Troubleshooting Installation Problems

Linux applications, and the kernel itself, are much more fault tolerant than they used to be. It's hard to render a system completely unbootable. At the same time, it's much easier to overlook certain problems that may be affecting performance on a system that seems to be running well. Services may not start, modules don't load, or the hard drive does not respond as quickly as it should. It's a good idea to run the dmesg program occasionally to review the information the kernel is getting during bootup. Also review /var/log/messages regularly to see everything that goes into the log. Anyone can view this file in a text editor, but you can also view it in YaST. Go to the Misc page and click View System Log.

Tip

Besides /var/log/messages, you can view other logs, such as /var/log/warn and several process tables from the /proc directory in this YaST module. Use the drop-down menu to change the file you're viewing.

Messages in /var/log/messages are generated by the kernel and other applications run by sysinit. Many "errors" noted here are not really errors. If the system has configured a device you don't have, it will generate an error, but that's harmless. But look for errors that appear to affect devices and processes that you use. Investigate the causes of these errors.

When you're troubleshooting problems, search the SUSE help pages and check the man page for the problem application (along with modules.conf for kernel modules that are not loading). Paste the error message (up to 10 words) into an Internet search engine and see what comes up. Then head over to the "Getting Help" section of Chapter 1, "Welcome to SUSE Linux," to look deeper into the problem.