Bug 244448

Summary:	GRUB graphical menu partially hangs; text mode works
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 10.2	Reporter:	Paul Mogren <fkamogee>
Component:	Bootloader	Assignee:	Steffen Winterfeldt <snwint>
Status:	RESOLVED NORESPONSE	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	jplack
Version:	Final
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---
Attachments:	hwinfo output dmidecode output

Description Paul Mogren 2007-02-10 14:44:56 UTC

I have an older machine which was just upgraded with a SATA controller and disk. I moved my openSUSE 10.2 installation to the SATA disk, and all is fine except for this. The graphical menu has three problems:
-The default selection with timeout does not work. The menu does not hang completely (I can make a selection and boot), but it never boots automatically.
-The animated parts get stuck almost immediately.
-If I press ESC to drop to text mode, there is a message dialog, and when that is dismissed, it just hangs.

When the gfxmenu is disabled entirely, text mode properly boots the default selection with timeout, and the other two problems are irrelevant. So obviously that is a usable workaround.

I tried re-installing grub, both by the command line and by YaST, neither helped.

Moreover, the behavior exhibited by the 10.2 DVD is even worse. IIRC, it is completely unusable. I have to prevent it from loading the graphical menu at all, which I did by mashing keys (I think F8 is the one that worked).

Comment 1 Paul Mogren 2007-02-10 14:46:17 UTC

Created attachment 118487 [details]
hwinfo output

Comment 2 Paul Mogren 2007-02-10 14:47:35 UTC

Created attachment 118488 [details]
dmidecode output

Comment 3 Steffen Winterfeldt 2007-02-12 10:20:15 UTC

Are you basically saying that the problems started after installing the sata
controller?

Comment 4 Paul Mogren 2007-02-12 15:03:29 UTC

Yes Steffen, that's correct.

Comment 5 Steffen Winterfeldt 2007-02-12 16:17:49 UTC

In what way is the DVD unusable? BTW, the key you were looking for is SHIFT.

Sorry, it does not look like I can do anything here. I would have to have
such a machine here to debug this.

Comment 6 Paul Mogren 2007-02-12 18:25:18 UTC

What I meant about the DVD is that the graphical boot screen hangs before even showing the menu (unlike my installation), so I can't boot anything. When it hangs, there is a blue background with curved lines and a white openSUSE logo. Sometimes the word "welcome" appears in various languages before it hangs, but usually not. In this state, the Caps Lock key toggles the keyboard LED, the ESC key has no effect, and Ctrl+Alt+Del causes a reboot.

By holding down the SHIFT key while the DVD loads, and answering no the question of whether to use the graphical boot screen, I can use the DVD's text-mode menu to boot. Even the graphical installer can be launched successfully in this manner.

Comment 7 Steffen Winterfeldt 2007-02-13 10:40:49 UTC

It sounds a bit like bug 166930, unfortunately that one wasn't really
resolved either. :-(

Comment 8 Paul Mogren 2007-03-02 14:35:13 UTC

I just had the idea to try out some other Linux Live CD's. Sure enough, the openSUSE 10.1 "Eval" install DVD worked fine. Presumably grub hasn't changed that much since then? If that still doesn't give you enough to go on, I'm willing to try building grub with or without certain patches to identify the offending code.

Comment 9 Steffen Winterfeldt 2007-03-02 14:47:55 UTC

Unfortunately, the code changed substantially. Not of grub itself but the
graphics code.

Comment 10 Paul Mogren 2007-03-02 15:42:11 UTC

Gotcha. Well, for what it's worth, the offending PCI SATA card is a Rosewill RC-209 with Silicon Image Sil3114 chipset. Maybe you can get your hands on one at some point. It only costs about $20 retail, which is insignificant compared to the cost of paying people to investigate, develop, and test a fix.

Thanks for your attention, anyway.

Comment 11 Marcus Meissner 2008-12-10 08:38:37 UTC

abandoned bug