7 Boot parameters #

The normal installation mode. All modern hardware functions are enabled. In case the installation fails, see F5Kernel for boot parameters that disable potentially problematic functions.

Perform a system upgrade. For more information refer to Chapter 1, Upgrade paths and methods.

Starts a minimal Linux system without a graphical user interface. For more information, see

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 12.4, “Boot failure”.

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 Default the video resolution is automatically determined using KMS (“Kernel Mode Setting”). If this setting does not work on your system, choose No KMS and, optionally, specify vga=ask on the boot command line to get prompted for the video resolution. Choose Text Mode 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, or configure a proxy server. If the installation is deployed on a network with an SLP server, select an installation source available on the server with this option. Find information about setting up an installation server with SLP at Chapter 16, Setting up a network installation source.

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 No ACPI to install without ACPI support. No local APIC disables support for APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controllers) which may cause problems with some hardware. Safe Settings 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: Installation—ACPI Disabled or Installation—Safe Settings. Experts can also use the command line (Boot Options) to enter or change kernel parameters.

Press this key to notify the system that you have an optional driver update for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. With File or URL, load drivers directly before the installation starts. If you select Yes, you are prompted to insert the update disk at the appropriate point in the installation process.

Tip: Getting driver update disks

Driver updates for SUSE Linux Enterprise are provided at http://drivers.suse.com/. These drivers have been created via the SUSE SolidDriver Program.

The normal installation mode. All modern hardware functions are enabled. In case the installation fails, see F5Kernel for boot parameters that disable potentially problematic functions.

Perform a system upgrade. For more information refer to Chapter 1, Upgrade paths and methods.

Starts a minimal Linux system without a graphical user interface. For more information, see

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.

The autoyast parameter specifies the location of the autoinst.xml control file for automatic installation.

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.

Specifies a location for a file from which to read additional options.

IBM Z This helps to overcome the limitations of 10 lines (and 80 characters per line under z/VM) for the parmfile. More documentation on the Info file can be found in Section 9.3.3, “Combining the linuxrc info file with the AutoYaST control file”. Since the Info file can typically only be accessed through the network on IBM Z, you cannot use it to specify options required to set up the network (these options are described in Section 7.3.2, “Configuring the network interface”). Also other linuxrc specific options such as for debugging need to be specified in the parmfile to be effective.

To upgrade SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, specify Upgrade=1.

IBM Z A custom parmfile is required for upgrading an existing installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Without this parameter, the installation provides no upgrade option.

Load 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.

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.

Disable ACPI support.

No logical APIC.

Disable KMS.

Start installer in text 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.

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.

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. If you add the try option, configuration will stop when the installation repository can be reached via one of the configured interfaces.

Alternatively you use static configuration. With static parameters, only the first matching interface will be configured, unless you add the try option. This will configure all interfaces until the repository can be reached.

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"

Tip: Other networking parameters

The ifcfg boot parameter is very powerful and allows you to set almost all networking parameters. In addition to the parameters mentioned above, you can set values for all configuration options (comma separated) from /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template and /etc/sysconfig/network/config. The following example sets a custom MTU size on an interface otherwise configured via DHCP:

ifcfg=eth0=dhcp,MTU=1500

Enter the fully qualified host name.

Domain search path for DNS. Allows you to use short host names instead of fully qualified ones.

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.

Specify the gateway to use. This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the installation.

Specify the DNS server in charge. This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the installation.

Domain search path. This setting is only evaluated if the network is required during the installation.

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.

To install over an encrypted connection, use an https URL. If the certificate cannot be verified, disable certificate checking with the sslcerts=0 boot parameter.

If an http, https, ftp, tftp, or smb URL is given, you can authenticate by specifying the user name and password with the URL. Example:

install=https://USER:PASSWORD@SERVER/DIRECTORY/DVD1/

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:/

Display_IP causes the installing system to try to connect to an X server at the given address.

Important: X authentication mechanism

The direct installation with the X Window System relies on a primitive authentication mechanism based on host names. This mechanism is disabled on current SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versions. Installation with SSH or VNC is preferred.

Enables a VNC server during the installation.

Sets the password for the VNC server.

ssh enables SSH installation.

Specifies an SSH password for the root user during installation.

URL of the RMT server. This URL has a fixed format of https://FQN/center/regsvc/. FQN needs to be a fully qualified host name of the RMT server. Example:

regurl=https://smt.example.com/center/regsvc/

Make sure the values you enter are correct. If regurl has not been specified correctly, the registration of the update source will fail.

Location of the RMT server's certificate. Specify one of the following locations: