FC4 install to external hard drive

[Jonathan Berry]

On 6/15/05, Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/15/05, Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 23:00 -0500, Jonathan Berry wrote:
> > > Hey everyone,
> > >
> > > I recently got an external HD (enclosure + internal disk).  I've been
> > > wanting to try installing to the external drive to see how it works,
> > > so I thought I'd try with FC4.  I get to Disk Druid and it will only
> > > show my internal HD on my laptop.  The external HD is very much
> > > visible to the system as I can do an fdisk -l from the shell and see
> > > it there.  I have to tell DD where to install, though, so how can I
> > > get DD to see (or show) the external HD?  Anyone have any ideas?  And
> > > let's try to avoid flames about the relative merits of DD and fdisk :
> > > ).  The disk is fully partitioned and all, I just need to tell Fedora
> > > where to install itself.
> > > This is FC4 x86_64 for the record.
> >
> > Is this a USB drive? The URL below has a link to a PDF about installing
> > FC3 on an external USB disk; the same procedure may work/be needed for
> > FC4 (never tried it, don't know for sure):
> >
> > http://www.vigla.eclipse.co.uk/
> >
> > Paul.
> 
> Hi Paul,
> 
> Yes, it is a USB hard drive.  Yeah, I had seen that link before, but
> hadn't really looked at it that hard.  Looks like you have to install
> with the "linux expert" flag to be given the option of installing on
> an external (USB) hard drive.  Now the question is, why is this not
> mentioned somewhere like the help menus or release notes or
> installation notes or something.  Even experts need *some* sort of
> documentation : ).

Hey again,

Well, I have FC4 running from my external hard drive after following
the instructions from the above link.  The PDF file has a lot of info
in it, so here are the high points in case someone else is interested.
 These should work fine if you have relatively modern hardware and can
boot from USB.

1. Boot the install with "linux expert" otherwise Disk Druid won't let
you install to your external USB disk.
2. Begin install as normal, use manual partitioning, be sure to use
partitions on your USB disk.  You might want to use fdisk to create
the partitions first if you have not already done so.
3. Choose not to install a bootloader when prompted.
4. Choose other options as wanted and wait for install...
5. Reboot with CD 1 or DVD in drive and boot it again with "linux rescue".
6. Don't bother with setting up network or auto-mounting installations.
7. Mount your / partition on /mnt/source and mount your /boot
partition (if required) on /mnt/source/boot
8. Here the real work begins.  Create new initrd (with USB modules)
and install grub
chroot /mnt/source
# make new initrd
mkinitrd --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod \
--preload=sd_mod  /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.usb.img 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
# install GRUB replace $arch with either i386 or x86_64
cp -a /usr/share/grub/$arch-redhat/* /boot
exit # exits the chroot so grub can find disks
/mnt/source/sbin/grub
# these commands are typed in the grub shell
# you should verify which partition has /boot and which disk is your USB disk
root (hd1,4) # partition where grub is installed, your numbers may vary
setup (hd1) # USB disk, your number may vary
quit # exit grub shell
9. Reboot, remove CD 1/DVD, make sure USB HD is set to boot before main HD.
10. You should get a grub prompt. If not you may need to do some more
work, see the above link.
11. Type the kernel and initrd lines manually (Note USB drive is now (hd0)):
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/1
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.usb.img
boot
12. You should be booting away now!  Oh, and after you boot, create a
/boot/grub/grub.conf file so you don't have to keep typing the above
:).
Note: in step 11 the use of the label in the kernel line.  DiskDruid
labelled it /1, yours may be differently.  Use e2label when in rescue
mode to check for yourself.  Also note that the initrd is the usb one.
 If you do not have a /boot partition, your lines will be more like
"kernel /boot/..."

If any of this doesn't make sense to you, see the link first (here it
is again http://www.vigla.eclipse.co.uk/ ).  I just wanted to throw
this together to highlight the portions that I found most useful and
relevant to me.  Most importantly you should know about GRUB and how
it accesses disks and what the numbers are for.  The link goes into
more detail on this and for things to do if you cannot boot from USB.

Jonathan