Ok, so my idea was to install openSUSE 11.0 on my SATA drive so I could get rid of my IDE with Vista on it... the plan was to remove the IDE and install linux, therefore I still have a working Vista if I ever need it but it is completely seperate from linux. This didn't work seeing as I forgot to remove the IDE before installation.. grrr..

So I was installing away and then the GRUB instal failed and I couldn't get it to work but I knew the openSUSE was already on there so all I needed was to boot from a livecd to install grub on the proper harddrive... so I did that after much mucking around and managed to boot linux up minus the IDE harddrive. It boots alright until it gets to around the kdm part where it comes up with a blue screen Yast which gets overrun with several errors/warnings, some of them about missing postfix files or something (kinda happens quick).

This all goes on and it gets to a text login prompt but my username and password are wrong so I can only login as root...

What I am wondering is how do I get out of this mess/figure out whats wrong?

To be clear I am on dial-up so another net install is clearly out of the question (I borrowed broadband from a friend to install this time), I am guessing there is a way to setup my network to use my other computer as a gateway for the dial-up and repair the appropriate files or whatever... I also want KDE 4.1 (I know it'll probably be a big overnight upgrade) so if its easier to get that before xdm gets sorted then I'll have at it.

I hope you guys can understand me; I spent all last night shifting files to clear the SATA and all this morning fighting the net install, then all afternoon resetting the IDE's mbr with Vista and then trying to install GRUB so I'm a bit frazzled to say the least... energy drinks FTW.

Thank you for reading that *phew*, and thanks for any suggestions.

To make it clearer I would like to know how to maybe save/access a log of the boot up so I can read the errors/warnings and find out what needs fixing, and also how to setup my network in text mode if need be (manual configuration).

Okay, so now that I've slowed down a bit I realise how stupd it was to ask without searching first; I found this: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ot-log-376970/
So I'm installing the ext2 drivers for Vista now and I'll see if I can access them to track down whats going on.

Looked at /var/log/boot.msg and all it says thats off is:
Skipped services in runlevel 5: earlyxdm irq_balancer xdm
Other than a few kdm unused lines...

I'll look at the yast2 log and try to find the syslog tomorrow.

Closed as requested.