Hi everyone. I’ve just installed Opensuse 12.3 and it seems to just hang there instead of rebooting after the first online update that happens as part of the installation process… I haven’t installed any optional packages or anything at all that . All I do is just chose CLI text mode for my desktop, input my IP settings and then just proceed with a completely vanilla installation. I run the first time update as part of the installation process which then causes the system to ask for a reboot. I choose yes to reboot and then it does absolutely nothing. It just has a blinking caret at the bottom of the screen. So naturally I have to switch the computer off without a proper shutdown. I noticed that when i switch it back on to finish the installation and the release notes are shown that there are many characters that look wrong. Like a little number 6 in a diamond. Is this because the system is not working properly because I couldn’t allow it to shutdown normally after what I assume imust have been a kernel update, or are those characters there because of an editing oversight? I’m assuming it’s because my installation is broken because of the failed shutdown. If so, how do I get Opensuse 12.3 to install with just the basics to start with, but avaoiding this problem with restarting? I assume the obvious answer of not doing the kernel update during installation will still leave everything else impropely installed/configued if I finish the installation and them try a reboot that will likely fail. I can’t really try anything just yet because it’s late and I need to get to bed. I just thought I’d ask for help in the hope someone might post something helpful overnight (well night time for me anyway) so that I can get it fixed and return my wife’s DVD drive to her in the morning befor she gets angry with me. 
It is common to have video issues, depending on the hardware used. Too old or really new can have the same effect. ON one PC with an nVIDIA 9500, I had to complete the installation using the text mode install. I also promptly upgraded the kernel after the install was complete. One choice is to try and enter the kernel load option called “nomodeset” to see if it might help. Look here at my blog for how that would look: How to Start openSUSE 12.2 with Grub 2 into Run Level 3 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums
Thank You,
Thanks for the reply, but I managed to get it to work beore my wife butchered me for “breaking” her PC. For anyone else that might encounter the same thing I just chose not to do the online update as part of the install process and continued until the installation was complete. Then I just logged in as root and did
zypper patch
instead of updating via yast. After that the system rebooted normally. I assume zypper up or zypper update would have done exactly the same thing, but patch is what worked for me. Once I had let zypper update everything then I obviously used
reboot
and when the system came back up it was all smooth sailing from there. 
Thanks again.
That’s good news.
Please, could you tell us what graphic hardware you have on your PC ?
I’ll do it as soon as I get apache responding to requests. I’ll pipe the output of hwinfo --gfx to a text file and then chuck it in htdocs so I can copy and paste it’s contents here. I’ve just got to refresh my memory on which conf files need what edits.
actually, I would prefer the 2 or 3 lines you get from sending the command:
/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A2
Its much more succinct and easy to read than the ‘hwinfo --gfx’ imho.
Righto. I’m still trying to find out how to set up apache from a default .rpm install through yast, but I’m partially sighted and have a hopeless memory so I’m struggling to find which options in the config need changing to what, but I’m getting there slowly but surely.
/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A2
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS880 [Radeon HD 4290] [1002:9714]
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:8454]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
There you go. I hope it proves helpful. Just let me know if it turns out not to be particularly interesting and you need some other hardware info.
Thanks. I was hoping I could figure out what (if anything) in the on-line update fixed the problem, but I could not. I looked at the change history for the kernel update, Mesa, X, drm, and even grub2 but nothing stood out as to where the fix came from.
Still, if nothing else it is good to know that an online update helps with a Radeon HD 4290.
Having typed the above, I note a big report was raised (and fixed) on openSUSE wrt the HD4290
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=803520
which was noted as possibly related to:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=802359
with a fix here: Request 155803: Submit yast2-storage - openSUSE Build Service … and it makes me wonder if the PC in question has an EFI boot.
Anyway, no worries, as this was just my curiousity, and at least this works for you now.
Well if you want any more ino I’d be happy to provide it. Just tell me what commands to run and I’ll post their output here.