I am having difficulties in installing correctly the SuSE distribution. In particular, I can't utilize a DOS partition to boot the machine and I can't use kdm. The details of the problem: - The machine is an IBM Intellistation with 2 ITANIUM processors at 800MHz and 2 16GByte SCSI disks attached to a 160MHz Adaptec controller. - OS is SuSE Linux ia64 7.2. - The system was installed on a 6GByte ext2 partition /dev/sda1 and uses a 2 GByte swap on the same disk (/dev/sda2). Both partitions were created inside YAST2 manually. - When the installation program rebooted the machine the first time, the reboot failed. (This is fine since we had not created any DOS partition.) Therefore we booted again from CD1 (`boot an installed system') and finished the installation. - At this point the first real problem occurred. The installation program rebooted again but the boot process freezed after starting kdm. The monitor switched to powersave mode and Ctrl-Alt-Del was disabled. (Jan-Christoph Westermann reported a similar problem on January 31st in this list, I believe.) - We renamed /etc/init.d/xdm and rebooted (using CD1). The boot succeeded. We could started X as root from terminal by startx and play with the configuration manager sax2. - Now the really unexpected part. We created a partition with label "FAT16" and formatted it with mkdosfs -v -F 16 /dev/sda3. - We copied /boot/elilo.efi and /boot/vmlinuz to the DOS partition. - Rebooted. EFI could not see the DOS partition. However, the physical device is there, in the output of the map command. (EFI recognized only fs0:, the boot partition made visible by the installation cd.) We also checked later that the partition was readable. - We tried many times with different partition labels (does EFI check it?). No change. We also tried creating the DOS partition on /dev/sdb1. (But the EFI primer from Intel's site does not mention EFI preferences concerning drives or even partition numbers, if I understand it correctly.) Same effect. I would really appreciate any hint on how to solve these problems. Although I have some experience with Linux on IA-32 machines, IA-64 is entirely new to me. Thanks a lot. Stefano -- Stefano Lodi, PhD Researcher Dept. of Electronics, C.S. and Systems & Faculty of Statistical Sciences University of Bologna, ITALY
* Stefano Lodi <adm@db.deis.unibo.it> [020209 17:53]:
The details of the problem: - At this point the first real problem occurred. The installation program rebooted again but the boot process freezed after starting kdm. The monitor switched to powersave mode and Ctrl-Alt-Del was disabled. (Jan-Christoph Westermann reported a similar problem on January 31st in this list, I believe.)
Initialization can take quite a while. During this period, screen is black. What graphics adaptor do you use?
- Now the really unexpected part. We created a partition with label "FAT16" and formatted it with mkdosfs -v -F 16 /dev/sda3. - We copied /boot/elilo.efi and /boot/vmlinuz to the DOS partition. - Rebooted. EFI could not see the DOS partition. However, the physical device is there, in the output of the map command. (EFI recognized only fs0:, the boot partition made visible by the installation cd.) We also checked later that the partition was readable.
Have you tried activating the partition or giving it the bootable flag? Best regards, Stefan Reinauer -- Ok hex 4666 dup negate do i 4000 dup 2* negate do " *" 0 dup 2dup 1e 0 do 2swap * e >>a 2* 3 pick + -rot - j + dup dup * e >>a rot dup dup * e >>a rot swap 2dup + 10000 > if 3drop 3drop " " 0 dup 2dup leave then loop 2drop 2drop type 266 +loop cr 5de +loop
On Sat, Feb 09, 2002 at 06:23:01PM +0100, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
* Stefano Lodi <adm@db.deis.unibo.it> [020209 17:53]:
The details of the problem: - At this point the first real problem occurred. The installation program rebooted again but the boot process freezed after starting kdm. The monitor switched to powersave mode and Ctrl-Alt-Del was disabled. (Jan-Christoph Westermann reported a similar problem on January 31st in this list, I believe.)
Initialization can take quite a while. During this period, screen is black. What graphics adaptor do you use?
I noticed that KDE takes a long time even when using startx, but I waited half an hour. I also tried to connect the monitor to the second output, but nothing was there either. So I powercycled the machine. The IBM 6894-10X uses Matrox G450, according to the specs at IBM's site. SuSE installed a G400. I will try to set to G450, although with startx everything seems to work fine.
- Now the really unexpected part. We created a partition with label "FAT16" and formatted it with mkdosfs -v -F 16 /dev/sda3. - We copied /boot/elilo.efi and /boot/vmlinuz to the DOS partition. - Rebooted. EFI could not see the DOS partition. However, the physical device is there, in the output of the map command. (EFI recognized only fs0:, the boot partition made visible by the installation cd.) We also checked later that the partition was readable.
Have you tried activating the partition or giving it the bootable flag?
I toggled the `bootable' flag, but EFI still refuses to see it. How do I `activate' a partition? I found an activating button in Yast2, but that's inside a Lilo configuration area. I this what you made reference to?
Best regards, Stefan Reinauer
-- Ok hex 4666 dup negate do i 4000 dup 2* negate do " *" 0 dup 2dup 1e 0 do 2swap * e >>a 2* 3 pick + -rot - j + dup dup * e >>a rot dup dup * e >>a rot swap 2dup + 10000 > if 3drop 3drop " " 0 dup 2dup leave then loop 2drop 2drop type 266 +loop cr 5de +loop
-- Stefano Lodi, PhD Researcher Dept. of Electronics, C.S. and Systems & Faculty of Statistical Sciences University of Bologna, ITALY
participants (2)
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Stefan Reinauer -
Stefano Lodi