you have allready an adeqaute Swap partition.

Question2: it is allready in use. To see what the acttive swap is:

sudo -i swapon -s

Question 3: You need Grub. It will give you at l;east the possibility to boot Fail save, your last resort with big problems

DenverD · July 6, 2010, 12:18pm

awesome-guy wrote:
> 1) Does GRUB have any use when I don’t have multiple Operating Systems?
> Does selecting ‘‘boot from MBR’’ in the installer prevent GRUB from
> being installed?

if you select “boot from mbr” it will install grub, which is what you
want–my advice: don’t start off trying to get too fancy (like not
installing GRUB)…

> 2) How big should my SWAP partition be? I heard recommended was 2x RAM,
> but that would mean I have to make it 8GB? Isn’t that a bit much?

opinion varies on that and it depends on your needs…like, if yours
is a laptop and you intend to hibernate/standby to disk, then you have
to have enough swap to contain all of the memory in use…

otherwise i think most folks say 2GB should be enough…of course it
does depend on how you use your system…if with 4 GB RAM you are
gonna process 6GB photos/movies/db/sound files then that stuff which
can’t fit in RAM must have somewhere else to be for periods of time…

other questions:

1) How exactly do I create a new swap partition (GB’s taken away
from /home and made into a new partition).

yes, you have to boot from a (for example) live CD/partition magic CD
something because you can not shrink a partition in use…so, boot
from the CD and shrink /home then build the swap on hard drive and
delete the one on USB stick… note: probably had you paid VERY close
attention during the install you might have noticed the partitioner
suggested the swap on stick…or, maybe you accidently put it
there…OR it is as jdmcdaniel3 said: it is really on the hard
drive, a fact you can check with this code in a terminal


cat /etc/fstab

which will show clearly exactly where ‘swap’ is mounted

2) How do I make the system use the new swap partition?

make the new one and delete the old one maybe…

would it be wise to wait for 11.3 to be released?

that is a decision you need to make…but, it sounds to me that you
are putting in on a machine all by itself…so, why not call this a
practice and just install it…and use it…chances are you will not
read enough of the documentation to prevent you from having some “user
induced” problems that you might wanna get rid of in a week anyway…

NOTE: you can lessen the chance that you kill your system by doing
some reading here, before beginning:

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/information-new-users/

and, especially notice and read the stickies (for the version you are
installing) in
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/information-new-users/new-user-how-faq-read-only/

I like to have everything as up to date as possible, but will there be
enough supported software available in the first few weeks that 11.3
is out?

well, there will be THOUSANDS of software packages available in the
default openSUSE repositories the day it is released…

and, be kinda careful with that “I like to have everything as up to
date as possible” because that is a two edged sword…the more up to
date you are the more likely you will discover bugs that no one else
has seen before…or introduce incompatibility and instability into
your system…

besides, with thousands of programs all being worked on by thousands
and thousands or independent programmers/groups it is impossible to
have everything up to date all the time…i mean, new software WILL
come out while you are asleep…will you devote your life to always
having the latest of everything installed on your machine?

-=welcome=- my best advice is: when you first load it do NOT make it
your first duty to make it LOOK or behave like what you are coming
from (whatever that is) instead take some days just figuring out how
to do stuff in maybe a different, maybe better way…

and, whatever you do…do NOT rush out to install any AV…waste of
time, today…

oh: you might notice i’m running openSUSE 10.3, i do so because it is
stable, predictable, reliable, safe (with no AV and no security
updates for eight months) and FASTer than i actually need…

awesome-guy · July 6, 2010, 1:16pm

Thanks everybody for the responses. I apparently jumped to the wrong conclusions when I couldn’t find my swap partition.

I’m still having some problems with booting with GRUB however. Now everytime I have to use Unetbootin from USB to get the system booted, because there is something wrong with GRUB, but I think I can figure this one out by myself.

Anyway, thanks again for the reactions, it feels like a warm welcome to the world of linux

DenverD · July 6, 2010, 3:10pm

awesome-guy wrote:
> but I think I can figure this one out by myself.

if you get hung up ask back, but before you do, please do this in a
terminal and copy/paste the output:


sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

that command will require you to provide the root password, please do so…

or better than asking: use this google search to browse other threads
with that cat in it, and you will probably find a ton of hints:
http://tinyurl.com/387nc25

awesome-guy · July 6, 2010, 4:24pm

Seems harder to figure out than I thought…

When booting I get the following message: (hd1,1)/boot/message: file not found

sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst gives:

openSUSE:~ # sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Jul  6 15:51:31 CEST 2010
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd1,1)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.12-0.2
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-FUJITSU_MHZ2320BJ_G2_K82BT9525UDD-part2 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-FUJITSU_MHZ2320BJ_G2_K82BT9525UDD-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.12-0.2
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-FUJITSU_MHZ2320BJ_G2_K82BT9525UDD-part2 showopts apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop

I think the system should boot from root, which is sda2, so I guess thats hd(0,1), but I’m not sure. Any ideas how to fix this? I now have to boot with the Unetbootin USB, because I can’t boot from live cd either because for some reason I can’t boot anything with my SATA dvd drive. Very tiring.

hcvv · July 6, 2010, 4:42pm

How did you get this? Direct from the install??

Yes, imho for both entries you should change (hd0,0) to (hd0,1)
And in the gfxmenu it also shoul be (hd0,1)

But how did you get that wrong??

hcvv · July 6, 2010, 4:44pm

And when you are trying to learn and understand a bit mmore this primer may be usefull: SDB:Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points - openSUSE

dvhenry · July 6, 2010, 4:46pm

Showing all output requested is also useful, it is not requested without reason.

awesome-guy · July 6, 2010, 6:00pm

I don’t know why it was wrong. It was all very confusing because I had 3 problems at the same time. I couldn’t boot from dvd, I was confused about the swap partition and I had this GRUB problem. But I’ve been playing around for a bit, changing stuff to (hd0,1), and now for the first time I also get a gfx menu instead of text menu, so I guess I fixed it Thanks for the help!

hcvv · July 6, 2010, 9:23pm

You are welcome. And enjoy openSUSE.