Boot problems are situations when your system does not boot properly (does not boot to the
expected runlevel and login screen).
13.3.1 Fails to Load the GRUB Boot Loader
If the hardware is functioning properly, it is possible that the boot loader has become
corrupted and Linux cannot start on the machine. In this case, it is necessary to reinstall the
boot loader. To reinstall the boot loader, proceed as follows:
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Insert the installation media into the drive.
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Reboot the machine.
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Select from the boot menu.
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Select a language.
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Accept the license agreement.
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In the screen, select and
set the installation mode to .
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Once in the YaST System Repair module, select then
select .
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Restore the original settings and reinstall the boot loader.
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Leave YaST System Repair and reboot the system.
Other reasons for the machine not booting may be BIOS-related:
- BIOS Settings
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Check your BIOS for references to your hard drive. GRUB might simply not be started if
the hard drive itself cannot be found with the current BIOS settings.
- BIOS Boot Order
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Check whether your system's boot order includes the hard disk. If the hard disk option
was not enabled, your system might install properly, but fail to boot when access to the hard
disk is required.
13.3.2 No Graphical Login
If the machine comes up, but does not boot into the graphical login manager, anticipate
problems either with the choice of the default runlevel or the configuration of the X Window
System. To check the runlevel configuration, log in as the root user and check whether the machine is configured to boot into runlevel 5
(graphical desktop). A quick way to check this is to examine the contents of
/etc/inittab, as follows:
nld-machine:~ # grep "id:" /etc/inittab
id:5:initdefault:
nld-machine:~ #
The returned line indicates that the machine's default runlevel
(initdefault) is set to 5 and that it should boot to the
graphical desktop. If the runlevel is set to any other number, use the YaST Runlevel
Editor module to set it to 5.
IMPORTANT: Do not edit the runlevel configuration manually. Otherwise SuSEconfig (run by YaST)
will overwrite these changes on its next run. If you need to make manual changes here, disable
future SuSEconfig changes by setting CHECK_INITTAB in
/etc/sysconfig/suseconfig to no.
If the runlevel is set to 5, you might have corruption problems with
your desktop or X Windows software. Examine the log files at
/var/log/Xorg.*.log for detailed messages from the X server as it attempted
to start. If the desktop fails during start, it might log error messages to
/var/log/messages. If these error messages hint at a configuration problem
in the X server, try to fix these issues. If the graphical system still does not come up,
consider reinstalling the graphical desktop.
One quick test: the startx command should force the X Window System to
start with the configured defaults if the user is currently logged in on the console. If that
does not work, it should log errors to the console. For more information about the X Window
system configuration, refer to Section 8.0, The X Window System,
(↑ Reference ).
