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First, a little info about a SuSE install:
Last evening I tried installing SuSE 9.0 (just arrived) on my Athlon XP
desktop over MDK 9.1. Interesting. Not as simple as the Mandrake install
but I managed to get it on and running after three or four abortive attempts:
I could not get grub or lilo to install into my HDD's MBR. Near random (and
desperate) tweaking finally got it to go. SuSE 9.0 is...OK, though it didn't
install most of the packages I manually selected (I selected almost
everything). It has a system somewhat similar to Mandrake's for those who
elect to manually select packages. The prosuite comes with 5 CDs plus two
additional CDs with special SuSE toys on them. In any case, it installed the
contents of only the first CD.
I wasn't overly impressed (I may give it a shot again later) so I decided to
give 9.2 an install. It went onto my laptop without problems but I had a
hell of a time getting it to install onto my desktop. 9.1 and 9.0 installed
on this same setup without problems. 9.2 almost forced me to either go back
to 9.1 or go ahead and stick with SuSE. First off, 9.2 refused to even start
to install. It took me quite a while to get it to work. I would bootup the
install CD and it would seem to be starting out OK, with the initial progress
bar climbing up to about 98% but then it would stop, the screen would go
blank without any message whatsoever, and it would sit there for as long as I
desired to let it. After a LOT of hair pulling and trying various install
options (vgalo, text only, appending a noapic option to the install kernel,
checking bios to make sure something wasn't amiss), I finally found that the
problem lay with the 2.4.22-10mdkboot kernel on the CD. I could get the
install to work ONLY when I selected the 2.2.19 kernel. This limited my
install options later but it got me into the installer.
I installed everything I could and all seemed OK. It then came time to reboot
for the first time. Reboot and...blank screen, just like during initial
attempts at installing. Trying to do a failsafe bootup produced a message
onscreen after initial boot but I don't recall the exact text (I left the
transcript at home on a notepad) but it APPEARED to be associated with APIC.
I had APIC disabled in bios and even with a noapic kernel option, I would get
this message concerning some APIC-associated (apparently) item (involving
"ESR" whatever that is). What finally did the trick (very oddly in my
opinion) was going into bios and enabling APIC. After doing this I could
bootup just fine. I now think that perhaps I would be able to do a normal
install if, and only if, I enabled APIC in bios first, regardless of sending
a noapic switch upon bootup.
The biggest problem, and it is unacceptable, is that I could not get 9.2 to
format my partitions as ReiserFS. 9.0 and 9.1 could. SuSE 9.0 could. 9.2
would error out almost immediately as soon as it tried to format any
partition as ReiserFS. I got stuck with ext3 (yech!). Because I am not
happy with my partition scheme and a few other problems - like not setting my
/var partition large enough - I will be reinstalling 9.2 once again on this
system. It looks like I will need to first start installing 9.1 or SuSE
again so I can get my HDD partitions formatted as ReiserFS and then terminate
the install and then start an install with the 9.2 CDs and elect NOT to
format any partitions.
Has anyone else run into a similar problem with 9.2 and ReiserFS?
praedor
- --
"Our ship is in the hands of pilots who are steering directly under full sail
for a rock. The whole crew may see this course to violate our liberties in
full view if they look the right way."
- --Samuel Adams, 1771
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