Suse 10.2 fails to boot after proper installation of ndiswrapper and drivers

[Soral 3.0]

Howdy,

I am a novice linux user, who recently tried to configure my wireless cards to work on a dual boot system of opensuse 10.2 and winxp.

The problem:
Suse 10.2 fails to boot correctly after the configuration of my wireless cards.
After GRUB loads, it doesn't matter if I try to start suse 10.2 or suse 10.2 (failsafe), suse cannot load.
It stops after it says:

enabling syn flood protection     done
disabling ip forwarding              done
setting up hostname 'linux-ntvr' done
setting up loopback interface     done

The situation:
I got suse 10.2 and winxp dual booting on my system. I have two different wireless cards:
D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Card (revision A I think)
NETGEAR WG111 802.11g Wireless USB2.0 Adapter (version 1)

Both work on winxp.

After following these instructions:
http://nextgen.no-ip.org/~andrew/linux/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapperinfo.php
on how to setup ndiswrapper in order to use my winxp drivers to wirelessly connect to my router -- I have successfully installed the wrapper and verfied that my drivers were correctly installed using the:

ndiswrapper -l

command.

After that, I start up Yast and attempt to configure my network (using the instructions as a guide). I could not configure my network properly. It was late, and I shut down my computer and resigned to finish troubleshooting the next day.

Next day, I have the bootup problems. I tried putting the dvd I used to install suse and use the "rescue system" option, but it goes straight to the rescue command-line which I am unfamiliar.

Any help is sincerely appreciated.

-Isaac

[John A]

It's rather odd the way the system freezes without an error message. Perhaps there's one in the logs.

When you get to the recovery console, try typing the following:

dmesg | more

Another good one is

syslog

See if there's any odd error messages that would relate to the freezing at startup. (Or you could just post anything suspicous-looking here.)

[Soral 3.0]

Thanks for the input.

Hmm... I can't seem to use either command...

Ok, so I put the dvd in, I boot using the "rescue system" option, the console shows up stating:

rescue login:

I type in my typical username, it asks for the password, I enter it, it does not work.

so then I am queried for a login again. This time I enter "root" and then it immediately brings me to:

Rescue:~#

I guess that means I am logged in as root?

However when I try both the

dmesg | more

or the

syslog

commands, it just states that these are not valid commands...

Any ideas?

-Isaac

It's rather odd the way the system freezes without an error message. Perhaps there's one in the logs.

When you get to the recovery console, try typing the following:

dmesg | more

Another good one is

syslog

See if there's any odd error messages that would relate to the freezing at startup. (Or you could just post anything suspicous-looking here.)

[John A]

Hmm... I can't seem to use either command...

Nevermind. Those commands won't do much good anyway, as they're only useful when run from the originating hard disk.

I can't quite think of why the startup wouldn't work... what happens if you leave the frozen startup screen for like 3 hours or something?

[Soral 3.0]

Nevermind. Those commands won't do much good anyway, as they're only useful when run from the originating hard disk.

I can't quite think of why the startup wouldn't work... what happens if you leave the frozen startup screen for like 3 hours or something?

Well, I can't say I've counted, but I have tried just letting the dead compy sit on the startup screen for at least, say 30 minutes. It just sits there like... a dead compy.

Anyhow, do you have anymore suggestions on what I should do (or what I shouldn't do) before I resort to reinstalling suse? I was planning on that, but I'd thought I would come in here and ask for any opinions before I lose what little files I have on linux...

Also, did I do anything bad during the install of ndiswrapper+wireless drivers that could have caused t his?

-Isaac

[John A]

Anyhow, do you have anymore suggestions on what I should do (or what I shouldn't do) before I resort to reinstalling suse? I was planning on that, but I'd thought I would come in here and ask for any opinions before I lose what little files I have on linux...

No, I can't really think of much that you might have done wrong, although I can't say I saw you installing it, so there's always that possibility...

Also, did I do anything bad during the install of ndiswrapper+wireless drivers that could have caused t his?

My theory is that there's something wrong with the kernel version. Next time try upgrading your kernel first. Once you're sure that's working, install ndiswrapper.

Another thing you may want to try is only installing wireless cards one at a time; I've read that multiple wireless cards in the same computer can have problems (although that's unlikely to be the case, still do everything step-by-step; don't rush it).

[Soral 3.0]

Those suggestions make a lot of sense. :-)

Allrighty then, thanks for your help, and wish me luck!

-Isaac

No, I can't really think of much that you might have done wrong, although I can't say I saw you installing it, so there's always that possibility...

My theory is that there's something wrong with the kernel version. Next time try upgrading your kernel first. Once you're sure that's working, install ndiswrapper.

Another thing you may want to try is only installing wireless cards one at a time; I've read that multiple wireless cards in the same computer can have problems (although that's unlikely to be the case, still do everything step-by-step; don't rush it).

[Infarction]

I think if you boot into your rescue mode and then mount and chroot to your install, then you'll be able to use dmesg and syslog. I can never remember how to chroot though, so you'd have to look around for instructions on that.

[John A]

I think if you boot into your rescue mode and then mount and chroot to your install, then you'll be able to use dmesg and syslog. I can never remember how to chroot though, so you'd have to look around for instructions on that.

Basically you might do something like the following:

chroot /mnt/volume /bin/bash

Where /mnt/volume is the actual filesystem of your hard drive. However, since you're booting from the recovery CD, it's quite likely you're going to have to mount it first.

And to get out of the chrooted environment, simply type exit , and you'll be back at the original prompt.

[Infarction]

you'll want to bind /dev and create a /proc somewhere inside the chroot environment as well before you actually enter it. Might be handy to copy DNS information as well if your 'net is working from the rescue boot...

[Soral 3.0]

Um, I really wish I could say I understood all of that, but I don't. :-(
So basically instead of logging into root, I try to log into "chroot" and attempt the error commands?

I not familiar on how to use rescue command line, but, j/w why would my wireless work in rescue mode if I can't get it to work in the desktop environment?

-Isaac

[John A]

Um, I really wish I could say I understood all of that, but I don't. :-(
So basically instead of logging into root, I try to log into "chroot" and attempt the error commands?

The Gentoo Handbook is a very well-written and useful guide for people not just installing Gentoo. The section linked-to below describes how to chroot to an environment. Skip the part about mirror selecting, but pretty much everything else you'll have to do in section 6a.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=6

One thing you'll have to do in order to access your filesystem is to mount it. I don't know your filesystem type, so I can't totally help you out with it. The syntax for mounting a filesystem is usually similar to this:

mount -t [I]fstype[/I] /dev/hda1 /mnt/location

Actually, this is kind of hard to explain. Perhaps a reinstall is better...

I not familiar on how to use rescue command line, but, j/w why would my wireless work in rescue mode if I can't get it to work in the desktop environment?

Well, it could work because the rescue environment is a static one (not changing) because it's from the CD. You can then use this supposedly-perfect environment to set up/fix the rest of your system, even if it cannot currently be booted.

Repairing a filesystem from a recovery command line is not the easiest thing to do, however, and for you it would probably be far easier to simply reinstall the system...

[Soral 3.0]

Thanks for the explanation -- but yeah, it is over my head. :-(

OK! Reinstalling this weekend...

-Isaac