The partitioning of the disk looks to be the problem. This system has two disks, the first disk at '/dev/sda1' is NT 4.0, and the second disk at '/dev/sdb[1-3]' is the SuSE Linux disk. When I run 'fdisk /dev/sda1' and then press 'p' for print partition table it shows the size of the NT partition, that it is bootable and active. Then when I run 'fdisk /dev/sdb1' and press 'p', no information is printed for the Linux partition. I get the standard banner for 'p' but no information about size, cyl, bootable, etc. is displayed. The linux '/sbin/fdisk' doesn't seem to be able to change any of the flags associated with this partition. When I press 'a (Toggle bootable flag)' it then asks 'Partition [1-4]', in selecting any of the partitions 1 through 4, it comes back with 'partition [1-4] has empty type'. I then exit with 'w write table to disk and exit' and then reboot, yields no difference. I have no clue as to what it wants for 'Partition [1-4]' since I only have three partitions: /dev/sdb1 -> boot /dev/sdb2 -> swap /dev/sdb3 -> root (/) Also after successfully exiting Linux's /sbin/fdisk with a 'w' option, subsequent calls to 'fdisk /dev/sdb1' show no partition information (using 'p' option) for the linux disk. I am not an MS/NT4.0 admin so I don't know if it even has fdisk to mark a disk bootable/active. And if it does, I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it. I tried the 'Start->Programs->Administrative Tools->Disk Administrator' tool, yet it doesn't seem to allow marking a partition active/bootable either. I also looked under the '\windows\system32' directory for executables that looked like an 'fdisk', but no luck. Any other clues would be helpful?? John Griffin jpg@cv.hp.com

"John P. Griffin" <jpg@hpcvsjpg.cv.hp.com> wrote:

...

In the process of installing SuSE 5.3 on another computer (HP Kayak XU) and after successfully going through the complete install, Yast, and configuring LILO. Rebooted the system.

Everything looks good during the boot, up until right after the partition check, below is the console output during boot, at the point of failure.

===================================== Partition check: sda: sda1 sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly. Unable to open an initial console =====================================

At this point the system hangs. Any clues as to what went wrong with my install???

I had the same problem. Do you have the boot drive set up as bootable in fdisk ? Do you have a boot disk to check the lilo/kernel ?

I just added the bootable drive flag and I was OK.

-Dee

W.D.McKinney (Dee) deem@wdm.com Faith is acting on your passions & beliefs. - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e

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