Can't access bootmenu after trying to install opensuse tumbleweed, am I softlocked?

Help
1

In the installation, I was asked to choose a de, I chose KDE obviously, then it asked me to make a user account. Then it went into installing, so i went away. I came back in a bit to see a cli where I couldn’t type (or do anything i think) so I held the power key for 5 secs (to shut it down) and then opened it again. Now it loads forever showing the laptop manufacturers logo

I used to be able to click control when it was rebooting to get a nice clean menu to other menus, like f9 on that menu to go to boot and etc, this was nice since I didn’t have to click f9 or the others by themselves. But now when I do, nothing changes BUT I get a small 12p text in the bottom left corner saying which key I clicked and what it was meant to do. Rn it’s such on this text

F9. . . Change Boot Device Order

So how do I access the grub/boot menu like this!? Am i soft locked?

2

This is more appropriate for an Opensuse forum, but it sounds like the install failed or crashed, or something similar.

Those F-key shortcuts are from your motherboard, so are very specific to your brand of PC.

3

been I clicked f9, it gave me the boot menu but now it doesn’t and I think installing an os can’t change the bootloader right?

btw sorry for asking here, mb

4

Oh, no, that’s OK.
I meant that you will get more knowledgeable help where there are more openSUSE people.
Grub and booting are from the distro, so fewer people here may be familiar with your system.:smiley:

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5

I don’t know if this can help you, but…

If you press Esc you can hide the plymouth and see the black screen with mounts, etc and theirs [OK], etc.

Maybe, also you’ll can see the Grub screen (if you have choosed Grub2-efi as Boot Loader).

Dominique, said this in the last Review of the TW for next snapshots:

Switch default bootloader on uefi systems to systemd-boot

Source:

Regards

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6

Woah! i didnt know that, so far every distro i tried had to same bootloader so i thought it doesnt change the bootloader

thx for the help, il ask on the OpenSUSE forums and maybe switch back to neon, no more distro hopping for me on my main

7

well look at my luck, i managed to install tw exactly when the probably only one update went live where it ruins the bootloader, ill have to look into it now

8

Two concepts to distinguish here:

  1. The motherboard firmware (UEFI on modern machines, still often called “BIOS”) that enables you to configure hardware settings, choose which device to boot from etc. This comes from your motherboard or laptop manufacturer, not from the distro.
  2. The piece of code that the firmware loads to initiate the process of booting into an OS. This is installed by the distro. On most distros it’s GRUB, but systemd-boot is also a possibility.

In the usual terminology, “bootloader” refers to (2). But I think you’re using it to refer to (1) - and in that case, no, installing the OS doesn’t change it, so it can’t lock you out of your firmware.

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9

Is only that in some future snapshot (I don’t know when but each Friday you have a new Review of the week) makes systemd-boot as default.

But in the installation you can change to grub2-efi, only that you don’t see which are choosed.
The same for security. By default, SELinux is choosed. But you can change to AppArmor.
In the installation you can also enable or disable Firewall and SSH i.e.

Remember that default not means the only.

Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20260307
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.23.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.19.5-2-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.3 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

Regards

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10

whoops, those terms were nearing hardware but my specialty is software so i didnt know.

the grub menu which shows me all the iso images detected on the device isnt activating.
i think its also called “boot device order“ selector or smt. but when i click f9 repeatedly, i just displays text telling me what it should have done (without actually doing anything) as i have already stated.

oh yeah i have ‘accidentally’ canceled a fedora install so i was left with no operating system, but the bios/bootloader was still working and allowed me to install a new one so i can get the iso installed for tumbleweed. funny to not have any os for a bit, but it was fixed so thats not the issue

11

wait so i can access a cli to tell it to change to grub? how?? how am i ment to bring the cli, i cant even open the bootloader

12

In the installation, you can enable/disable and choose things, choose packages to install, etc, before next to start installation.

i.e. Enable/Disable Firewall, SSL, Mitigations, and others.

I guess that you can change the bootloader (systemd-boot or Grub2-efi, and SELinux or AppArmor).

I hope that this can help you.

Regards

13

Oh, perfect timing, i have already installed it and now am stuck and cant get to the grub to be able to install another OS

its too late to change it like that, sadly.

thx for helping tho

14

Forgot to update, @nathaniel.krebs helped me solve the issue. Special thx to him!

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