I've been trying this for 2 weeks and gave up now. I have hp thin client and wanted to install damn small linux on external hdd-usb drive.

I have grub menu and kernel seems being launched but in the end I end up with:

Code:
modules/usb-storage.o: unresolved symbol ................
.................. ..(more unresolved symbol messages)
modules/usb-uhci.o: unresolved symbol .................
.....................(more unresolved symbol messages)
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8,errno = 2
VFS: Cannot open root device "sdb2" or 08:12
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:12
First i followed instructions from DSL wiki [Installing_to_the_Hard_Disk] from my other laptop with ubuntu installed:

but after reboot i got error from grub regarding stage1 and i found out that mapping is incorrect and there is no stage1 file. So i copied boot files from my ubuntu system (especially stage1 and stage5 - is this ok to reuse those files from other distros?), setup menu.lst and device.map and manually updated mbr. Below are some listings:

grub
Code:
grub> null (hd
 Possible disks are:  hd0 hd1

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 (hd1,1)

grub> root (hd1,1)

grub> setup (hd1)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1)"...  17 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd1) (hd1)1+17 p (hd1,1)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.

grub>
fdisk -l (from laptop not terminal)
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0c55e774

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        7847    63030996    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            7848       30401   181165005    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            7848        8466     4970496    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6            8467       12164    29704153+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           12165       12772     4883728+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8           12773       16541    30274461   83  Linux
/dev/sda9           16542       19459    23437312    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda10          19459       30401    87890944    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 2030 MB, 2030043136 bytes
24 heads, 23 sectors/track, 7182 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 552 * 512 = 282624 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1               1        7183     1982338+   6  FAT16

Disk /dev/sdb: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6905f4a2

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         156     1253038+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2   *         157         764     4883760   83  Linux
device.map
Code:
(hd0) /dev/sdb
(hd1) /dev/sda
(hd2) /dev/sdc
menu.lst
Code:
default 0
	
timeout 15

title DSL
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/sdb2 init=/etc/init vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal
initrd /boot/initrd.gz  

title DSL fb800x600
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/sdb2 quiet vga=788 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal 
initrd /boot/initrd.gz  

title DSL fb1024x768
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/sdb2 quiet vga=791 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal 
initrd /boot/initrd.gz  

title DSL fb1280x1024
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/sdb2 quiet vga=794 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal 
initrd /boot/initrd.gz
Under my hp thin client this partition is visible as hd0,1 and as I've said i have proper grub menu from my usb-drive and kernel prints some messages while being launched.

It seems that root=/dev/sdb2 kernel boot options the most appropriate because when i started systemRescueCD from pendrive i checked:

fdisk-l
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 64 MB, 64028672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Disk /dev/sdb: 4064 MB, 4064280576 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 494 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0217934c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1         495     3968992+   6  FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(493, 254, 63) logical=(494, 30, 48)
SDA is an internal flash drive in thin client but it's too small so it's not used. Terminal has option in bios to boot from USB.

And the last listing:

/etc/fstab
Code:
/dev/sdb2  /  ext2  defaults,errors=remount-ro  0  1
proc  /proc  proc  defaults  0  0
BTW i used "debug" kernel option but there a lot of messages - is there any way to log it to some file? I guess since it cannot mount /root there will be not persistent logging?

Is device.map required in grub along with root=/ option in kernel?

Does anyone managed to boot some distro using grub from USB-HDD drive?