Final step to boot from an USB hard disk?
Jim Cornette
fc-cornette at insight.rr.com
Fri Mar 25 04:32:23 UTC 2005
Antonio Montagnani wrote:
> Following Simon's instructions ( www.simon.com/usb ):
> Please note that it is an IDE hard disk in an IDE to USB box (and
> working properly both in Linux and Windows...)
I have a bookdrive that contains an IDE drive. It installs fine with
FC4T1 without giving options to the installer. I haven't tried to boot
it yet. I didn't change anything from post install.
To boot from USB flashes, don't you need to do things in a different way?
>
> 1) I installed Fedora on the external Hard disk, installing grub on
> /dev/sda and deleting the option to start Windows as my goal is to have
> a Fedora system booting any laptop!!
Hardware detection from box to box might cause some problems. I change
videocards in BIOS ocassionally and this causes some problems. I imagine
adding and removing hardware from machine to machine would reveal some
pitfalls. The live CDs of different distributions might be more successful.
>
> 2) according to the instructions I created a new image
>
> 3) I modified the grub.conf file that now looks like:
>
> #boot=/dev/sda1
> default=0
> timeout=5
> splashimage (hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
> hiddenmenu
> title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
> root (hd1,0)
> kernel /vmlinux-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
> initrd /usbinitrd.img
>
> Is it correct??
>
> 4) I rebooted the machine, but the Rescue disk tells me that there is no
> Linux partitions!!!!!
I believe you need to add the askmethod using FC3
>
> 5) Fdisk -p /dev/sda says:
>
> Disk /dev/sda:81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
> 255 hads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cyclinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 0 8225280 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83
> Linux
> /dev/sda2 14 140 1020127+ 82 Linux
> swap
> /dev/sda3 141 9964 78911280 83 Linux
>
> If I manually mount the system by :
> mkdir /mnt/sysimage
> mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sysimage
> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sysimage/boot
> chroot /mnt/sysimage
>
> 6) At this point if I issue fdisk /dev/sda I get : Impossible to open
> /dev/sda ??? what does it mean??
Try ls /dev/* and see what devices are listed. I only have /dev/null
listed in my device directories.
I mounted my installation similar to what you have listed, but am only
running this installation through a gnome-terminal.
>
> 7) If I check my fstab file it looks like:
>
> LABEL=/ / ext3
> defaults 1 1
> LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
> none /dev/pts devpts
> gid=5, mode=620 0 0
> none /dev/shm tmpfs
> defaults 0 0
> none /proc proc defaults
> 0 0
> none /sys sysfs defaults
> 0 0
> LABEL=SWAP-sda2 /swap swap defaults 0 0
>
> Why boot1 and not boot????
The LABEL=device needs to differ from the other devices that you have
available. For my FC3 instalation I have these labels.
cat /etc/fstab
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/usbdisk ext3 pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/sda2 /media/usbdisk1 ext3 pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/usbdisk2 ext3
pamconsole,exec,noauto,noatime,sync,managed 0 0
For my Experimental USB rawhide install, I have this information in
/etc/fstab. This information is from the installation running in the
chroot. I think that these settings would be different if fstab-sync was
ran. I'll try it. (nope, see error under listing.)
cat /etc/fstab
LABEL=/1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sys /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
fstab-sync
error: dbus_bus_get: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.FileNotFound: Failed to
connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
Things seemed the same in fstab.
>
> 8) at this point I tried to instal grub (grub-install /dev/sda ) but I
> get the reply :
> /dev/sda: not found or not a block device!!!
This might be due to having no nodes ( /dev/sda and others not being
present within the chrooted environment.) I don't know how to get device
nodes loaded because they are not like once was (static and many) Now
they are dynamic and limited.
>
> Any help????Thanks
Probably not much help. I am more curious to how one can make this a
possibility.
Good luck! I'll try some of your suggestions.
Jim
>
--
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
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