Jim Cornette ha scritto/wrote il giorno/on 20/03/2005 11:13:
Tnx Jim
As now it is too late to start this task, let me resume what I am aiming to and what is my experience...
1) I am trying to set up a Fedora on an external USB hard disk
2) I do want that the system will start Fedora immediately if the external disk is connected (otherwise Windows should run)
During installation I decided not to install Grub as my goal is to have a system booting Linux when the external HD i sconnected otherwise Windows must be started. No choices to the user....and I want to be connect to any system (mainly laptops) and use Linux
I toyed around a bit with an Industrial computer that was capable of booting from USB hard drives,usb-cdroms or usb-floppies once and the installation booted up to a point. I think the installation was RHL 7.3 and used devicenames vs labels. It kernel panicked, but at least it started to boot.
For your attempted setup, if BIOS supports usb booting devices, you might choose the usb-hard-drive as the booting device before the hard drive. In theory and with my limited success with booting from a usb hard drive, it *might* work.
I believe with labels (new default) instead of device names, grub should start from the boot loader in the MBR of the USB hard disk. The labels should allow every partition to find its mountpoint. If you cannot set your boot device order in BIOS, it would be a tough thing to get to work. I believe you would still have to run the line included in your reply below for the usb modules to be available for when the kernel loads and assumes control of the USB-HD.
Therefore I installed Fedora on this HD issuing the command: Linux expert noacpi
When I rebooted the system, of course it didn't boot (USB booting is available).
I tried to follow instructions at www.simonf.com/usb but I got lost.
When I issued the command
mkinitrd --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod --preload=sd_mod /boot/usbinitrd.img 2.6.9-1.667
I can see somewhat what they are attempting. I didn't try to get these usb related modules to be included in the kernel.
I asked on another list why this option was not available during instalations before. I believe erratic operation or other reliability issues were given as the reasons for the method not to be ofered during installation.
But the system didn't boot !!!
So I decided to check what was in the /boot directory and I didn't find the usbinitrd.img file.
Try unmounting the /boot partition and see if the intird is in the directory used as a mounting point for the boot partition. If the boot partition was not mounted when you ran mkintird, it would be in the /boot directory when the /boot partition is not mounted. I found that in rescue mode a few times, the boot partition was not mounted when I chrooted to /mnt/sysimage. I believe I ran rpm to install a kernel on a usb drive that I could only get functional when chrooting from a usb drive and the kernel was installed in the boot directory when the /boot partition was not mounted. (I didn't think to check if /boot was mounted.)
I suppose that I will have to issue the modified command mkinitrd.
At this point I realized that I couldn't see other directories..
This happened to me for the disk that I referred to. I tried googling for the references to mount an lvm with little luck. I then checked a webmail account of mine and found the mail describing how to mount an lvm. (initialize, then make mountable)
What is your suggestion?? to play a fresh installation with standard partitions (how do you manage them???) or making them active following your instructions?
I wouldn't trust my earlier directions to get a system active. It was luck that it worked well enough to get at my data. I believe that dev-mapper (Not sure of spelling or actual functions for this. But I realize it controls the lvms in some way.)
Jim
Tnx
-- You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
