setting up the hardware clock
 

Hello all,

I have opensuse 10.3

Everything has been working fine for several months, then out of the blue, something changed.

I woke up to see that the system was down.

When trying to start it, it goes to

"can't determine runlevel" and stalls

- OR -
if it gets past that point, it stops at

"setting up the hardware clock"

What steps can one take to solve the problem?

TIA

One possibility, the BIOS...

Have you opened your BIOS to see if the date/time setting corresponds to the correct time?

If it has markedly fallen behind the real time, you might look to change the battery for the CMOS.

This is easily done on a motherboard mounted in a cabinet, although somewhat more complicated on a laptop. Your motherboard manual or google will tell you more about how it is done.

Thanks for responding :)

I was able to use an installation CD for Opensuse Linux. It booted up and did not go into the error. In other words, it went to the installation screen for Opensuse.

When it did this, does it not mean that it got past the BIOS problem?

I was looking at the CD for something on it that could repair the OS.

In case you need it...

You can indeed try to repair the installation with the installation media. I would try with the DVD.

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/iso/

However, openSUSE 10.3 is getting old, and you might take the opportunity to install 11.0 or 11.1 in its place.

You might open a terminal and use the command "dmesg" and perhaps "lsmod" to see what 10.3 is doing as it boots. See also "man dmesg" and "man lsmod" for an explanation.

Was there any change in the system just before these booting deficiencies occurred?

Did you, by the way, open the BIOS Setup and look?

However, if the system boots without a problem, there should be nothing wrong with the BIOS and the POST process.

Could it be that you have a power failure and that was the reason why it was down ?
How old is the backup battery of the BIOS settings ?
Some when there items change the BIOS settings opensuse will stalls during boot.