If you encounter any problems using the openSUSE Leap installation media, check the integrity of your installation media. Boot from the media and chooseMore › Check Installation Media from the boot menu. A minimal system boots and lets you choose which device to check. Select the respective device and confirm with OK to perform the check.

In a running system, start YaST and choose Software › Media Check. Insert the medium click Start Check. Checking may take several minutes.

If errors are detected during the check, do not use this medium for installation. Media problems may, for example, occur when having burned the medium on DVD yourself. Burning the media at a low speed (4x) helps to avoid problems.

If your computer does not contain a built-in bootable DVD drive there are several alternatives. This is also an option if your drive is not supported by openSUSE Leap.

One reason a machine does not boot the installation media can be an incorrect boot sequence setting in BIOS. The BIOS boot sequence must have DVD drive set as the first entry for booting. Otherwise the machine would try to boot from another medium, typically the hard disk. Guidance for changing the BIOS boot sequence can be found in the documentation provided with your mainboard, or in the following paragraphs.

The BIOS is the software that enables the very basic functions of a computer. Motherboard vendors provide a BIOS specifically made for their hardware. Normally, the BIOS setup can only be accessed at a specific time—when the machine is booting. During this initialization phase, the machine performs several diagnostic hardware tests. One of them is a memory check, indicated by a memory counter. When the counter appears, look for a line, usually below the counter or somewhere at the bottom, mentioning the key to press to access the BIOS setup. Usually the key to press is one of Del, F1, or Esc. Press this key until the BIOS setup screen appears.

Regardless of what language and keyboard layout your final installation will be using, most BIOS configurations use the US keyboard layout as shown in the following figure:

Figure 4.1: US Keyboard Layout #

Some hardware types, mainly very old or very recent ones, fail to boot. Reasons can be missing support for hardware in the installation kernel or drivers causing problems on some specific hardware.

If your system fails to install using the standard Installation mode from the first installation boot screen, try the following:

If this fails, proceed as above, but choose Safe Settings instead. This option disables ACPI and DMA support. Most hardware will boot with this option.

If both of these options fail, use the boot parameters prompt to pass any additional parameters needed to support this type of hardware to the installation kernel. For more information about the parameters available as boot parameters, refer to the kernel documentation located in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt.

Tip: Obtaining Kernel Documentation

Install the kernel-source package to view the kernel documentation.

There are other ACPI-related kernel parameters that can be entered at the boot prompt prior to booting for installation:

When you have determined the right parameter combination, YaST automatically writes them to the boot loader configuration to make sure that the system boots properly next time.

If inexplicable errors occur when the kernel is loaded or during the installation, select Memory Test in the boot menu to check the memory. If Memory Test returns an error, it is usually a hardware error.

After you insert the medium into your drive and reboot your machine, the installation screen comes up, but after you select Installation, the graphical installer does not start.

There are several ways to deal with this situation:

You inserted the medium into the drive, the BIOS routines are finished, but the system does not start with the graphical boot screen. Instead it launches a very minimalist text-based interface. This may happen on any machine not providing sufficient graphics memory for rendering a graphical boot screen.

Although the text boot screen looks minimalist, it provides nearly the same functionality as the graphical one: