OpenSUSE Install :: 11.4 - Normal Boot Works - Failsafe Doesn't

In summary, after updating from 11.2 through 11.3 to 11.4, normal boot works fine, failsafe mode hangs with two fatal errors - "Module atiixp not found" and "Module ide-pci-generic not found". i would like to fix this a) so I have a recovery position b) so I learn a little more. As 11.2 has gone out of support I decided to embark on the upgrades to 11.3 then 11.4 using the zypper method described on this site. I think failsafe boot worked ok with the original 11.2 install, but I never had to use it in anger, so I can't be 100% sure. I did not test failsafe in 11.3, just checked that the typical cd set of applications seemed ok before proceeding with the upgrade to 11.4.

I have an AMD processor, chip set and an ATI 3800 series graphics card, so I added the ATI repositories for 11.3 and 11.4 as i worked through the upgrades. At 11.4 there were some graphics glitches during normal and failsafe boot which were successfully fixed by adding "nomodeset" to both boot options. Normal boot works fine but failsafe boot hangs with the error messages above. Searching for failsafe boot errors is unhelpful since, in all cases I have checked, normal boot fails too. I did try removing "Xfailsafe" from the failsafe options which produced no change.

I am guessing that, in failsafe mode, the ATI drivers are not loaded into the kernel and the idea is to default to some safer drivers which, in my case, are not present for some reason. However, there seems to be little information on the origin or purposes of atiixp so I don't know how to go about fixing this. I have not really researched the generic pci driver issue, but I am guessing that this is a fall back when the expected atiixp is missing.