main fc5 system on sda1 [byers@bootp drhmail09]$ uname -a Linux bootp 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5 #1 Tue Aug 8 15:30:55 EDT 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux I am trying to boot from a backupcopy of my mainfc5 which backupcopy is in top dir of the usb disk /dev/sdc1 mounted as /media/disk-1 when in mainfc5 that usbdisk is one large reiserfs partition sdc1 1) first problem if i use in grub.conf in a new stanza root (hd2,0) corresponding to /dev/sdc1 then boot fails immediately "hd2 does not exist" I also note that when booting my mainfc5 there is an early message (not seen in dmesg) something like cant find special .../dev/sdc1 then later in the boot process it does find sdc1: [byers@bootp drhmail09]$ dmesg |grep sdc1 sdc: sdc1 ReiserFS: sdc1: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal ReiserFS: sdc1: using ordered data mode ReiserFS: sdc1: journal params: device sdc1, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30 ReiserFS: sdc1: checking transaction log (sdc1) ReiserFS: sdc1: Using r5 hash to sort names both pieces of evidence imply that usb disk not available early enough in the boot process Is there any fix for this or a workaround? 2) second problem if i cheat and copy the /boot dir from the usb fc5copy into /dev/sdb3 and use root (hd1,2) in grub.conf then again attempting to boot from usb gets to ok booting the kernel but shortly fails with "could not find /dev/root" and other "couldnotfind" then kernel panic,locks up googling "could not find /dev/root" reveals that this has been a problem in several fedora last few yrs, (most or all of them _not_ using external usb disk) fc6,fc7 maybe i saw one on fc8 as well but no clean solution, in general not obvious (to me) why it occurred. some cases helped with use LABELs, some not. ( i tried this, no help) some cases helped with complex(to me) mkinitrd some cases helped with earlier kernel, but i dont see explanation of why In my case, the following stanza using an older kernel does boot! but has other problems. eg networking not avail until i do a 2nd boot I got the older kernel from some oddball kubuntu thing i was experimenting with way back title FC5copy (2.6.15-26-386) usbfc5 /media/disk-1 (hd1,2)sdb3 rootusb root (hd1,2) ## sdb3 kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 ro root=LABEL=rootusb rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386 this kernel 2.6.15-26-386 instead of what i use in mainfc5 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5 Is there any current advice re "could not find /dev/root"? has anyone seen it in f8,f9,f10? thanks for any advice yes i know i should get f9 or f10. but i would like to see if I can find clean method to booting from usbexternal disk. Jack