Trouble booting 12.1

English Install/Boot/Login
1

This is a follow up to an earlier partial report

I “upgraded” my X86_64 11.4 system to 12.1 using zypper. Initially it took half a day fighting to get it live, but I did not take notes as to how I did it. Term being over I thought i would investigate.

Initially reboot just crashed out to rescue login

The main thing I could see as that it had barfed mounting three remote (NFS) filing systems, and is also said
md-service control process exited status=3
I commented out the nfs mounts in /etc/fstab and tried ^D. Failed so did a reboot. This gave a green(?) screen which as impervious to ESC (as I am used to use). Stayed with a green screen, but C-A-F2 gave a command console. (no F7 screen and F1 stuck on green)

Checked had a network with ping. Reinstated the nfs files and did mount -a. This seemed to start rpc.statd but after a long time managed to mount one of the three.

Tried “init 5” which logged me out of all terminals.

Removed NFS and rebooted. This time got a plain console (and a clock 1 hr fast!). Ping very slow to local net (1000ms/packet). Tried to start xdm with no success.

Poked around in logs and saw a note about disabling KMS – I thought the machine had an Intel graphics card but seems it is Radeon. So at last I thought i was getting somewhere

But NO. Booting with nomodeset on the boot line gave the same hung system.

Eventually got it alive with the unlikely options nomodeset nomodeset (yes twice)
That gave something but them mounted the nfs disks (eventually), but I still cannot log in as me, only root. Discovered that although my home directory was mounted, I could not access it – cd to it just hung. So I can log on as root, but no access to our network files.

SO two questions;

  1. How do I boot the machine so I can use it?
  2. How do I stop this happening again?

==John ff

This is from my notes as I could not get machine-readable access to logs etc

2

Can we assume you made a backup of important files. If not, do so now.

A live CD will / should give you access to the file system.
You could also use it to chroot to the installed system.

3

Naturally all important files are backed up multiply. The problem is thjois is my main desktop/compute machine at university.

The other question I meant to ask is can I revert to 11.4 which worked!

4

On 12/20/2011 08:56 PM, jpffitch wrote:
> 1) How do I boot the machine so I can use it?

no idea how to repair what you have…it kinda depends on why/how it got
messed up…

> 2) How do I stop this happening again?

you say you “upgraded my X86_64 11.4 system to 12.1 using zypper” but i
wonder which of these supported, recomended and documented methods did
you use http://tinyurl.com/35p966c or http://tinyurl.com/6kvoflv...if
you didn’t follow one of those step by step, then i suggest you could
try that next time and see how it goes…

–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat http://tinyurl.com/DD-Hardware
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Software
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

5

On 2011-12-20 20:56, jpffitch wrote:
> SO two questions;

You could try booting with systemV. F5 at boot.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

6

The other question I meant to ask is can I revert to 11.4 which worked!

Only if you can actually edit the repos back to 11.4
Have you tried a level 3 boot?
And run yast?

Otherwise you’d have to use a live CD and chroot to the installed system. I don’t have time to explain that now. I have to sleep.

12.1 would probably work if it was a fresh install

7

This “F5 System V” selection at boot, is the most important thing at present on re-loading, upgrading or a fresh install on older machines.