SUSE / openSUSEThis Forum is for the discussion of Suse Linux.
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Dell Dimension 3000
P4 2.8 / 1G RAM / 2 x 80 G HD
Dual boot Win XP home (original installation) / Linux Suse 9.2 (from cover disk Linux Format magazine)
Initial install – fit 2nd brand new HD – boot windows – boot with DVD in place and accept the defaults to install suse. Works very well with the exception of BT Voyager 1040 WIFI card. (Can’t get wifi to work but can use good old copper as a back up in the meantime – another problem for another day) Has been happily working away for the past couple of months.
Suse looks for updates. On the latest update at the weekend, I accepted the recommendations and I believe the kernel was updated (not sure – I am very new to Linux and not much cop with any other actually)
At the end of this there was a comment about doing something (updating) the sbin/lilo. This was not done and the PC would then not boot. I still do not know what I have to do. I can find files etc but when I look at the contents / settings I do not really want to go changing anything as I do not have any real idea of what it is that I am changing and what the consequences could be.
I have tried recovering and reinstalling. This has gotten me to the point where it shall boot but when I try to restart it falls over. Error message has been different – one refers to an error in the kernel and the other is in the text check list on start up that goes along fine – then scrolls a screed of numbers very fast, then refers to a null pointer in 000 (forget how many 0’s)20. At this point it is a full stop, kick the plug out of the wall socket.
I tried the update for the kernel again but it would not do it.
This is my first foray into using Linux and I am impressed. I want to recover this PC to work with Linux. Please don’t send me back to Windows.
Something else that might be useful is a listing (ls -l) of the /boot directory - SuSE work using links in there to point to the kernel and initrd files so they need to be accurate.
Last night I had 7 attempts before successfully booting.
1st attempt error
Segmentation fault
System boot control: the system has been set up
system boot control: running /etc/init.d/boot.local
Segmentation fault - failed
2nd attempt
Kde light blue screen appeared with "X" for cursor - frozen no further activity.
3rd attempt
continuously scrolling text
[<c0------>] more text
all moving to fast to read
4th attempt
<1> unable to handle kernel null pointer dereference at virtual address 00000020
printing eip:
C011ad61
*pde =
5th attempt
Segmentation fault
master resource control: run level 5 has been reached
failed services in run level 5: network
skipped services in run level 5: nfs
6th attempt
<0> kernel panic - not syncing: attempting to kill init!
I am having difficulty getting at the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. I can locate it but I cannot access as it is locked to me as a user. When I tried to switch user and log in as root everything froze again.
on reboot I tried to copy the file to a USB flash memory stick. this resulted in the the following error when I tried to open konqueror
Opened kwrited listening on device /dev/pts/0
message from syslogd@601vd1J at ----
601vd1j kernel: flags: 0x20020068 mapping: f2585118 mapcount:0 count:1
601vd1j kernel: backtrace
601vd1j kernel:trying to fix it up, but reboot is needed
601vd1j kernel:bad page state at prep_new_page(in process 'syslogd'.page c16103a0)
Looking at YAST - bootloader configuration I appear to have lilo as the bootloader
I will try again to log in as root and copy the /grub/menu.lst but I think this is enough for one posting
I'm not an expert on these things (still a newbie myself to be honest), but the kernel module doesn't seem to be following SuSE's normal naming convention. I thought they changed the build version at the end (on SuSE 9.0 the kernel went 2.4.21-99 to 2.4.21.199 to 2.4.21.273 - on my install anyway) - yours seems to have an additional .13. Can you do an ls -l on the /usr/src directory and /lib/modules directory?
The PC is actually behaving itself reasonably well over the past few days, but I haven't changes anything so I suspect that the root of the problem still exists.
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