Bill Davidsen wrote: > If you did an install on a USB drive to avoid space issues on the > internal drives, (a) where will the boot install, and (b) what will > happen if the USB drive is unplugged? > > I have a laptop and don't want to mess with the internal drive with FC4, > Win2k, and Slackware installed,I use it for training. I'd like to put > Ubuntu on a plug-in, but I don't want to outsmart myself. > If you have the option in your BIOS to boot from a USB device, you can have the drive set up with Grub completely on the USB drive. The Grub install is a little tricky, because the BIOS mapping is different when you do the install then it is when you boot from the drive. What I did was do the install, but not install Grub to anywhere. Then I booted from the install DVD in the rescue mode, corrected grub.conf and device.map making sure that the USB drive was drive 0. You then have the option of running grub-install with the --root-directory=<mount point> or chroot <mount point> and running grub-install. You will want to specify the USB drive as the install device. Make sure you use the correct device, or you will mess up booting from your internal hard drive. Because you already have Linux installed on your internal drive, and I would guess a working Grub or LILO setup, you could install Grub for the new installation on the MBR of the USB drive, and add a chainload entry in your current grub.conf pointing to the MBR of the USB drive. That way, you can use the normal update tools to keep the grub.conf up to date on the USB drive, and booting without the USB drive will not be a problem. If you do the install described above, you will need to have grub remap the BIOS drive numbering before changing to the USB drive. You need the USB drive to be the first drive. But for this to work, I believe that your BIOS has to map the USB drive into the drive list. If I have time, I will be trying this later today, so I will let you know how it goes. I did the install to the USB drive last night, and it boots F7 when I tell the BIOS to boot from the USB memory device. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
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