Installing Suse 10 to External USB Drive...

[oldman]

For SUSE 10.1 I have not had to make a usb initrd.img. In order to not make a special initrd it is necessary that you boot from the usb drive. SUSE 10.1 will create the correct initrd if when you install that you indicate the boot order of your drives. Just place the USB drive first. I have forgotten where in the install this appears but I do known it is there. Possibly where you are asked where to place the bootloader.

For example I use 3 drives- 2 ide and 1 USB (actually 5 different USB drives-like cards pick one). Drive 1 is my Windows XP and Dell partitions drive- Two bootable FAT hidden partitions and 1 Windows partition. Drive 2 is a NTFS data drive- not bootable. And drive 3 is one of my linux USB drives.

When setting the boot order in the SUSE 10.1 installation I set it in the following order :

hd0 is sda <-- my USB drive
hd1 is hda <-- my Windows drive
hd2 is hdb <-- my data drive

Since I place the bootloader on my USB drive if I unplug or turn off the power to the USB drive when I boot the computer goes directly to the ide drive with Windows.

I wiil say that because some distros will insist in installing the bootloader on the MBR of the ide drive I found a utility that will restore the Dell bootloader using the backup version from one of the Dell partitions.

[heywatzup59]

Thanks a lot oldman, i'll try that!

[heywatzup59]

Hey oldman,

Dell Inspiron 600m, BIOS A17
Hammer Storage (80GB Pocket Hammer) sda (SuSE 10.1)
Internal Hitachi 30GB hda (Windows XP and Ubuntu)
San Disk CF PCMCIA Card reader 96MB hde, no os (yet )

I tried the install your way by changing the order in the bootloader install (sda, then hda, then hde) and also in the BIOS (CD-R/RW, then USB removable device, then Internal HDD). However it would not boot from GRUB or through the BIOS. The rescue system would not work because it gave a read-only filesystem error. However, I was able to boot Ubuntu from the internal hard drive by moving it ahead of USB in the BIOS. From an Ubuntu terminal I did:

dan@danlaptop:~ # sudo su
root@danlaptop:~ # cd /media/sda6
root@danlaptop:/media/sda6: # mkdir ./mnt/suse
root@danlaptop:/media/sda6: # mount /dev/sda6 ./mnt/suse
root@danlaptop:/media/sda6: # chroot ./mnt/suse
danlaptop:/ # vi /etc/sysconfig/kernel

In VI, I saw there were already some of the modules, but they were not identical. "ehci_hcd uhci_hcd usb_storage" were there after reiserfs, so I changed them to "ehci-hcd ohci-hcd uhci-hcd sd_mod usb-storage." Then, I ran:

danlaptop:/ # mount -tproc none /proc
danlaptop:/ # mkinitrd

This gave me an error (I can't remember it), but it still installed the initrd and showed a list of libraries used (maybe?). However this did not appear to have any effect on the install because the next time I rebooted and changed the BIOS boot order back to USB first, it booted GRUB from the MBR of the external drive and booted into SuSE 10.1!!!!!

I have not tested as to whether the other entries for Windows and Ubuntu the external GRUB work or not. If you know what the entries in menu.lst should be, it would be great if you could post them here.

For anyone having the same problem and you don't have another linux version on your computer, you should check out Damn Small Linux (www.damnsmalllinux.org). You can burn the iso and then use that to install to a USB stick. It worked great on my San Disk Cruzer 512MB and it leaves lots of storage for files. If your computer doesn't support usb booting you can make a boot floppy from bootfloppy-usb.img and use that to boot into the usb stick. I think you could do this rescue from any version of linux.

Thanks oldman for the help

-dan

[Ozzyprv]

Excellent thread, thank you all!.

I just installed (yesterday) Suse 10.0 on my external USB Maxtor 180 GB drive. I had spent weeks trying to get it installed before bumping into this excellent guide.

I have only one question. During the installation process, one of many tries, I installed to boot loader (GRUB) on my internal drive (@MBR). Now I have, as indicated by this post, on my external drive.
How can I "delete" that boot loader from my internal drive? I want to be able to boot normally into WindowsXP when I turn my external drive off.

Thank you again.

Oz.

[oldman]

How to delete grub from your internal drive will depend on your computer. If you have a computer with out any utility or restore partitions you will need to run a fixmbr command ( do a google search on how). If you have a computer with utility or restore partitions it could get more complicated than that as the bootloader may have special properties. For example I have a Dell with both a utility and a restore partition. My computer has a custom MBR which will not be repaired by fixmbr. I had to do a search to find an answer, but I did.
Check the specifications for your computer. Most will work with fixmbr if yours is a Dell then I cn be of some help, I have broken my MBR several times. Dell's have Windows on the second partition of the first drive. The utility and restore partitions are hidden so that the Windows partition is the standard drive C.

[GrowlerV6]

Hey guys

damn i am glad i found this live(ish thread)

ok have Suze 10 on my external usb drive

only have the usb connection no power

managed to get it installed eventually but it will only boot now if I go via CD1 and select Boot Existing System

When I tried fiddleing with the Boot and MBR i got the dreaded (from what i have read) Grub Error 21

managed to fix that so am back to my XP hard disk (phew)

Laptop is a Thinkpad T41

Disk is a Archos Mini HD 40 gb

When I boot my machine the light flahses to say yes connection is possible but it just wont boot via the external drive

Bearing in mind I am a Linux noob of the worst extent and guidance from you kind folks will be greatly appreciated

[oldman]

Did you enter your BIOS and set the boot order to USB drive before IDE drive?
Or maybe I should ask if your computer can be set to boot from USB?

Grub error 21 is : Selected disk does not exist.
To quote the Grub Manual. "This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full file name refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system."

This raises somemore questions assuming you have set the system to boot from USB.
Did you create the required initrd that contained the necessary USB drivers.
They have to load FIRST. That is the purpose of the new initrd.

What is the contents of your /boot/grub/device.map file? Are the drives in proper order?

What does your /boot/grub/menu.lst (may be grub.conf) file look like?

Did you place grub on the MBR of the external drive? This is CRITICAL for making USB install systems easy to use. It also protects your internal drive
from being creamed by making errors when installing and booting.
Also some USB drives are slow to power up. I had one that was slow and was eratic in booting. It was a buss powered enclosure. I changed to USB enclosures that had their own power supply. When I turn on the power supply about 45 sec before booting I always get a clean boot now. This could be a problem with some enclosurers. The bad one I have cost around $10.00 US, very cheap. I do not know what your Archos unit is. I use a external 3.5" enclosure marked ME-720 Series. I have 5 with WD, Seagate and Maxtor drives from 80GB to 200GB.

If you computer can not be booted from USB you can create a boot CD to do the job. I have seen several threads about how but do not remember where. A Google search should find some help there.

oldman

[GrowlerV6]

Did you enter your BIOS and set the boot order to USB drive before IDE drive?
Or maybe I should ask if your computer can be set to boot from USB?

Grub error 21 is : Selected disk does not exist.
To quote the Grub Manual. "This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full file name refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system."

This raises somemore questions assuming you have set the system to boot from USB.
Did you create the required initrd that contained the necessary USB drivers.
They have to load FIRST. That is the purpose of the new initrd.

What is the contents of your /boot/grub/device.map file? Are the drives in proper order?

What does your /boot/grub/menu.lst (may be grub.conf) file look like?

Did you place grub on the MBR of the external drive? This is CRITICAL for making USB install systems easy to use. It also protects your internal drive
from being creamed by making errors when installing and booting.
Also some USB drives are slow to power up. I had one that was slow and was eratic in booting. It was a buss powered enclosure. I changed to USB enclosures that had their own power supply. When I turn on the power supply about 45 sec before booting I always get a clean boot now. This could be a problem with some enclosurers. The bad one I have cost around $10.00 US, very cheap. I do not know what your Archos unit is. I use a external 3.5" enclosure marked ME-720 Series. I have 5 with WD, Seagate and Maxtor drives from 80GB to 200GB.

If you computer can not be booted from USB you can create a boot CD to do the job. I have seen several threads about how but do not remember where. A Google search should find some help there.

oldman

Oldman many thanks

Suspect it is the drive that is the problem but I have the cd boot device anyway that you mentioned.

I leave it in permanently so when I power up my laptop i either just leave it or selct hard drive to boot from or tell it to boot Suze

I am away from my comp for a week on holiday as of tonight so I will leave it until I get back

I will keep you informed as to the outcome of my experiments

[ww2-]

Sorry to write in a relatively inactive topic, but I want to ask for help before giving up and installing another distro.

I'm trying to run SuSE 10.1 from my USB external hd. I've been partially successful from the start, since, at one moment, I was able to boot normally, but now I'm having a problem that is probably specific to SuSE's way of handling device names.

Being afraid of messing up and losing my data, I did the whole installation with all the other hard disks disconnected: only the external USB one remaining.

This is my PC's original drive configuration:

• 2 SATA I disks in RAID 0, running from my motherboard's onboard RAID controller (for Windows XP);
• 1 IDE ATA 133 40 gb drive (for additional data);
• 1 IDE ATA 133 40 gb drive in the external USB bay;
• 1 DVD-RW drive.

Now, the problem is I can boot in safe mode, but can't do anything in rescue mode (gives me a read-only file system) and can't boot by the regular way ("SuSE Linux 10.1"), since in the end I get the already mentioned "not found... exiting ... /bin/sh" error.

If I disconnect all other disks again, leaving only the USB one, SuSE boots fine.

So, this leads me to believe there's some sort of device assignment problem here. I tried editing /boot/grub/menu.lst and device.map with several combinations --(hd2,1) instead of (hd0,1), for instance-- but nothing worked. I managed to get a command line shell when using (hd0) /dev/sdc in device.map, but that gave me a strange (none):suse input line.

I know for fact that SuSE's installation created three sdaX partitions; boot, root and swap, in my external USB disk. I'm also sure that GRUB was installed solely on the USB disk, since I can boot to Windows XP normally when that device is off.

As you can see, I'm a complete newbie. Any help in figuring out this would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Edit: a bit more of information I forgot to give you

From SuSE's text mode installation, which provides a way to see hardware info, I got the following:

• RAID 0 array disks are /dev/sda and /dev/sdb (for some reason it recognizes them separately)
  
• USB storage is /dev/sdc (a discrepancy, considering SuSE installer configured GRUB to boot from /dev/sda2 and YaST hardware info shows the USB storage as /dev/sda too?)
• DVD-RW is /dev/hda
• Internal (not USB) 40 gb hd is /dev/hdb