Hi,

Basically, I have had nothing but trouble installing SUSE 10.1 on my laptop. I started off by downloading the DVD version and booting it up. As soon as I selected Installation from the menu, the blue screen came up, as it should, and the icon started spinning. Then, about 20 seconds later, it stopped - the laptop had frozen. Running the setup in text mode revealed that the installation was stopping at the ieee1394 detection. So, my first instinct, was to disable it in BIOS. This, I have discovered, is not possible. So, I ran the installation with the option "manual=1". This enabled me to only load the kernel modules that I wanted. At this point, I thought great, problem solved, I can live without firewire. And the installation completed and prompted for a restart. So this is what happened and sure enough, the GRUB bootloader appeared, and I selected SUSE Linux 10.1. This is when my latest problem started. Instead of SUSE booting up, it just freezes. The icon spins, again, for about 10-15 seconds, but then it stops and nothing happens. Running the boot option "splash=0" shows that the computer gets stuck at, not suprisingly, a firewire related component. It looks like it is stuck inside some kind of loop, as the same line of text appears over and over again. It's moving so quickly that I cannot read it all but it definitely has the word "ohci1394" (this is why I'm guessing it's firewire related). Booting up in failsafe mode results in the same behaviour also.

Has anybody got any ideas? Can I boot my system without loading the ohci1394 module? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Try installing PCLinuxOS. I put it on my Toshiba Satellite last week and it was a very easy installation. Everything worked right away. It was the easiest installation I've ever done.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/page.php?7
Get the Big Daddy version.

Are there any other suggestions apart from changing distribution? I chose SUSE due to it's strong community and good reputation. I would like as much as possible to stick with it! Please, someone must have a solution....

Don't get "married" to a distribution. You will probably try a dozen distributions over time. I think PCLinuxOS is better for a first experience than SuSE. I use SuSE. SuSE is okay but there are a lot of problems that everybody has with SuSE. You just have to read through this web site to see that. The fact that the installer won't work right away on your computer is a good indication that you should try another distribution.

Try installing with the Safe Settings (one of the install options). I think this will install without some of the nicer features (acpi, firewire, etc)

Running setup with the Safe settings doesn't make any difference. The hardware detection still starts and this is where it waits forever "Activating ieee1394 devices...".

Unfortunately, this happens sometimes with Linux since your laptop manufacturer (whoever that is) doesn't officially support Linux. You have problems installing SUSE but if you try a different distro as suggested above you might not have any problems.

Another solution (probably not one you'd like) is to buy another laptop on which others have already successfully installed SUSE. Maybe if you posted the model laptop you have and the 1394 chipset it uses, someone may have solved this problem already.

What is the make/model of your laptop? You may be able to avoid the problem by passing in the "nofirewire" boot parameter

Hi Guys!

Even if "getting married" to a distribution may not be a good idea, if you are new to linux it's good to choose a distribution with strong community and extensive support - like we here I think SUSE Linux is a perfect
Linux system to start with.

OK, again - support for ACPI under linux is not perfect. Very often a Linux
user have to tune it on his/her own. Try out the following boot parameters.
You should give them into Grub at the first boot screen, where you can
choose between different installation types:

ACPI Kernel Parameters
acpi=off
acpi=force
pci=noacpi
acpi=noirq
acpi_irq_balance
acpi_irq_nobalance
acpi_irq_pci=irq-number
acpi_irq_isa=irq-number
acpi=oldboot
acpi=ht

- If it's an older laptop, you can also put nolapic.
- If the problem consists really in FireWire device, put additionally
to grub "nofirewire"

Best Regards,
OOZIE

Just have to say I'm with oozi on this one. If our only answer to a problem is "try a diff. distro" we would all be using Windows.

Note also my advice is the same as well. Acpi CAN create lots of problems for certain laptops( manufacturers make it work for M$ not the standard). On a fresh laptop install i always do it with the ACPI=off option and test it later.

Give the options he stated a try and let us know. Oh, don't worry about the 'splash=0' just hit the esc button.

Another alternative to "nofirewire" could be "hwprobe=-ieee1394". This should disable hardware probing, but I am not sure if this renders the hardware unusable. It may well be that the hardware will work after the system has been updated.