Suse 10.2 Multiboot Install Problems
 

My attempts to install Suse 10.2 RC1 on one of my hard drive's partitions (in this case /dev/hdb6) have not worked out. My first attempts to set up a KDE-based install resulted in a system which seems to recognize all of my hardware, but provides no GUI interface. I only get a text-only type install; like I'm running under init 3. Attempts to use 'startx' or 'sax2' fail. And my xorg.conf file is basically empty. This install attempt DID recognize my network adapter and did download system updates during the installation process.

My second attempt to set up a Gnome-based install also failed. During this effort (tried multiple times on a freshly formatted /dev/hdb6) the new installation failed to recognize or work with the network adapter card. So no updates could be or were downloaded as part of the installation process. And I still get no GUI.

Please note that I have a multi-boot configured system with two hard drives. It looks something like this:

Drive One:
1. /dev/hda1 -- A hidden Windows 95 FAT32 backup partition of the PC's original system as installed by HP.
2. /dev/hda2 -- My Windows XP boot partition. Known as "Drive C:"

Drive Two:
1. /dev/hdb1 -- A very small Linux boot partition.
2. /dev/hdb2 -- An 88 GB partition known to Windows as "Drive D:". It's where I keep all of my data. I have formatted it as a FAT32 partition so it can be more easily accessed by both XP and Linux.
3. /dev/hdb3 -- A 1 GB Linux swap partition.
4. /dev/hdb4 -- An extended partition which occupies the remainder of the hard drive (about 101 GBs).
5. /dev/hdb5 -- A logical Linux partition. It holds Fedora Core 6, which works very well.
6. /dev/hdb6 -- A logical Linux partition. The partition on which I have been trying to install Suse 10.2 without success.
7. /dev/hdb7 -- A logical Linux partition. Currently targeted as a candidate for Ubuntu.
8. /dev/hdb8 -- A logical Linux partition. Currently targeted as a candidate for Mandriva or backups of the systems loaded on the first three logical partitions.

My PC is an older 2.2 Ghz HP Pavilion 514n with 1 GB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 5200 graphics card.

Does anybody have any suggestions as to what I should do in order to successfully install Suse 10.2?

It looks like it should work to me.

Try this:
Deleate /dev/hdb6 and then re-create it as "ext3" and mount it as "/".

That should put it in there.

Umm, I did that. It did not solve the problem.

A "Gold" version of Suse 10.2 RC5 was supposed to be put out yesterday. I think I'll wait until sometime next week to download and install it.