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Today I started my Linux box after a break of about a week, and instead of nicely firing up X and displaying my Linux desktop, it either displayed the console and stopped, or showed the console, then blanked the screen, then stopped, or rebooted the computer.

If I start it in 'failsafe' mode, I cannot login - no keyboard input is accepted.

The machine is a dual boot system with Win2K installed, which still starts and runs fine, so it might not be the hardware.

Any advice (apart from reinstalling)?

Boot from a CD and mount your partitions? I don't know what would be causing that problem; check wherever syslogd is set to put your logs.

I cannot check anything; as I said the computer freezes whatever I try. I don't have a boot CD either (would need to get e.g. Knoppix first).

Do you have Linux on a separate drive? That might possibly be the problem. I'm guessing you haven't changed anything either. Can you see any error output while it's booting? Hit F2 at the splash screen and see if anything looks out of the ordinary.

If I start Linux in fail safe mode it displays a lot of messages about mounting drives, installing drivers and keyboard layout tables etc. Then it arrives at the login prompt, where I cannot type anything.

Is it possible that you installed a new kernel as an update that has somehow hosed things up? Ubuntu does this (install new kernels, not hose things up), but it retains the old kernels too, which you can still boot with using the Grub menu.

Look for X error messages in /var/log. The name of the logfile is
probably something like Xorg.0.log.

Edit: except you would need a boot CD or something for that...

Your install CD should actually be able to function as a boot CD. It should give you the option to drop to a shell, where you can mount your Linux partition.

If you can get to a shell from your CD, make sure to run fsck on the parition.

Sounds like a hardware problem. Take the comp apart and put it back together. Check if problem persists.

Either you did an update (automatic maybe?) the last time you were in it and forgot, which hosed it somehow. Or it is a hardware problem. Some hardware problems will mess up linux while windows continues to function while others will hose windows but allow linux to still function.

It could also be that you formatted one of your linux partitions for some reason while you were in windows, effectivly erasing the linux files but it is unlikely from someone of your skill level.

If you are getting mount errors you should boot with a live cd. Your suse installation cd will work just fine. Go to the console and check a few things such as /etc/fstab and your partitions \"fdisk /dev/hdX\". It is at least booting the kernel so at least you know your /boot partition is fine and grub (or lilo) is working.

Grendel,

Diedel wrote:The machine is a dual boot system with Win2K installed, which still starts and runs fine, so it might not be the hardware.

Xamindar,

it pretty likely was an update. I had one mess things up in the past already (task bar gone for good). I will try the install CD, thx.

Anyway, I wanted to install Linux on my 64 bit machine, and this might be a good occasion ...

All the more reason why you should use a debian-based distro.

I've never had problems with Suse just dying, but it's really too slow for me. I second the consideration of making the switch over to Ubuntu or Debian.

Jeff250 wrote:All the more reason why you should use a debian-based distro.

Any distro can have issues. I hated rpm because of having to force installs all the time with odd little programs which eventually cluttered my system. I switched to debian which was a whole lot better for me but eventually it got all corrupted and I had to reinstall. That was probably a hardware problem as my capacitors were exploding. Then I went over to gentoo and totally love it (despite the long compile times). I heard ubuntu is pretty dang nice (debian based) but I haven't tried it. I will try it eventually.

At the moment I would say Ubuntu and Gentoo are the best ones. Mostly for bleeding edge I think. Suse and Red Hat are flagship in the buisness market.

Your choice of distro all depends on your preference. They all have good points and bad. And NONE are as simple as Windows to use.

I will never use Debian. Too many problems with OpenGL drivers and D2X-XL.

I've had my fair share of D2X-XL problem reports by Debian users that were rooted in the Debian distro.

I'll stick with OpenSUSE (10.1) and next time use KDE and not Gnome. To me, my Linux always seemed very fast, as long as it lasted, heh.

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silly question:

keyboard: usb or ps/2?

Flip has a good idea; make sure if you have a USB keyboard that hotplug isn't failing on boot.

Also, if you set up sshd, try logging into your machine remotely (here's a really good Windows SSH client). Then run dmesg and see if there's anything bad in there.

Diedel wrote:I'll stick with OpenSUSE (10.1) and next time use KDE and not Gnome. To me, my Linux always seemed very fast, as long as it lasted, heh.

KDE != fast. Especially, especially on Novell.

Diedel wrote:I've had my fair share of D2X-XL problem reports by Debian users that were rooted in the Debian distro.

I can't pretend to know every fact about the situations, but the problem probably wasn't that they were rooted with Debian but that they were rooted in using packages from the stable repository. The stable repository is great for servers, but for desktop use the packages will be noticably years out of date. I don't think that you'd have this problem if you used packages from Debian unstable (which is an overstatement in the Linux world) or from an up to date debian-based distro like Ubuntu or Mepis. At least, I've never had trouble with Ubuntu.

DCrazy wrote:Flip has a good idea; make sure if you have a USB keyboard that hotplug isn't failing on boot.

Also, if you set up sshd, try logging into your machine remotely (here's a really good Windows SSH client). Then run dmesg and see if there's anything bad in there.

Diedel wrote:I'll stick with OpenSUSE (10.1) and next time use KDE and not Gnome. To me, my Linux always seemed very fast, as long as it lasted, heh.

KDE != fast. Especially, especially on Novell.

If you dont mind losing all the eye candy - black box or fluxbox is a mighty fast GUI. Very slim and light.

DCrazy wrote:KDE != fast. Especially, especially on Novell.

I don't care, as long is it is stable.

Holy f*, I have to reinstall all the stuff I need for D2X-XL again!