[Solved] Boot Hangs after install

[doktor5000]

Please don't set a resolution for the monitor, just select Plug&Play monitor, and that's it.

For how to manually start X, you can try via

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systemctl start display-manager.service

or

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systemctl isolate graphical.target

or as regular user (not as root)

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startx

[BrentRogers]

Tried those
1. systemctl start display-manager.service
Just get a blank screen with mouse Pointer
No Login Window.
2. systemctl isolate graphical.target
Seems to crash my system
3. startx
Same as #1, just get a blank screen.
No Display Manager
Do get messages that the one has crashed. [ or some message like that].

[magic]

The log for the current / last active X session should be in /var/log -- probably Xorg.0.log which may contain relevant information - errors are denoted by (EE)
Is drakx11 detecting the correct 'graphics card'?

Hmm...Does this do any better?

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startx /usr/bin/icewm

[kajosim]

If all else fails - then if the BIOS battery has not been replaced within the last 5 years then I suggest you replace it with a new battery.

[jiml8]

I think I agree with magic. You likely have some hardware fault in there.

If you are getting a blank screen with a working mouse cursor, that means the video driver is starting. Most likely you have a corrupted configuration for your desktop which is why you are not getting past that point.

But why would the config on a new system be so corrupted? Suggests that perhaps the default config was not written properly and, taken along with all the other problems you have had, that suggests that maybe there is a problem with your hard drive system or memory. Dunno.

Have you tried running fsck on your file systems? Smartctl on your drive(s)?

[BrentRogers]

Thank you
It seems that the root filesystem [/] has issues:
ran fsck
it came back with
…
/dev/sda1 is mounted
e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.

My system has two hard drives.
When I install, it has the 1st hard drive as one partition.
It has the 2nd Drive as 3 Partitions.
I want to reformat both and use the whole drive of each for Mangiea.
When I do that I seem to run into problems.
Is there any way I can manually format both drives -- or perhaps just install onto the one. Then manually format and mount the others after install.

[BrentRogers]

startx /usr/bin/icewm
Works a lot better.
I actually have a "desktop"

[doktor5000]

It seems that the root filesystem [/] has issues:
ran fsck
it came back with
…
/dev/sda1 is mounted
e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.

No, that's normal - it should not abort, but you cannot run an fsck on a mounted filesystem, as the message says, you would have to run that from a live DVD or so.

[magic]

I'm thinking there might be an issue with hardware acceleration.
What (graphincs) driver is it using?
-
If I'm on the right track and you don't want/need acceleration you can try just disabling it - I don't know if you can do that with the config tools I've only ever done it by editing the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (as root). If you want to try that you can insert the following line in the device section (between Section "Device" and EndSection)

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Option "NoAccel"

You can always edit it back again if no joy.

After that a straight 'startx' should bring up the default environment (I'm assuming Plasma) with only software rendering.

Edit: Should say that really is to test a theory rather than a definitive permanent fix. /

---
As for your other question - that's a different topic...but you should be able to do custom/manual partitioning during the install process.

[wintpe]

it might help, if we could see what hardware you actually have in that PC.
can you run lspci and pull out the graphics card line.
regards peter

[BrentRogers]

I think I have a work around...
It seems that if I boot into "recovery mode" and then hit Ctrl-D at the prompt. Things work fine.
My machine is set up to be a server only, so I have disabled the Graphical Interface at boot.
If I need the Graphical Interface to manage, I can login as root, then run 'startx /usr/bin/icewm'.

All I need to do now is update the GRUP menu to default to "Recovery Mode"....
How would do that.

[doktor5000]

If you only want to disable automatic start of X then try this as root:

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systemctl set-default multi-user.target

If you simply boot to that, is it the same as hitting Ctrl-D at the "recovery mode" prompt ?

[BrentRogers]

It seems that "recovery mode" is doing something different up to and after the "Ctrl-D" as something "gets lost somewhere" and the system "gets stuck somewhere".
So I want the default boot to be 'into recovery mode".
I will "Ctrl-D" as necessary as part of my normal startup.

[doktor5000]

To change the default entry, IIRC you have to either put that manually in the GRUB_DEFAULT stanza in /etc/default/grub, or use the command grub2-set-default to do so.
To get a list of the entries (counting starts at 0) you could use something like

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awk -F"'" '/menuentry / {print $2}' /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Afterwards you need to update the grub configuration, as root

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update-grub2