Hi, I’m new to OpenSuse. I’ve had a FreeBSD server a few years ago though.
I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600. Now I can’t get the liveCD kernel to boot. I get the first boot menu, but the only thing that works is the Memtest option. If I choose anything else, it will “load kernel” very smoothly to 100%. After that: blank screen with a blinking cursor.
In the HCL someone successfully tested this with model with 10.2 and 10.3. I have the 11.2 live CD burned at slow speed. I would expect to see at least some copyright message or anything at all when booting the kernel.
I’ve tried the CD in another computer (desktop, Core2) and it will load everything just fine.
I’ve tried the failsafe and other ‘safe’ options, no difference.
I’m a bit lost here, what could cause it to fail booting at such an early stage ?
This laptop has 384MB of RAM and a Trident 16MB graphics card.
I’m using it every day, with WinXP so far.
Note that openSUSE-11.2 is a bit different in that in 11.2 it is not necessary to have an xorg.conf for some hardware, while in 10.2 and 10.3 it was necessary. There is a likely probability that xorg was unsuccessful in configuring for your card automatically.
I think yes and no. I think the liveDVD would start ok (because it uses the fbdev driver for installations) but upon the 1st reboot you would have the EXACT same problem.
Now for the liveCD, I recommend you reboot to it, and when the first boot/splash menu appears, where you can chose to boot from the hard drive, or a normal boot from the live CD, or the media check, or the fail safe settings boot, press F3 and select a text boot. Then do a regular boot.
This will boot you to a full screen text mode (referred to as run level 3). Login as user “linux” (no quotes) and press <enter> as the password. Then type “su” (no quotes) and press <enter> as the password to get root permissions. Then try the one of these three drivers: trident, vesa, fbdev. I am guessing at trident, as I am not in front of a Linux PC so I can not test this. It actually might be “ati” instead of “trident”. I need to be at a Linux PC to check.
So to try the trident driver type (with root permissions):
sax2 -r -m 0=trident
note that is “zero equals trident”, and if that appears to have worked, exit sax2, and type “exit” to get rid of root permissions, and then as a regular user (called “linux” in this case) type “startx” to test X window.
If the trident driver (which I am guessing at) did not work, then try the VESA driver by typing (with root permissions):
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
note that is “zero equals vesa” and if that appears to have worked, exit sax2 and type “exit” to get rid of root permissions, and then as a regular user (called “linux” in this case) type “startx” to test X window.
If the trident driver (which I am guessing at) and the VESA driver did not work, then try the FBDEV driver by typing (with root permissions):
sax2 -r -m 0=fbdev
note that is “zero equals fbdev” and if that appears to have worked, exit sax2 and type “exit” to get rid of root permissions, and then as a regular user (called “linux” in this case) type “startx” to test X window.
Hi, I feel a bit embarrassed to write to you again. First of all, thank you for the lengthy reply. The problem was me being too impatient :shame:
After selecting text mode in the boot menu, it takes well over 5 minutes (yes) of total nothingness, then the CD drive spins up again and I see some “Kiwi” message appearing. Actually I only noticed while writing a long post back to you that nothing was happening
I got curious and, yes, this is the same when rebooting and selecting a graphics mode. It takes a very long time again of just a blinking cursor, then the Suse load screen is appearing. Obviously the modest P3 needs a lot of time to calculate something. Until now the system otherwise doesn’t appear slow at all.
I must have been misled because I expected some plain text to appear when the kernel booted. Thanks again.
P3 700 MHz.
BIOS says 384MB
free -m says 371MB
I think the difference is video RAM.
Initially I had a small issue with getting the screen out of 800x600, but after playing with SaX2, other resolutions were showing up and working in Gnome as well.
Everything works fine now, including wireless networking and TCP/IP printing. Amazing.