I'm befuddle by grub. I'm able to boot w/o a ram disk if I convert a machine back to lilo. There, everything is documented in the kernel docs. Plain as day. The grub stuff -- and ram disks - everything is misdirection, er, I mean indirection (or do I). First in grub, it's got 'root' wrong. It requires what I call "boot" to be call "root". Then it has no place for the real root param. I'm guessing that's what the command line to the kernel is for, the root= param. But I haven't had alot of luck with that so far. Also, I'm not seeing any output from the point grub starts until the system (may) display a login prompt on the console. So I don't know if the boot is starting then dying somewhere, or never starts. I tried the previous 11.1 suse kernel and it wouldn't boot at all any more either (and gives no output). So 1) how do I get my output back to "normal" (both in my boot and the suse boots -- which are also blank, but the newer ones eventually show a prompt). Did someone patch the kernel's default to not generate it's normal output? 2) How do I turn all frame buffer nonsense and let it just talk to the console on my console? 3) what charms do I need for grub to boot from disk (w/out a ram disk) (I know the basics -- that my hard disk drivers, file system drivers -- have to be built-in -- I would like to go through and include drivers I need, make optionals 'modules', and make not-applicable options 'off'. What mode should my console be in? Should I even compile in a frame buffer? I do all my administration remotely, so I don't need graphics on this system. (it only has about 1024x768x16 at most, I think...) Thanks for pointers. I make another try every couple of days -- but it's a pain taking down my internet access -- mostly waiting for the SLOW Dell BIOS BOOT. Sigh. Once it gets past that, it comes up pretty fast. Thanks, -linda -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org