openSUSE Leap allows setting several parameters during boot, for example choosing the source of the installation data or setting the network configuration.
Using the appropriate set of boot parameters helps simplify your installation
procedure. Many parameters can also be configured later using the linuxrc
routines, but using the boot parameters is easier. In some automated setups,
the boot parameters can be provided with initrd
or an
info
file.
The way the system is started for the installation depends on the architecture—system start-up is different for PC (AMD64/Intel 64) or mainframe, for example. If you install openSUSE Leap as a VM Guest on a KVM or Xen hypervisor, follow the instructions for the AMD64/Intel 64 architecture.
The terms Boot Parameters and Boot Options are often used interchangeably. In this documentation, we mostly use the term Boot Parameters.
The boot parameters are described in detail in Chapter 3, Installation Steps. Generally, selecting starts the installation boot process.
If problems occur, use Chapter 4, Troubleshooting.
or . For more information about troubleshooting the installation process, refer toThe menu bar at the bottom of the screen offers some advanced functionality needed in some setups. Using the function keys (F1 ... F12), you can specify additional options to pass to the installation routines without having to know the detailed syntax of these parameters (see Chapter 2, Boot Parameters). A detailed description of the available function keys is available in Section 2.2.1, “The Boot Screen on Machines Equipped with Traditional BIOS”.
This section describes changing the boot parameters for AMD64, Intel 64, and ARM AArch64.
The boot screen displays several options for the installation procedure. Enter to boot it. The relevant options are:
boots the installed system and is selected by default, because the CD is often left in the drive. Select one of the other options with the arrow keys and pressThe normal installation mode. All modern hardware functions are enabled. In case the installation fails, see F5 for boot parameters that disable potentially problematic functions.
Perform a system upgrade. For more information refer to Chapter 13, Upgrading the System and System Changes.
Starts a minimal Linux system without a graphical user interface. For more information, see Section 17.5.2, “Using the Rescue System”. This option is not available on live CDs.
Boot a Linux system that is already installed. You will be asked from which partition to boot the system.
This option is only available when you install from media created from downloaded ISOs. In this case it is recommended to check the integrity of the installation medium. This option starts the installation system before automatically checking the media. In case the check was successful, the normal installation routine starts. If a corrupt media is detected, the installation routine aborts. Replace the broken medium and restart the installation process.
Tests your system RAM using repeated read and write cycles. Terminate the test by rebooting. For more information, see Section 4.4, “Boot Failure”.
Use the function keys shown at the bottom of the screen to change the language, screen resolution, installation source or to add an additional driver from your hardware vendor:
Get context-sensitive help for the active element of the boot screen. Use the arrow keys to navigate, Enter to follow a link, and Esc to leave the help screen.
Select the display language and a corresponding keyboard layout for the installation. The default language is English (US).
Select various graphical display modes for the installation. By
“Kernel Mode Setting”). If this setting does not
work on your system, choose and, optionally,
specify vga=ask
on the boot command line to get
prompted for the video resolution. Choose
if the graphical installation causes problems.
Normally, the installation is performed from the inserted installation medium. Here, select other sources, like FTP or NFS servers. If the installation is deployed on a network with an SLP server, select an installation source available on the server with this option.
If you encounter problems with the regular installation, this menu offers to disable a few potentially problematic functions. If your hardware does not support ACPI (advanced configuration and power interface) select
to install without ACPI support. disables support for APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers) which may cause problems with some hardware. boots the system with the DMA mode (for CD/DVD-ROM drives) and power management functions disabled.If you are not sure, try the following options first:
or . Experts can also use the command line ( ) to enter or change kernel parameters.Press this key to notify the system that you have an optional driver update for openSUSE Leap. With or , load drivers directly before the installation starts. If you select , you are prompted to insert the update disk at the appropriate point in the installation process.
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a new industry standard which replaces and extends the traditional BIOS. The latest UEFI implementations contain the “Secure Boot” extension, which prevents booting malicious code by only allowing signed boot loaders to be executed. See Book “Reference”, Chapter 14 “UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)” for more information.
The boot manager GRUB 2, used to boot machines with a traditional BIOS,
does not support UEFI, therefore GRUB 2 is replaced with GRUB 2 for EFI. If
Secure Boot is enabled, YaST will automatically select GRUB 2 for EFI for
installation. From an administrative and user perspective, both
boot manager implementations behave the same and are called
GRUB 2
in the following.
When installing with Secure Boot enabled, you cannot load drivers that are not shipped with openSUSE Leap. This is also true of drivers shipped via SolidDriver, because their signing key is not trusted by default.
To load drivers not shipped with openSUSE Leap, do either of the following:
Before the installation, add the needed keys to the firmware database via firmware/system management tools.
Use a bootable ISO that will enroll the needed keys in the MOK list on the first boot.
For more information, see Book “Reference”, Chapter 14 “UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)”, Section 14.1 “Secure Boot”.
The boot screen displays several options for the installation procedure. Change the selected option with the arrow keys and press Enter to boot it. The relevant options are:
The normal installation mode. All modern hardware functions are enabled. In case the installation fails, see F5 for boot parameters that disable potentially problematic functions.
Perform a system upgrade. For more information refer to Chapter 13, Upgrading the System and System Changes.
Starts a minimal Linux system without a graphical user interface. For more information, see Section 17.5.2, “Using the Rescue System”. This option is not available on Live CDs.
Boot a Linux system that is already installed. You will be asked from which partition to boot the system.
This option is only available when you install from media created from downloaded ISOs. In this case it is recommended to check the integrity of the installation medium. This option starts the installation system before automatically checking the media. In case the check was successful, the normal installation routine starts. If a corrupt media is detected, the installation routine aborts.
GRUB 2 for EFI on openSUSE Leap does not support a boot prompt or function keys for adding boot parameters. By default, the installation will be started with American English and the boot media as the installation source. A DHCP lookup will be performed to configure the network. To change these defaults or to add boot parameters you need to edit the respective boot entry. Highlight it using the arrow keys and press E. See the on-screen help for editing hints (note that only an English keyboard is available now). The entry will look similar to the following:
setparams 'Installation' set gfxpayload=keep echo 'Loading kernel ...' linuxefi /boot/x86_64/loader/linux splash=silent echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrdefi /boot/x86_64/loader/initrd
Add space-separated parameters to the end of the line starting with
linuxefi
. To boot the edited entry, press
F10. If you access the machine via serial console, press
Esc–0. A
complete list of parameters is available at
http://en.opensuse.org/Linuxrc.
This section contains a selection of important boot parameters.
autoyast=
URL
The autoyast
parameter specifies the location of the
autoinst.xml
control file for automatic
installation.
manual=<0|1>
The manual
parameter controls whether the other
parameters are only default values that still must be acknowledged by
the user. Set this parameter to 0
if all values
should be accepted and no questions asked. Setting
autoyast
implies setting manual
to
0
.
Info=
URL
Specifies a location for a file from which to read additional options.
upgrade=<0|1>
To upgrade openSUSE Leap, specify Upgrade=1
.
dud=
URLLoad driver updates from URL.
Set dud=ftp://ftp.example.com/PATH_TO_DRIVER
or dud=http://www.example.com/PATH_TO_DRIVER
to load drivers from a URL. When dud=1
you will
be asked for the URL during boot.
language=
LANGUAGE
Set the installation language. Some supported values are
cs_CZ
, de_DE
,
es_ES
, fr_FR
,
ja_JP
, pt_BR
,
pt_PT
, ru_RU
,
zh_CN
, and zh_TW
.
acpi=off
Disable ACPI support.
noapic
No logical APIC.
nomodeset
Disable KMS.
textmode=1
Start installer in text mode.
console=
SERIAL_DEVICE[,MODE]
SERIAL_DEVICE can be an actual serial or parallel
device (for example ttyS0
) or a virtual terminal
(for example tty1
). MODE
is the baud rate, parity and stop bit (for example 9600n8
).
The default for this setting is set by the mainboard firmware. If you do
not see output on your monitor, try setting console=tty1
.
It is possible to define multiple devices.
The settings discussed in this section apply only to the network interface used during installation. Configure additional network interfaces in the installed system by following the instructions given in Book “Reference”, Chapter 13 “Basic Networking”, Section 13.6 “Configuring a Network Connection Manually”.
The network will only be configured if it is required during the installation.
To force the network to be configured, use the netsetup
parameter.
netsetup=VALUE
netsetup=dhcp
forces a configuration via DHCP.
Set netsetup=-dhcp
when configuring the network
with the boot parameters hostip
,
gateway
and nameserver
.
With the option
netsetup=hostip,netmask,gateway,nameserver
the
installer asks for the network settings during boot.
ifcfg=INTERFACE[.VLAN]=SETTINGS
INTERFACE can be *
to
match all interfaces or, for example, eth*
to match
all interfaces that start with eth
. It is also
possible to use MAC addresses as values.
Optionally, a VLAN can be set behind the interface name, separated by a period.
If SETTINGS is dhcp
, all
matching interfaces will be configured with DHCP. It is possible to
set static parameters. With static parameters, only the first matching
interface will be configured. The syntax for the static configuration is:
ifcfg=*="IPS_NETMASK,GATEWAYS,NAMESERVERS,DOMAINS"
Each comma separated value can in turn contain a list of space character
separated values. IPS_NETMASK is in the
CIDR notation, for example
10.0.0.1/24
. The quotes are only needed when using
space character separated lists. Example with two name servers:
ifcfg=*="10.0.0.10/24,10.0.0.1,10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2,example.com"
hostname=host.example.com
Enter the fully qualified host name.
domain=example.com
Domain search path for DNS. Allows you to use short host names instead of fully qualified ones.
hostip=192.168.1.2[/24]
Enter the IP address of the interface to configure. The IP can contain
the subnet mask, for example hostip=192.168.1.2/24
.
This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the
installation.
gateway=192.168.1.3
Specify the gateway to use. This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the installation.
nameserver=192.168.1.4
Specify the DNS server in charge. This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the installation.
domain=example.com
Domain search path. This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the installation.
If you are not using the DVD for installation, specify an alternative installation source.
install=SOURCE
Specify the location of the installation source to use. Possible
protocols are cd
, hd
,
slp
, nfs
, smb
(Samba/CIFS), ftp
, tftp
http
, and https
. Not all source
types are available on all platforms. For example IBM Z does not
support cd
and hd
.
The default option is cd
.
If an ftp
, tftp
or
smb
URL is given, specify the user name and password
with the URL. These parameters are optional and anonymous or guest login
is assumed if they are not given. Example:
install=ftp://USER:PASSWORD@SERVER/DIRECTORY/DVD1/
To install over an encrypted connection, use an
https
URL. If the certificate cannot be verified, use
the sslcerts=0
boot parameter to disable certificate
checking.
In case of a Samba or CIFS installation, you can also specify the domain that should be used:
install=smb://WORKDOMAIN;USER:PASSWORD@SERVER/DIRECTORY/DVD1/
To use cd
, hd
or slp
,
set them as the following example:
install=cd:/ install=hd:/?device=sda/PATH_TO_ISO install=slp:/
Only one of the different remote control methods should be specified at a time. The different methods are: SSH, VNC, remote X server.
display_ip=
IP_ADDRESS
Display_IP
causes the installing system to
try to connect to an X server at the given address.
The direct installation with the X Window System relies on a primitive authentication mechanism based on host names. This mechanism is disabled on current openSUSE Leap versions. Installation with SSH or VNC is preferred.
vnc=1
Enables a VNC server during the installation.
vncpassword=
PASSWORDSets the password for the VNC server.
ssh=1
ssh
enables SSH installation.
ssh.password=
PASSWORDSpecifies an SSH password for the root user during installation.
To configure access to a local RMT or
supportconfig
server for the installation, you can
specify boot parameters to
set up these services during installation. The same applies if you need IPv6 support
during the installation.
By default you can only assign IPv4 network addresses to your machine. To enable IPv6 during installation, enter one of the following parameters at the boot prompt:
ipv6=1
ipv6only=1
In networks enforcing the usage of a proxy server for accessing remote Web sites, registration during installation is only possible when configuring a proxy server.
To use a proxy during the installation, press F4 on the
boot screen and set the required parameters in the dialog. Alternatively provide the kernel parameter
proxy
at the boot prompt:
proxy=http://USER:PASSWORD@proxy.example.com:PORT
Specifying USER and
PASSWORD is optional—if the server allows
anonymous access, the following data is sufficient:
http://proxy.example.com:PORT
.
Enabling SELinux upon installation start-up enables you to configure it after the installation has been finished without having to reboot. Use the following parameters:
security=selinux selinux=1
During installation and upgrade, YaST can update itself as described
in Section 3.2, “Installer Self-Update” to solve potential bugs
discovered after release. The self_update
parameter can
be used to modify the behavior of this feature.
To enable the installer self-update, set the parameter to
1
:
self_update=1
To use a user-defined repository, specify a URL:
self_update=https://updates.example.com/
If your screen uses a very high DPI, use the boot parameter
QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR
.
This scales font and user interface elements to the screen DPI.
QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1
You can find more information about boot parameters in the openSUSE wiki at https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Linuxrc#Parameter_Reference.