Testing my appliance remains unbootable.

I don’t think the first thing I’m supposed to see when testing my build is penguins dancing around, but that’s what I get. Strange thing is that the About dialog of this penguin atrocity has a web link that does not resolve, and a directory to a /boot/message file, promising that it can stop this penguin madness, yet when I cd terminal into /boot and then ls terminal it to show its contents after nano said it doesn’t exist since I tried to edit it like it taunted me to, there is neither a “message” directory nor a message file to begin with. I posted a link to some screenshots. The one with the green progress bar shows the GUI screen which is practically a dead end, it doesn’t do anything after that. I’ve used up my whole hour allotted for testing the appliance in one instance, thinking it would eventually load my desktop on its own, but it never went past showing a green bar across the bottom of the screen after it filled up. So another time I tried startx (there’s a screenshot of the output), and another instance I even tried sudo gdm, but there’s no point in posting a screenshot of that because it only made a black screen forever. I also include the “system menu” screenshot which is executed after I press the Alt-F1 button on the side of the testing window. Please, help me. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzygWR1ZgugnSjduV0czdkR2aWc&usp=sharing

Edit: Oh yeah, and I tried to post this report in SuseStudio.com/forum, but no matter how many times I tried to register on the site, the code image would never work. I tried to enter the alphanumeric code in the picture tens of time, and it never accepted it, even though the characters in the images were not hard to recognize. I already signed up to susestudio.org earlier in the day with success (obviously), so I’m using this thread to file my report instead.

I made some progress, but I think installation remains impossible. I started a new appliance from scratch to make sure I did not remove any important packages that come bundled with a new GNOME appliance while adding the packages I wanted. This action gave me the appearance of the boot selection screen that I my configuration said it should look like, removing the appearance of the dancing penguins, yet the green status bar would still appear and freeze after it fills up. I fixed this part by building the disk image format instead of the live cd/dvd, so the green bar is a bug that seems to be isolated to particular builds. Once I test drove a disk image build, the correct personalization I configured finally showed up for the boot screen as it did for the boot selection screen I fixed with necessary software. Here is the tricky thing. I have been able to test drive my disk image build successfully, but only by using a trick which only works in SuseStudio, leaving my hopes to install my appliance on my computer thwarted. The thing about it that only works in SuseStudio, only in the disk image build format, and only once the logo is brightened all the way, if I press the Cntrl-Alt-Delete button twice very quickly, then it would restart and quickly advance into my desktop login screen (or when I set it to log in the user automatically, to the desktop), and I could test out my appliance then. This bug seems to be bigger than I thought. I hope it is fixed soon, so that I can install my appliance and use OpenSuse because I think that if I try to install it as is then when I’m supposed to press Control Alt Delete on my keyboard, it might start a full reboot on my machine and then freeze at the logo again. Should I try to install the disk image format? I’ve installed Linux distributions with ISO and Preload formats, but the SuseStudio’s instructions on how to use a USB drive to install the disk image format seem complicated, but I will try it if you want. Here are more screenshots of the progress I’ve made, https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzygWR1ZgugnRnM5bXNrT3hxV3c&usp=sharing

The “dancing penguins” is an openSUSE thing for December. It’s harmless
and can be disabled if you want. See:

http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Animated_penguin_GRUB_splash_screen

for details.

What version of openSUSE are you using to build the appliance, what
platform is the appliance, and what specific packages are you selecting
during the installation?

Jim


Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner

Ah, I see. So, if I wanted to change the dancing penguins setting, would it affect future appliance tests statefully? I will keep this in mind if it ever shows up again. Thank you.

I am using the 64-bit, openSUSE 13.1 for the GNOME desktop, and the packages I’m selecting are (the ones marked with an asterisk come automatically after selecting the version and architecture): abiword, *dbus-1-x11, dpkg, *glibc-locale (I’m noticing there are two of these exact same packages selected one after the other), gnome-backgrounds, gnome-calculator, gnome-photos, gnome-screenshot, gnome-software, gnome-system-monitor, *gnome-terminal, gpa, *grub2, *gtk2-branding-openSUSE, *gtk3-branding-openSUSE, *gvfs-backends, gwget, *icewm, imagewriter, inkscape, *iputils, *kernel-default, kernel-grsec, *less, *libgnomesu, MozillaFirefox, nano, pax-utils, *plymouth, pullin-flash-player, *SuSEfirewall2 (sic), sushi, *syslog-ng, *tomboy, *vim, *x11-tools, *xf-86-video-modesetting, *xorg-x11, *xorg-x11-driver-input, *xorg-x11-driver-video, *xorg-x11-fonts, *xorg-x11-server, *yast2, *yast2-branding-openSUSE, *yast2-control-center-gnome, *yast2-firstboot, *yast2-theme-openSUSE, *yast2-x11, *zypper. Just in case you need them, the patterns I’m selecting are: base, devel_rpm_build, gnome, gnome_basis, x11; and the repositories I have selected are openSUSE 13.1 Updates, openSUSE 13.1 OSS, dsterba_13.1, and my own respository which suse studio automatically adds, despite having 0 packages and 0 patterns in it.

On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:36:01 +0000, maiar wrote:

> Ah, I see. So, if I wanted to change the dancing penguins setting, would
> it affect future appliance tests statefully? I will keep this in mind if
> it ever shows up again.

Only if you export the setting from the test drive and import it into the
configuration for future builds. :slight_smile:

I’ll have a look at the list you posted a bit later - in the middle of a
project (just waiting for a download to finish) at work, so not a lot of
time at the moment.

Jim


Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner

On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:56:27 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:

> I’ll have a look at the list you posted a bit later - in the middle of a
> project (just waiting for a download to finish) at work, so not a lot of
> time at the moment.

I’ve just built an appliance with the settings you used, and actually,
hitting escape during boot, I see it hanging after “LVM: Activation
generator ssuccessfully completed.” shows twice. If you hit esc, do you
see the same thing?

Jim

Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner

On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 01:10:20 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:56:27 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> I’ll have a look at the list you posted a bit later - in the middle of
>> a project (just waiting for a download to finish) at work, so not a lot
>> of time at the moment.
>
> I’ve just built an appliance with the settings you used, and actually,
> hitting escape during boot, I see it hanging after “LVM: Activation
> generator ssuccessfully completed.” shows twice. If you hit esc, do you
> see the same thing?

I did a little more fiddling around with it, and did get into the GUI by
enabling networking, connecting via ssh, and then running:

init 3
init 5

That got me a GUI in test drive, but it’s odd that it didn’t do that the
first time.

I wonder if you can reproduce that.

Jim


Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner

I will have to try another day, for SuseStudio is under maintenance in the server I’m trying to connect to at the moment. I then Googled how to ssh into SuseStudio because I unfortunately have never ssh’ed into anything yet despite a few years of Linux user experience, and it came up with instructions on SuseStudio which (again) is under maintenance. I will have to test the escape during boot and ssh, init 3, init 5 later. Sorry for the delay. When I get the chance, did you press escape first thing, during the boot selection screen, loading screen, or boot screen (the names of the screenshots in the second link I posted give these frames of reference)? If I do get ssh to reproduce the GUI like you did, is ssh possible during live installation on a real machine in order for me to actually use this appliance?

On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 08:36:01 +0000, maiar wrote:

> I will have to try another day, for SuseStudio is under maintenance in
> the server I’m trying to connect to at the moment.

No problem. :slight_smile:

> I then Googled how to
> ssh into SuseStudio because I unfortunately have never ssh’ed into
> anything yet despite a few years of Linux user experience, and it came
> up with instructions on SuseStudio which (again) is under maintenance.

When you enable networking in Test Drive, the page gives you the command
to enter. Just copy and paste. :slight_smile:

> I
> will have to test the escape during boot and ssh, init 3, init 5 later.
> Sorry for the delay. When I get the chance, did you press escape first
> thing, during the boot selection screen, loading screen, or boot screen
> (the names of the screenshots in the second link I posted give these
> frames of reference)? If I do get ssh to reproduce the GUI like you did,
> is ssh possible during live installation on a real machine in order for
> me to actually use this appliance?

The ssh option here is specific to SUSE Studio test drive - it lets you
get into the machine before its network is enabled.

I got past the grub2 menu, so pressed escape after the image came up
indicating the system was booting - as on a real system, so I could see
where the boot process was hanging up.

Jim


Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner