Hi,

Installing Suse 9.0 Pro on a Toshiba Satelltie laptop 1805-S207

Dual boot with preexisiting WinXP home.

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During the install the screen when blank and would not respond - powered off/on - install continued but in Text mode.

So now I have a command line Suse install - good practice for my syntax but not as fun to play with.

Suse install said the text install was necessary because I had less than 64Meg of Ram.

In WinDozeXP I can see 240MGs - 256 minus some for the video card.

Sooo. . . whatsup? Why didn't SUSE install see my full memory?

Looking to go GUI,

-:>Kevin

PS:> Once installed I want to add MySQL and PHP for a little LAMP database design . . . anyone in here playing with those tools?

I reinstalled running YaST in the text-only mode.

I typed in the 'textmode=1' parameter at the boot screen.

FYI - I'm booting off of side A of the DVD.

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My theory was that -perhaps- the YaSt GUI/Slideshow was hoggin so much of the resources so that it erroneously though I had less than 64 Megs.

So I ran the text install - it installed w/o a GUI anyway.

Perhaps I misunderstoond the text install - I thought it meant YaSt ran in TextMode, which it did - but perhaps it also means the Linux GUIs are not installed either - i.e. Linux is installed in textmode/command line mode.

(Is there some X program, or desktop, I should try to launch from the command line?)

When I reinstalled I selected 'New Installation' so I'm thinking the first GUI-less install you not have influenced the second install to do the same.

BTW - I did not get the 'Less than 64Megs' message this time - of course because it wasn't trying to install the GUI.

- - - - -

I ran one pass of the SuSe memory test tool - from install boot menu.
It passed and it showed 240Megs!

So it still seems like the memory is getting filled up during the install process such that the system thinks I'm low when it comes time to check that.

I'll keep working and posting . . . . suggestions are appreciated.

-:>Kevin(Is there some X program, or desktop, I should try to launch from the command line?)

Thought I had it - but no, same thing.

Here is a link http://tinyurl.com/2xm3f - some computers can only see 64Megs of RAM at a time - it's a BIOS limitation.

The entered "linux mem=96M" in the boot prompt kernal parameter

I reinstalled again and typed it in the parameter box in the boot/install screen.

Darn! Still command line!

-:>Kevin

Well I'm having an interesting dialog with myself here . . . I'd hoped for more feedback from the Linux community.

Anyway I'll keep posting what I learn in case someone has similar problems and needs this info.

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SuSe repartitioned the hard drive for me - I used this feature rather than Partition Magic 8 - because I don't have a copy.

They asked that I first run CHKDSK/SCANDISK and then DEFRAG the whole drive - it was required. Then SuSE YaST repartitioned the drive.

I deleted a bunch of junk on the XP side before doing all this - I wanted to make enough room for Linux. The drive is 20Gigs and I got the XP side down to about 5 or 6 Gigs.

After repartitioning WinXP still worked great.

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Here's the thing. I was looking at my partition info. Linux only has ~450Megs and WinXP has the rest.

Maybe that <the lack of drive space> is stopping Linux from installing full - ie with GUI desktops.

Anyway I have a copy of Partition Magic 8 on order - when it gets here I'll resize the partitions so SuSE has tons of room. Then I'll reinstall SuSE.

-:>Kevin

I've had problems with SuSE's Partition feature. I've tried it on 3 computers, and had to resort to Partition Magic 8 each time. It can't repartition NTFS, and it doesn't do well with FAT32 either.

If it is only seeing 456 MB, that could explain why you are not getting a GUI interface. A minimal install of SuSE 9 is 500 MB, a basic install can run you 2 GB, so it looks like you need to wait for that copy of Partition Magic.

If you are at a command prompt, but the GUI is installed, typing "startx" will launch your default GUI (KDE in SuSE). However, you can only run 1 GUI at a time. If the command doesn't work, try hitting F7 to get out of the command prompt.

However, once you get your hard drive repartitioned, you should be able to install without a hitch. Good Luck.