If it's not your display driver... meybe its your kernel. I had some hard freezes with the stock 2.6.27 kernel installed with 11.1 so I installed 2.6.28 from kernel.org and its been solid ever since. I also had problems with a service called jexec hanging on startup so I uninstalled the package. My system is good now but it was nearly a weeks work to get it that way :( wcn Stan Goodman wrote:
At 21:27:53 on Wednesday Wednesday 07 January 2009, Felix Miata <mrmazda@ij.net> wrote:2.6.28
On 2009/01/07 19:40 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:
I posted the earlier phases of this adventure here about a month ago, and have since "progressed", but always with similar results in the end.
It quickly became clear that the DVD drive had failed in the middle of the installation, and I replaced it. Using the Installation DVD, I ran the installation-media verification routine, and found that it was defective (I have checked the iso file's MD5 code before I burned it), so I burned another and verified it successfully. I then installed v11.1 from this valid DVD.
Installation and configuration proceeded normally, but instead of rebooting to present me with a finished system, it stalled with a dark screen and unblinking cursor in the upper-left corner. A five minute wait convinced me that it was going nowhere.
On many systems that blinking cursor is the result of missing boot code in the MBR, or the lack of a startable/active primary partition that has a properly installed boot loader. Better systems instead of that nothingness will provide a message to the effect that nothing bootable is available.
It isn't a "blinking cursor" (except when I am trying to avoid cusswords); it's an UNblinking one ... NON-blinking, static, cursor; the system has died.
Any idea how much happens before you reach the blinking cursor? Can you tell from disk activity that it does things for a while before halting? Possibly there's a problem related to your video chip.
That is a very appealing idea. Yes, there is some HD activity after the screen goes blank but before the cursor stops blinking. Intuitively, this may also explain why Windows isn't affected, just because it is different.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=336302 might apply
I will chase down these references that you have supplied, but tomorrow. It's 2200, and I've had enough for the day.
(Two previous installations with the unverified DVD got further than this, in one case bringing up a finished system which I was able to use for the rest of the evening, but which failed to boot the following morning.)
In order to try diagnose the reason for all this, I installed Windows XP, using the entire 20GB HD. This installed faultlessly, and ran perfectly, even after two shutdowns and reboots. I interpret this as meaning that I do not have a hardware problem.
I forgot to mention that I have also swapped in a HD, so that all the readily accessible hardware elements would seem to be innocent.
At the moment, the only thing I can think of is that the partitioning scheme I chose is inadequate, because that's the only thing that has not been tested. I have partitioned the HD as follows (from the beginning of the disk):
Primary /boot 560MB ext3 (GRUB) Logical Swap 560MB Swap Logical / 8GB ext3 Logical /home 10GB ext3
I doubt the partitioning has anything directly to do your trouble, but if you repartition in the future, note that your /boot is stupidly big for a 20G HD with only one installed OS. 70G-100G is more than plenty for any sane normal user. OTOH, but sure you have enough swap. If you want to STD, you need at least as much swap as your installed RAM. If you might ever install more RAM than you have now, be sure to use that amount.
It seemed very unlikely to me. I mentioned it out of desperation, because nothing else came to mind.
70G-100G? Should the G be a B? Bytes?
This early on, nothing is easier than repartitioning.
I don't know what else to examine, and would be very grateful for comments and advice.
On http://en.opensuse.org/Linuxrc roughly halfway down you'll see kexec_reboot. Yours might be a machine that should be blacklisted but isn't. Try disabling it.
Tomorrow.
"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6 NIV
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
Thanks, Felix...
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