Suse 10.0 not launching kdm GUI interface

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi all,

I could use some help from the experts on getting my system back running. I went on vacation and when I came back my windows xp Suse 10.0 dual boot machine was having problem. I know what you’re thinking - why am I running old stuff, well this computer is actually hooked up to a tool which has software that is from the 1990’s and can only really run in XP and Suse 10.0 in addition this computer is not connected to any networks it’s just sitting there for the sole purpose of running and operating this tool. The dual boot is needed for running a file conversion through the linux side, converted files are then ran through the software on the XP side. The XP side of the partition is fine

I’ve read a few forums online regarding issues with this so I’ve attempted to run a few commands in the TTY but haven’t really gotten anywhere.

Here are hopefully some relevant details about the problem I’m experiencing and some info I’ve tried to look at to correct it. I’m not sure if this is a graphics card issue or just some boot file got corrupted or changed.

**FAILURE DESCRIPTION
**during boot up everything in the loading grub screen looks normal and says “done” until you reach the Cron daemon and then it throws a couple of messages that look like:

Starting Cron daemon/usr/sbin/Cron:        can't open or create /var/run/cron.pid I/O error 
startproc: exit status of parent of /usr/sbin/cron: 
Master Resource Control: runlevel 5 has been                     reached 
Failed services in runlevel 5: atd early kdb kdb resmgr acpid postfix cron

after that point it attempts to start the HAL daemon:

Starting HAL daemon
##############################
#acpi SYSTEM BUT ACPID NOT RUNNING     #
#start acpid first, then restart powersaved! #
###############################

This finished the grub boot attempt and leaves you in the tty - see below (sorry about the size of the image is there a way I can shrink it?)
https://theliberalengineer.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/20160913_154946_resized.jpg

**Related Info **

Some of the trouble shooting that I’ve done for this based on reading elsewhere about booting issues is below:
The chip type:

sax2 -p 
/usr/sbin/sax2: line 26: : unknown: integer expressions expected
/usr/sbin/sax2: line 26: : unknown: integer expressions expected
Chip: 0 is -> ATI Range 128 Ultra TF      01:00:0 0x1002 0x5446 AGP r128

I’ve hears some people say that the boot runlevel must be set to runlevel 5 so I checked the /boot/grub/menu.1st file and I think it’s setup for runlevel 5 but maybe I’m wrong here … looking at some other threads it looks like you can change run level by running init 5 … I didn’t try that yet.

This is from the /boot/grub/menu.1st file:

title SUSE LINUX 10.0
      root (hd0,5)
      kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 vga=normal_selinux=0 resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent showopts 
      initrd /boot/initrd

I also tried running the sax2 command to reset the xorg.conf file and then running startx - this is the result of that attempt:

sax2 -r o=versa
/usr/sbin/sax2: line 26: : unknown: integer expressions expected
/usr/sbin/sax2: line 26: : unknown: integer expressions expected
SaX: initializing  please wait ...
SaX: no X-server is running
SaX:will start own server if needed
SaX: startup

This lead to the following screens - and resulted in getting into a very broken user environment which is unresponsive:

https://theliberalengineer.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/20160915_105310_resized.jpg
selecting OK and not changing the configuration:

https://theliberalengineer.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/20160914_115315_resized.jpg

Does anyone have any ideas, I’m sorry I’m not a expert with linux but was hoping for some guidance here, let me know if there’s any other information I can get that would help with troubleshooting.

Thanks.

#2

there are 2 things to come to mind
#1 why on earth are you using such an old distribution SUSE 10 is ancient it’s 10+ years old and unsupported if that is a corporate machine get SUSE 12 if it’s your personal PC install openSUSE LEAP or 13.1 or 13.2 depending on your hardware as LEAP is x64 only, seeing that you have a 32bit OS I’d say go for 13.2 or 13.1 depending on your graphic card (I think you can get SLE 12 for free it’s the updates and support you pay for)
#2 this is the openSUSE forum for SUSE support go here
https://forums.suse.com/
why go there because nobody here has SUSE 10 installed and can’t help you.

ps. Sax2 has been depreciated a long time ago and this looks like a video driver issue on the suse forum tell them what hardware and what drivers you have.
edit, you can use the same account there you don’t have to register again

#3

See OP re ancient distro.

I’ll check the suss forums.

#4

There is at least another major problem on that machine: According to the visible messages the filesystem for /var is not accessible. I would try to fix that first, because any program which uses /var/lock for its lock files will fail due to that problem . Mightbe this fixes also the X11 GUI problem.
I would first look into /etc/fstab, which partition and which filesystem is used for /var and the look for error messages when trying to mount it manually.

#5

I might be in error I’m not sure when opensuse started using the opensuse instead of suse name, you might have the right forum but version 10 is 11 years old, there is one answer that you will get update
it looks like an amd driver issue but you won’t find a driver that old,
I’d say get the 13.2 live iso copy it (with dd or with rufus in dd mode (press alt+I to activate)) boot with the 13.2 live image save your data then install 13.2 from the live iso (it can be done) and update
there are 2 flavors of live images for an older machine I’d go with KDE (the first link)
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/iso/openSUSE-13.2-KDE-Live-i686.iso
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/iso/openSUSE-13.2-GNOME-Live-i686.iso

#6

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 17:06:01 +0000, mr4nders0n wrote:

> Starting Cron daemon/usr/sbin/Cron: can’t open or create
> /var/run/cron.pid I/O error

This message tells me that you’ve probably got a hard drive failure going
on.

You might try booting the system from media or a USB drive (if it
supports it) and use smartctl to check the drive’s status, assuming the
drive supports it.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#7

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:06:01 +0000, I A wrote:

> there are 2 things to come to mind #1 why on earth are you using such an
> old distribution SUSE 10 is ancient it’s 10+ years old and unsupported

He already said he recognizes that it’s an old version and explained why
he’s using it.

> if that is a corporate machine get SUSE 12 if it’s your personal PC
> install openSUSE LEAP or 13.1 or 13.2 depending on your hardware as LEAP
> is x64 only, seeing that you have a 32bit OS I’d say go for 13.2 or 13.1
> depending on your graphic card (I think you can get SLE 12 for free it’s
> the updates and support you pay for)
> #2 this is the openSUSE forum for SUSE support go here
> https://forums.suse.com/
> why go there because nobody here has SUSE 10 installed and can’t help
> you.
>
> ps. Sax2 has been depreciated a long time ago and this looks like a
> video driver issue on the suse forum tell them what hardware and what
> drivers you have.

SUSE 10 and SLES 10 are two different things. He’s in the appropriate
place; in any event, the I/O error would indicate this isn’t a video
issue but probably a dying hard drive. The video issue is probably
related to services failing to start as a result of the I/O errors
earlier in the system.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#8

@ I_A:

I think this is SUSE Linux 10.0, naming openSUSE was with the Release of openSUSE 10.2:
https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime

Kernel was also 2.6.13…

@ mr4nders0n:
Why not installing a supported Distribution?

hy am I running old stuff, well this computer is actually hooked up to a tool which has software that is from the 1990’s

And switching to another Hardware and Software?

#9

the OP said it’s a dual boot system with XP, if I remember correctly way back then SUSE defaulted to reiserfs, there are a few utilities that can access (read only) files on ext3 or reiserfs from windows so the OP can backup his files, if he didn’t change anything hardware or software related it could be a file system or a dying disk error, he should backup his files and try to fix the fs, the suse 10 install disk does have a text only mode repair mode he can load it and run fdisk (after backing up his files)
if the OP hasn’t kept the install disks finding SUSE 10 will be hard, I checked
ftp://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/
and I couldn’t find 10.0

if you can boot to windows you can get your files with Total Commander (shareware) or Double Commander (open source) and the Ext2fs+Reiser 1.6 plugin
http://www.ghisler.com/download.htm
https://sourceforge.net/projects/doublecmd/
http://totalcmd.net/plugring/ext2fsreiser.html

#10

What a blast from the past!

First, I think it should be useful if the exact os version can be identified, IIRC anything before 10.3 was considered somewhat unstable, 10.3 was the first version released with a solid reputation (and I started using OpenSuSE).

I dont’ know that enough information has been gathered to know exactly what the problem is although I remember then that file systems often needed to be repaired using fsck.

Note in the posted photo that something failed before what is displayed (the top of the screen). Is likely relevant and critical.

In any case, recommend making a livecd with fsck and smart utilities installed (or download and run any of a number of livecds that have been created specifically for repairing systems).

Run the smart utilities to see if your hard drive is reporting any errors.
Run fsck to easily fix the most common disk errors of that time.

And, before you do <anything> make a backup even of your broken system if you don’t already have working backups if you value what you have or face the possibility of corrupting the whole thing and can’t recover.

IMO,
TSU

#11

Just to close the loop on this - the solution we went with was to build a new linux box from an old PC with 13.2 64 bit, install completely new software from the vendor and then deal with the network communication between the three computers (Linux, XP, OS-9) all hooked up to the tool.

All’s well that ends well although being able to recover the original Suse 10.1 was unsuccessful. Whole ordeal took like 6 weeks to complete between building the new PC, the external software vendor, and getting the network setup. I love computer problems …