Greetings to all.
About 3 weeks ago I started experimenting with linux mainly because its fame of being "very stable". I was feed up with windows BSOD (blue screen of death) I started using Ubuntu 8.04 and was quite happy with it. I decided to give it a try to SUSE 10.3 and tried to do a dual boot system with Ubuntu. Long story short I messed up and ended with only SUSE being bootable (I was being help with this at another thread but did not finish the dual installation because of what I am about to explain). Suse was working OK until 3 day ago I was burning a data cd with k3b. The program froze and there was no way for me to end it. I tried closing the program using the x in the window , i tried going to the console , and to the root ( even thought I know NOTHING about this)I wrote end , terminate, stop, shutdown k3b and nothing happened. I was trying to find the linux equivalent of ALT + CRTL + DEL to close the program but did not find it. I tried to shut down and tried to restart but a small window appeared on the left superior corner saying something like " k3b stopped the process". My last resource was to use the power button to shutdown the pc.
Another problem I experimented was that a program being downloaded that was supposed to be save on the desktop was not. A small Konqueror dialogue box appeared saying there was not enough space that if I wanted to free some space I marked yes and then the same message appeared over and over again ( this was very strange for me because I have only SUSE on the pc I do not know how I ran out of space at the HOME FOLDER or desktop).
The third and most mysterious one was when I tried to use th pc and the system started as usual and the THE GSOD (YES THE GREEN SCREEN OF DEATH) appeared saying "COULD NOT START KSM SERVER CHECK YOUR INSTALLATION" I restarted the pc about 4 or 5 times and the same message kept appearing Not being able to boot and pissed by so many obstacles I decided to reinstall SUSE . Now those problems are gone...but this morning I used k3b to erase a disk I went to do some chores around the house and when I went back to the pc it was still "erasing" the disc. When I tried to close the program the same thing happened .I was not able to close it no matter what I did.Also none of the 2 SUSE installation that I have done turn the pc off when you mark "SHUTDOWN" The green screen with the progress line on the lower right appear , the line fills up white then becomes transparent and thats it, the pc does not shut down. Your thoughts and ideas regarding this matter will be appreciated. No system is perfect and being a free system linux is great but can be a quite challenging experience for a newbie (I can swear that). I just want to know how to deal with this problem because it seems they are starting again judging for the problem with k3b. THAN YOU

Well, that was a lot of stuff to resolve, but just quickly, when an application like k3b freezes, just open a console, and type in 'xkill' (without the apostrophies). Xkill will tell you to click on the application, and the application will kill itself immediately.

Since you're using openSuse, I'm assuming your boot loader is grub. To recover the Ubuntu partition, open an editor such as kate as root. Goto the /boot directory. Go into the grub directory. In there open the file menu.lst. All of your boot loading data is in there. You'll have to know your hard disk assignments before you do any editing. Open the file /etc/fstab. In there will be the listing of all your partitions and drives with their assigned names. Some might be hdax, or sdax, where x is a number. Then when you look at menu.lst, the menu data will make sense.

For now, let's start there; and I'm sure many more will post with more help, and probably some shortcuts that I am unaware of.

Good luck.

So you start with installing Ubuntu after that you install Suse
How did you install suse and reinstall suse ?
This question is only to try explain the message that you,re running out of space.
With web browser do you use Firefox or konqeuror ?

all the best

Thank you for your answers. First the message about not having space appeared before I re-installed suse. Well, being a newbie the only thing that came to my mind was to reinsert the suse cd reboot and ask for the system to install the OS. No , I did not erase the disc first so I assume that I am having a lot of wasted space. I used first FIREFOX I do not like Konqueror that much

1. A shortkey for xkill = CTRL+ALT+Esc
1.1. It's default but you can change it in KDE
2. About ALT+CTRL+DEL
2.1. A similar task can done in KDE with pressing CTRL+Esc or execute "ksysguard" in a konsole or Pressing ALT+F2 and type "ksysguard" and pressing Enter.
2.2. Because of OpenSUSE 10.3 : typing that command will give you a more detailed Screen with more default options
2.3. But, if you login as a regular User, you can't kill any process from here.
2.4. You should open a Terminal Emulator, execute "su" command, enter Root password, and try "ksysguard" for a full access, for example killing a program.
2.5. If you know the name of the program that you executed; or at least part of it, you can do following process:
2.5.0. suppose you want to kill "k3b"
2.5.1. As a root, execute : ps aux | grep k3b
2.5.1. you'll get an output similar to this:
userx 4444 ... 3:20 k3b ...
root 5462 ... 0:00 grep k3b
2.5.2. "4444" is just and example. In fact you'll receive a different number.
2.5.3. Execute : "kill 4444"
2.5.4. It it doesn't work try : "kill -9 4444" or "kill -SIGKILL 4444"
2.5.5. k3b will kill.

mehrshad moslehi ---- vigol ---- vigolyas
www.vigol.com - mehrshadmoslehi@yahoo.com

Do you get answer about Loader/Grub/Boot in others forums -- as I saw your Post --?? or wanna more?

mehrshad moslehi ---- vigol ---- vigolyas
www.vigol.com - mehrshadmoslehi@yahoo.com

I saw some post in the other thread about the double install I have to check them. I started this so if the same problems happens again I can know how to procede. Now thanks to all of you part of my questions has been answered for which I am very thankful.

If do not tell suse to install and using the hole disk most likely Ubuntu is still there.
Even if you decide to install suse 11 and not tell suse to erase suse 10.3 she leafs suse 10.3 untouched
TO decide where suse should install and how many space to use ,use the expert mode


all the best

Can anyone guess about the reason why Suse does not shutdown my pc completly?

Well, don't know the exact reason, but here's the fix:

Open a console and sux in as root.

sux <enter>
root password <enter>

type 'kate'

Goto /boot/grub/menu.lst and open the file.

Add acpi=force in the configuration lines that are in the selection you use to boot Suse. Save; close kate; close the console; and reboot. After the reboot your computer should turn all the way off.

For a newbie to linux dealing with so many things concerning changing programs is not easy. After beating my head against my glass desk ( I almost broke it ) I was able to get here
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Mon Jun 2 00:09:12 BST 2008
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,6)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_HTC426020G5CE00_L6VP1U-part7 vga=0x317 resume=/dev/sda5 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_HTC426020G5CE00_L6VP1U-part7 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=force noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default
where I read acpi=off I changed it to force. I shutdown the pc and turned it on once more but still the pc does not shut off by itself the green screen stays until you press the on/off button. Did I do something wrong?. I must say that the problem happens only if I want to turn off the pc. If I have to reboot the pc goes all the way without problems it turn off and reboot, but once I am done and want to finish the pc does not turn off

Did you manage to solve the problem about shutting down suse ?
If not try to start up in failsafe mode , use startx to start the x server, log out again , if the shutdown script of kde is damage or not working it should come up with error message.
Shutdown the system with the command shutdown now
There should also be shutdown log see if there are error messages in it

all the best