On Monday 28 February 2005 18:16, Carl Zeilon wrote:
I'm trying to install 9.2 x86_64 into my new machine. It's configured with a single SATA drive & the BIOS is set to treat it as an IDE drive. I also have a NV6600GT PCI express video card. I'm attempting a network FTP install. The install always hangs just as YAST is activated. I see the floppy drive light come on for a moment, the system speaker beeps once, & then blank screen. The virtual consoles (ctl/alt/F1-F6) work & show the YAST started message. Ctl/alt/del reboots the machine as well so the machine is not hung, just the installation. I've tried the 32 bit as well with the exact same result. Knoppix runs OK with the hard drive mounted properly and all, so I don't think it's an issue with the hard drive configuration or my Samsung LCD. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
This is a known problem, due to a bug in XOrg PCI-Express code in the SuSE 9.2 distribution. I've just worked around it, with help from Andreas on this list (thread 9.2 AMD64 Install CD with New Kernel - see most recent postings) and from postings to the Nvidia Linux Forum (thread Cursor missing and/or corrupt icon, AMD64/PCIe/FC3/6629). See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2322 for details of the bug. The lockup occurs (I think) when YaST attempts to start the xorg vga driver, which excites the bug. The workaround, as Andreas advised, is to do a text mode install. When the linuxrc screen shows on bootup, press F2 and select 'Text Mode'. Configure the default run level to 3 (no X) or you'll have problems later. I installed from the SuSE 9.2 DVD (I didn't find that Andreas' CD with New Kernel helped with this bug). I got the latest NVidia graphics driver from www.nvidia.com (might be on Andreas' CD too). I dealt with this install entirely off-line, so I had to download the driver on another system and put it on a CD to transfer and install it. Now the tricky bit. You need an /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the default 'Device' entry using the new 'nvidia' driver, with the options: Option "SWCursor" "on" Option "NoRenderExtension" "on" This is difficult to achieve because of the bug. I did it by running 'sax2 -m 0=vga' (that's zero=vga) to get an initial xorg.conf (don't let the graphics test run, or the system will lock up). I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf, changing 'vga' to 'nvidia', and adding the options shown above. I then daringly did 'init 5' to start X. That gave me a viable X display and KDE, and I could run YaST from the KDE menu to improve the graphics configuration. Finally I dealt with the large bootup console font by editing /boot/grub/menu.lst: replace "console=tty0" with "vga=0x31a". Worked for me. YMMV. Andreas, can you release another Install CD which deals with this problem without the hassle described? John Storrs