SuSE just won't boot. Hangs.
 

I am NOT a newbie. I spent half the day trying to install 9.3 (openSUSE). The install went fine (twice!) But no matter what I do the damn thing hangs at:

ATA dev0 ATAPI, max udma/33

I get the pretty green grub boot screen with the choices... and nothing will boot... not 9.3, not failsafe.

I've tried ide=nodma and acpi=off but it just hangs there. I've got Kanotix (Debian flavor) on one partition and Mepis on another and both are fine. But SuSE is DOA!! Anyone have any suggestions? As I said the install went fine... and is very impressive compared to other distros.

My hardware is about a year old... two SATA drives, Intel 810 mobo with built in video and sound. 1 GB of RAM.

I'd really like to NOT give up on this so if anyone has an idea, please let me know.

Thanks,

Al

and if you do run failsafe what will it say. See where it hangs on failsafe. Otherwise try repairing the installed system, in some cases it helped. How it's done? Well, let's see...
Insert DVD
Reboot and start installatiion
Select Repair installed system and choose either manual or automatic repair

The install is beautiful. No problems. At boot I get the pretty grub
green screen, I make the choice, and it hangs at 'hardware detection'.
Hitting ESC I can see the last line is:
ATA2: dev 0 ATAPI, max udma/33

I've tried 'repair', re-install, memory test, failsafe.... nothing. It's
using a 2.6.11-4 kernel.

I've tried ide=nodma as well as some assorted apcpi and apic parms in
grub. No dice!

Kanotix and Mepis boot just fine. I guess I'll stick with debian based
distros unless someone has a suggestion.

They made SuSE 9.3 FREE so I guess I can't complain too much.... but had
I paid for this I'd be yelling very loudly!!

I'd like to get this fixed, but am at a loss. I could understand if other distros would not OR if the install went badly but YaST looked great on the screen and I was really impresssed.

I hope someone has an idea. I'm all out of them. Tried everything I know.

Al

Did you install SuSE on SATA or ATA. If on SATA then it's a bugger. Try installing on ATA. On 9.2 installing on SATA drives with some SATA Controllers didn't work at all. 9.2=>9.3 not a big difference

I've got two SATA drives.... about 2 years old now. Slackware 9.1 installed on them, as do Mepis and Kanotix (another Debian flavor.) You're saying that SuSE can't install on SATA drives after all this time... with a 2.6 kernel? Hmmmm. If so, I wish I had known before I spent the time.

Al

What I said was that SOME SATA Controllers are not supported. Most likely one of your drives is sitting on that baby...
;)

Silicon Image SATA Controller is not supported, for instance. That's the reason on my Desktop is Slackware

I hava a Seagate SATA - ST380013AS
It's about 2 years old now.
There HAS to be a way to get SuSE to see/boot this drive. The installer writes to it fine. I can see the partition from Debian. Looks good. So if I can write it in the installer there must be a way to get this damn thing to boot!!! :-)

Al

Seagate is Name of Drive. But what controlls it is called SATA Serial Controller. Well, Silicon Image is not supported for instance.

I did another install and still can't boot. Here is the boot.msg file.
http://pastebin.com/336827

Maybe someone can see something in there that might help. Otherwise I guess I'll give it up and wait for the next release of SuSE.

Al

I'm learning the ropes with Unix, I'm an NC State Engineering student, and I'm running SuSE 9.3. I don't know if this helps whatsoever, but on my machine, SuSE will hang on the ieee 1394 connection (for a digital camera) and I don't even have anything plugged in except my usb devices (my mouse, joystic, and configured printer). If I unplug the usb devices, minus the mouse, it will boot fine. Like I said, I don't know if it helps, but there's my two cents. I figure if my usb devices have anything to do with my 1394 port, maybe my problem could help you. :) Good luck!:scratch:

Well, I spent all day trying to get SuSE to work and it just won't. I've booted from within the install program, but never to X... even though I've changed xorg.conf a million and one times. No way can I boot directly to SuSE. It just hangs. There is obviously something about how they built the kernel that does not work well with my hardware. No big deal. The new 10.1 will be out soon and perhaps that will work. Until then I will stick with Kanotix (http://www.kanotix.com) which has been stable, fast, and a joy to use.

Thanks for the help folks. I really put in the time (a quiet Sunday) and it is just not to be I'm afraid.

Al

well, i have some bad news for you... suse has been buggy and just generally getting worse as an os since 8.2. i hate rpm based systems, but i was really surprised at the speed, hardware support, and ease of installation of suse 8.2. ( just for the record, i dont use suse and never will, it was for a friend that was looking for a distro that isnt for the "poweruser") he liked it and was able to get alot working on it. which was a surprise considering we just went down the list on distrowatch and downloaded about every distro there was trying to get what he wanted. suse seemed like the answer. but God delivered one hell of a storm later on the month and ruined his system. he said that since he liked that old version of suse ( cause this was only about 4 months ago, and 8.2 was older then) that he would get 9.2 (which was the newest at the time). he hated it from install. bunch of problems. couldnt get zip to work at all, no matter how much kernel work and package work and editing fstab or you name it i tired it nothing worked for that. if he booted with usb mouse plugged in, nothing would boot.( like someone said earlier) nothing but problems. i was talking to this girl upstate and she bought 9.3 and hates it. we tried to get the sound to work, and no go. i am pretty good at building kernel, and modules, and blacklisting certain modules that interfere, and her sound will not work with 9.3. i dont know that suse is doing, but seriously. so just stick with the debian based systems. also, just for info. my friend that had the problems with 9.2 now has VectorLinux. since i use slackware and it is a userfriendly (basically it has more gui) version of slack, i figured i could help him with anything he might need. now, it has done everything that he liked about suse 8.2, and everything that suse wouldnt do. and by the next night, he was capturing video from his digital video camera, and editing it with 2 different programs that were not previously installed. and then building dvds of them. he is very happy with it. just letting people know. some people like SlackerLX and myself, will like to use the command line, and some would like something like vector, that just works. jsut my 2 cents, well that was probably a whole nickle.

Regarding the SuSe Linux problem.
I would suggest getting a new installation CD/DVD. I think YaST does not check the integrity of the setup data.
I had some problems while installing SuSE 9.1 personal from a bad CD and it could not install the GRUB boot loader, but I think a good idea would be installing SuSE 10(never tried it but SuSE knows what they are doing :), though it's still in development stage ).
Hope it will solve your problem