RE: [suse-autoinstall] How do you get SUSE's autoinstall mode to work, and how do you get useful error messages out?
I had a brand new GX270 that needed the BIOS updated before the graphics would do more than 640x480 8 bit color. Oh and it is so nice of Dell to make that have to run under DOS or windows only for the BIOS update. So, find a win98 bootable floppy and update your BIOS before wasting any more time. Todd -----Original Message----- From: volker_blum@web.de [mailto:volker_blum@web.de] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 3:12 AM To: suse-autoinstall@suse.com Subject: [suse-autoinstall] How do you get SUSE's autoinstall mode to work, and how do you get useful error messages out? Hi, I am trying to use SUSE 9.1 on a brand new Dell GX270 computer; short summary, there are all sorts of weird issues. Maybe someone here has seen anything like it? - I cannot get the graphical installation mode (autoinstall?) to work. I do get the (grub?) boot menu on the DVD all right. After choosing "installation" in any incarnation, the kernel is loaded all right (I suppose), but switching to X (?) appears to fail. Anyway, I get a blue screen with no text except for an "OK" request - only that none of the keys on the keyboard except the F1, F9, F10 and ESC keys work,, ah yes, and no mouse ... i.e. it is impossible to configure anything at all. - Space oddity - I did get the graphical installation mode exactly once, and never again (yes, there are only three switches to try in grub, on one and the same DVD and the same computer ... this is not reproducible). The graphics was dreadful, but it found the mouse and keyboard all right, and I could set up some things ... except then one partition (and only one ... hda6) could not be formatted (reiser) with no understandable error message. This leaves me somewhat stumped. (a) How could I get back to the graphical installation mode, which seemed to detect my (USB) Mouse and (PS/2) keyboard all right? (b) Once I get there - in what way could I get a useful error message out of the system so as to know what went wrong with formatting that one partition - is the disk bad, is it some minor corrigible error, should I use a different file system? (c) Finally, maybe this all is a kernel problem together with my newish hardware ... is autoyast based on 2.6 or 2.4? This is approximately the 10th SUSE Linux version (since 5.2?) which I have installed sometime, somewhere ... and this time I am really unsure what to do - downgrade to 9.0? Thanks VB -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-help@suse.com
Thanks!! I looked at a corresponding discussion at Dell, and lo and behold, the end of a long long thread says it works with the most current bios A04 if you set the legacy video mode (???) switch, buried somewhere in the BIOS, to 8 MB instead of 1 MB. I suppose I need not comment much on this. What I still do not understand is that, in the time-honored YaST1-mode, I do not get either a working mouse or keyboard. But, if the autoinstall now works (I have not gone through with the installation but at least it now starts) I might not go back and check. I sincerely hope that there will be some kind of support data base entry from SUSE. This is a definitive showstopper for a fairly general class of machines. How would one submit this? VB On Thursday, July 29, 2004, at 03:56 Uhr, Ness, Todd wrote:
I had a brand new GX270 that needed the BIOS updated before the graphics would do more than 640x480 8 bit color. Oh and it is so nice of Dell to make that have to run under DOS or windows only for the BIOS update. So, find a win98 bootable floppy and update your BIOS before wasting any more time.
Todd
-----Original Message----- From: volker_blum@web.de [mailto:volker_blum@web.de] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 3:12 AM To: suse-autoinstall@suse.com Subject: [suse-autoinstall] How do you get SUSE's autoinstall mode to work, and how do you get useful error messages out?
Hi,
I am trying to use SUSE 9.1 on a brand new Dell GX270 computer; short summary, there are all sorts of weird issues. Maybe someone here has seen anything like it?
- I cannot get the graphical installation mode (autoinstall?) to work. I do get the (grub?) boot menu on the DVD all right. After choosing "installation" in any incarnation, the kernel is loaded all right (I suppose), but switching to X (?) appears to fail. Anyway, I get a blue screen with no text except for an "OK" request - only that none of the keys on the keyboard except the F1, F9, F10 and ESC keys work,, ah yes, and no mouse ... i.e. it is impossible to configure anything at all.
- Space oddity - I did get the graphical installation mode exactly once, and never again (yes, there are only three switches to try in grub, on one and the same DVD and the same computer ... this is not reproducible). The graphics was dreadful, but it found the mouse and keyboard all right, and I could set up some things ... except then one partition (and only one ... hda6) could not be formatted (reiser) with no understandable error message.
This leaves me somewhat stumped.
(a) How could I get back to the graphical installation mode, which seemed to detect my (USB) Mouse and (PS/2) keyboard all right?
(b) Once I get there - in what way could I get a useful error message out of the system so as to know what went wrong with formatting that one partition - is the disk bad, is it some minor corrigible error, should I use a different file system?
(c) Finally, maybe this all is a kernel problem together with my newish hardware ... is autoyast based on 2.6 or 2.4?
This is approximately the 10th SUSE Linux version (since 5.2?) which I have installed sometime, somewhere ... and this time I am really unsure what to do - downgrade to 9.0?
Thanks
VB
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-help@suse.com
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-help@suse.com
participants (2)
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Ness, Todd -
Volker Blum