Unable to Install 11.3

English Install/Boot/Login
21

Using parted magic You need to delete the 30GB (sda5) ntfs partition
It will become free un-partitioned space
Highlight the free space and create New - logical - swap 2GB
(You have to adjust the slider to set the size)

Now highlight the remaining free space and create a New - logical - ext4 (it will be about 27-28GB)
No need to move the slider, it will automatically use all the remaining space, which is OK.
Apply

You might watch this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/create-partitions.mpeg
It will give you an idea
VLC should play it in windows, right click the link and save as

Once you have those partitions you can install SUSE. But you may need to point the installer to your ext4 partition. You do that by going the Custom partitioner route
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/11.2%20slideshow/pic8-default%20partition%20proposal.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/11.2%20slideshow/pic9-custom%20partitioons.png

Assign the ext4 as root / like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/11.2%20slideshow/pic15-root%20partition.png

swap will look after itself

22

WOW, thnx, will revert bac once i hav done all this. When you say partition magic, you mean again boot up PartMagic and then delete the 30GB???

23

caf4926 has given good advice.

I agree that sda5 appears to be the 30.3 GB drive. I note from your pix:

Device    Boot     Start     End     Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              1       5      48131   de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *          6    1918   15360000    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           1918   12435   84402852+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4          12426   38913  212768460    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5          12426   16395   31888993+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6          16396   38395  180875883+   7  HPFS/NTFS

and when I do the ‘mathematics’ only sda5 appears to be approximately 30GB.

Now the ‘trick’ (which is not so difficult once one is experienced) here is to convince openSUSE to install on /dev/sda5, which is what caf4926 is trying to help you set up.

If you have the time and equipment (camera/computer), I recommend that after you think you have completed the steps caf4926 recommends, but BEFORE you actually have the openSUSE installer write to your drive (and it will tell you before it actually starts writing) take another pix with your digital camera of what openSUSE intends to do, and post it here. Then you could get one last quality check from those of us on the forum, that the install indeed is to take place on sda5 and not on some other drive.

Also, note once you create the swap partition that caf4926 recommends, your Linux drive numbers for sda5 and sda6 will change.

Have you backed up sda6 (other files like moves, doc and others) ?

24

No i have not taken the back-up. i will take it up then.

25

It’s always a good idea to back up
Especially if you are inexperienced. Though my feeling is the sda6 partition should be OK, but good to be safe.

Please also note, I didn’t involve what we call a /home partition because of the constraints imposed by your partitioning.

26

I have completed the process as stated and here is the image

http://thumbnails37.imagebam.com/11158/ed3c9a111578700.jpg](ImageBam)

Should i go ahead and install OpenSUSE???

27

IMHO its safe to go ahead with the installation. Note the openSUSE installer will make a proprosal to you as to where it will install openSUSE. Pay CLOSE ATTENTION to that. Ensure it will go exactly where you want it. If unsure, take a picture of what it proposes and abort the install. That way nothing has yet been done.

28

This is the Final screenshot before clicking Install

http://thumbnails37.imagebam.com/11159/53b302111587239.jpg](ImageBam)

And on clicking Install this is the screen shot

http://thumbnails31.imagebam.com/11159/cca257111587916.jpg](ImageBam)

Is it safe to proceed???

29

That looks ok to me, assuming it is using the same naming structure you identified here:
http://thumbnails37.imagebam.com/11158/ed3c9a111578700.jpg](ImageBam)

ie in this case your Dell partition is /dev/sda1, and your Windows7 is /dev/sda2 (boot) and /dev/sda3 (programs/data) and your extra data is /dev/sda5 (inside the extended /dev/sda4).

Hence with those assumptions, it should be safe to proceed and install.

I note it is proposing to mark /dev/sda4 (the extended) as the active which will then after install is complete, likely point to the grub boot manager on /dev/sda7. To boot your MS-Windows you will have a choice of Windows1 and Windows2. My guess is Windows1 should boot Windows7, and Windows2 will not boot anything.

30

Looks OK to me too
Report back …

31

HI, if the second line in your images says “Use /dev/sda6 as swap” It should, and I think it does, then you are OK to go, the first line is clear and easy to read.

32

I just notice it has put 2 entries in grub to boot windows
Only one of them will work to boot the windows OS

Just FYI:

I think sda2 is a windows boot partition and sda3 is the windows OS

We can advise once you are up and running, if you post the contents /boot/grub/menu.lst
see this: Edit the Grub Menu to add Windows entries.

Don’t edit anything until you report back here

33

Successfully Installed OpenSUSE 11.3. Thanks a lot for all the help, especially, caf4926 and oldcpu. still have one prob. When i boot there are two boot option for Linux.

  1. Desktop – openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34-12
  2. Failsafe – openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34-12

when i select second option, things are great, but wen i m selectin the first option, the Suse screen comes and is simply stuck.

http://thumbnails35.imagebam.com/11162/ec5bcb111612236.jpg](ImageBam)

Also i do not know how to get the wireless connection to Linux. The wireless option is disabled.

http://thumbnails18.imagebam.com/11162/cbea78111613615.jpg](ImageBam)

Again thanx a lot for such a big help.

34

What graphics device do you have

Post result of this from a terminal

/sbin/lspci -nnk

35

In addition to providing the answer to caf4926’s request (ie provide output of: /sbin/lspci -nnk ) please also try booting the option-1 selection, but when the selection menu 1st appears, type ‘nomodeset’ such that ‘nomodeset’ appears in the options line (see image below as an example):

Does that allow your PC to boot with option-1?
http://thumbnails30.imagebam.com/11164/60422a111635665.jpg](ImageBam)

36

Did you have any success there ? If not, we really do need the output from the command in a konsole/terminal that caf4926 asked you provide, where the command for you to enter is:

/sbin/lspci -nnk

That should tell us enough about your wireless and graphic hardware that any further recommendations will be closer to being helpful.

37

?? any success here ??

38

This was the result for your command in terminal.

PART 1

PART 2

39

YES on adding ‘nomodeset’ the first option Boots properly

40

Ok thats good news. From what I read your laptop has an Integrated AMD RS880 graphics which a Ubuntu user with same laptop noted this (output from an ‘lspci’ command) :


01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M880G [Mobility Radeon HD 4200]

You could confirm that to be the case by running in a terminal ‘lspci’ .

In openSUSE-11.4, if one types:


man radeon

one will get a list of hardware that ‘should’ work with the radeon driver. If you type that you will note the entry:


RS880 Radeon HD 4100/4200/4290

which indicates both the Dell spec and Ubuntu article I quoted are consistent, and it is likely your PC has the AMD RS880 (and more specifically the Radeon HD4200 graphics) and it should work with the open source radeon graphic driver.

Now, there is a bug in openSUSE-11.4 that when one boots to the liveCD or PC after installation that the PC will not boot with the radeon driver (similar to what you noted), but instead one needs to use the boot code ‘nomodeset’ (also similar to what you noted). If one uses that boot code, one will boot instead to the ‘radeonhd’ graphic driver (which is no longer supported, but it is still included). If one types :


man radeonhd

there is no mention of support for the AMD RS880 (HD4200) graphics, so I think we are ‘lucky’ that ‘nomodeset’ boot code works on your PC.

What you could do is try to improve the graphics that you get when booting. As an interim, you could try to force the loading of the superior ‘radeon’ driver in a way works around the bug. You can do that by editing the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf such that it forces the loading of the ‘radeon’ graphic driver. Remove the comment ’ # ’ in front of the word ’ Driver “radeon” ’ in that file such that it looks like:


Section "Device"
  Identifier "Default Device"

  Driver "radeon"

  ## Required magic for radeon/radeonhd drivers; output name
  ## (here: "DVI-0") can be figured out via 'xrandr -q'
  #Option "monitor-DVI-0" "Default Monitor"

EndSection

You will need to use root permissions to make and save that edit.

Then restart your PC and again use the ‘nomodeset’ boot code in the options line (it is possible to make that permanent if you wish - just ask and we can explain how). And proceed to boot.

If your PC does NOT boot (with nomodeset boot code) after the change to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf file, you can likely force it to boot by using the boot code ‘x11failsafe’ (instead and/or in addition to ‘nomodeset’ ) which forces the loading of the very basic (but highly compatible) FBDEV graphic driver. And then restore the 50-device.conf file to the way it was before.

Good luck, and glad to read you had some success.