Bug 592779

Attach YaST logs, please.
It's actually helpful to attach them to (almost) every bugreport
for YaST.

See http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/YaST

Please hit ESC to enter text mode, then enter 'harddisk' at the boot prompt.

What happens then?

(In reply to comment #1)
> Attach YaST logs, please.
> It's actually helpful to attach them to (almost) every bugreport
> for YaST.
> 
> See http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/YaST

Sorry, I don't know how to get YaST logs from the DVD boot process.
The wiki page doesn't seem to cover this.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Please hit ESC to enter text mode, then enter 'harddisk' at the boot prompt.
> 
> What happens then?

That works fine. The boot menu from the installed system comes up, and the system starts correctly.

It crashes only when I select "Boot from Hard Disk" in graphical mode.

.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 597167 ***

Reopening bug.

Tilman wrote in bug 597167 comment 8:

The problem I reported in Bug 592779 (slightly different from the description
above, as I don't get a "Boot failed" message) still manifests itself on my
test system with the Milestone 6 and 7 32 bit installation DVDs.

Milestone 6 differs in that the system rebooted after a few seconds of the
black screen, while Milestone 7, like Milestone 4, just hangs indefinitely. (I
didn't test Milestone 5.)

To make sure it's not a problem of my test system I also tried an openSUSE 11.1
Retail DVD and its "boot from hard disk" function worked fine.

Problem still exists in RC1.

I tried to reproduce the problem on several other machines, but for now it's only happening on a single machine which happens to be my 32 bit test machine. This is its hardware configuration:

MSI Hermes 650
Mainboard MS-6535
Processor Intel Celeron 1,7 GHz
512 MB RAM (2x 256 MB DDR PC-266)
80 GB IDE HDD, IDE DVD-ROM drive
VIA PCI 3+1 USB 2.0 interface card
AVM Fritz!DSL PCI DSL/ISDN combo controller
Acer AL1716 LCD monitor, DVI connection
PS2 keyboard and mouse

If you'd like me to test a modified configuration, let me know.

At the boot screen, please press 3 times Shift-F10. This lets you edit the
complete command line that is passed to the bootloader. If you remove the
'vga=' option, does it work?

That didn't change anything.
The line came up reading "harddisk vga=0x317".
I tested removing the vga option completely, leaving only "harddisk",
as well as changing it to "vga=normal".
In either case, the machine switched off the video output and hung as described in the initial report.

Additional observations:
- There seems to be a short delay (about half a second) after hitting enter during which the screen is black but active, then a short flicker, and only then does the video signal go away and the machine hang.
- Once it's hung, the NumLock key doesn't even toggle the keyboard NumLock LED anymore.
- The power button however still reacts immediately, without the usual eight second delay after hard OS crashes.
- I managed to reach the same state once by hitting Ctrl/Alt/Del just before the initial "Welcome" screen would have appeared.

Perhaps a BIOS problem? Its an AMI BIOS, A6232SMS V1.1 060702

Sorry, forgot to set "provides the needed info".

Hm, something sets the video mode, but it is not the boot loader on dvd.

What boot loader do you have on your disk? The openSUSE grub with graphics?
If so, could you disable the graphics there and try again? (Comment the gfxmenu
line in /boot/grub/menu.lst.)

Yes, it is the openSUSE grub with graphics.

I commented out the gfxmenu line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, booted from the 11.3RC1 installation DVD and selected "Boot from Hard Disk" again. The character mode boot menu from the installed system appeared correctly, and after selecting either the standard or the failsafe entry the system started to boot. But in both cases, after a few lines of messages it went black and hung as before.

Next I edited the kernel command line from the boot menu, changing the vga parameter to "vga=ask". This got me as far as the "Press <ENTER> to see available video modes, space to continue" prompt. Pressing Enter displayed the list of modes, but no matter what I typed then, whether "scan" or one of the modes, led to the black screen/hung state.

Hitting the space bar at the vga=ask prompt let the system continue booting until shortly after starting the X server. Then it hung with a frozen graphics screen still displaying the busy cursor but no login window yet, on a strangely discolored/checkered green background. In that state, the power button was also blocked, ie. I had to hold it for 8 secs to switch the machine off.

Changing the kernel command line to "vga=ask 3" and hitting the space bar after the vga=ask prompt got me a running system in character mode. Entering "startx" at that point produced a working X GUI. When quitting that, the screen went black instead of showing the character mode display, but the keyboard remained operative -- hitting Ctrl/Alt/Del twice led to a reboot.

Thanks, Tilman! So it actually hangs in the kernel. Maybe a KMS thing.

I assume you're using intel graphics? Does booting with i915.modeset=0 help any? I suspect that X may not start up, but it will at least help troubleshoot why you don't have a console earlier.

(In reply to comment #15)
> I assume you're using intel graphics?

Nope. The MS-6535 mainboard has SiS 650 chipset graphics.
X.org is recognizing and driving it with its "sis" module.

> Does booting with i915.modeset=0 help any?

Unsurprisingly, in the light of the above, that doesn't change anything.

As openSUSE is abandoning ISDN support which is essential for me, I'll move to a different distribution. Consequently I won't be available for questions concerning this bug anymore.

Ok, thanks, I'll close this out then.