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I have a friend that wants to start playing with Linux. Naturally, they
do not want to disturb their Windows partition to do so, and it's a
laptop, so that's the end of that, pretty quickly.

However, he has a 250GB IDE drive in a IDE-to-USB housing that works
pretty well, and the laptop recognizes it as a device that can be booted
from. I'm still waiting on Slackware to download at home before I make
any more attempts at installing anything on it, but I know that RH and
Xandros (both systems I "won" at a local LUG meeting, but haven't yet
found a good home for) refuse to see /dev/sda even though the kernel
sees it just fine. They will only install to /dev/hda - at least,
that's the only option that their installers are giving me.

I half expect the same behavior in Slackware's case, since it will find
that the system itself is IDE based, before trying to find any other
drives. In any case, I was thinking, take the drive out of the housing
and install it in a desktop machine, install Linux on it, and with the
bootloader and all (since no boot loader that I know of, can communicate
with USB drives, it'd be pointless to put it on the Hard disk of the
laptop), and then just tell the laptop to boot off of that after I put
it back.

The only problem is this: I'm not exactly sure how one would go about
setting it up to actually boot from a USB drive - the Laptop can talk to
the drive to get it to boot, but what kind of hoops am I going to need
to jump through to get it to successfully boot the Linux system and get
it running, after the drive is placed back on the USB bus? Do I merely
place a USB / SCSI enabled kernel into an initrd? In theory, I would
think it'd be sorta simple like that, but I'm not entirely sure... so,
here I am.

Anyone have any ideas before I jump into this? It'll (obviously) be my
first time installing a distribution of Linux to run from a USB drive,
but it seems like it should work.

Thanks!

Mike

- --
Michael B. Trausch <fd0man+spam@gmail.com>
Website: http://fd0man.chadeux.net/spm Jabber: mtrausch@jabber.com
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On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 07:25:11 -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
> I have a friend that wants to start playing with Linux. Naturally, they
> do not want to disturb their Windows partition to do so, and it's a
> laptop, so that's the end of that, pretty quickly.
>
> However, he has a 250GB IDE drive in a IDE-to-USB housing that works
> pretty well, and the laptop recognizes it as a device that can be booted
> from. I'm still waiting on Slackware to download at home before I make
> any more attempts at installing anything on it, but I know that RH and
> Xandros (both systems I "won" at a local LUG meeting, but haven't yet
> found a good home for) refuse to see /dev/sda even though the kernel
> sees it just fine. They will only install to /dev/hda - at least,
> that's the only option that their installers are giving me.
>
> I half expect the same behavior in Slackware's case, since it will find
> that the system itself is IDE based, before trying to find any other
> drives. In any case, I was thinking, take the drive out of the housing
> and install it in a desktop machine, install Linux on it, and with the
> bootloader and all (since no boot loader that I know of, can communicate
> with USB drives, it'd be pointless to put it on the Hard disk of the
> laptop), and then just tell the laptop to boot off of that after I put
> it back.
>
> The only problem is this: I'm not exactly sure how one would go about
> setting it up to actually boot from a USB drive - the Laptop can talk to
> the drive to get it to boot, but what kind of hoops am I going to need
> to jump through to get it to successfully boot the Linux system and get
> it running, after the drive is placed back on the USB bus? Do I merely
> place a USB / SCSI enabled kernel into an initrd? In theory, I would
> think it'd be sorta simple like that, but I'm not entirely sure... so,
> here I am.
>
> Anyone have any ideas before I jump into this? It'll (obviously) be my
> first time installing a distribution of Linux to run from a USB drive,
> but it seems like it should work.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Mike
>
> - --
> Michael B. Trausch <fd0man+spam@gmail.com>
> Website: http://fd0man.chadeux.net/spm Jabber: mtrausch@jabber.com
> ================================================== =================
> Do you have PGP or GPG? Key located at pgp.mit.edu!
> Remove filter trigger from e-mail, or I won't get it, and -spm with
> the web URL, as well, to protect from spammers.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
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>
> iD8DBQFCWQ0XPXInbkqM7nwRAwP+AJ9avIWjPcacE1mJdr86TR zpiWNdXACffn/U
> LZLJW901whND81hOpXr5eeo=
> =TGZB
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

It would be a hell of a lot easier to give them a Knoppix live CD. If the
bios has an option to boot from a USB drive, I don't see what the problem
is. I have a distro I can boot from a USB flashdisk.

Michael B. Trausch wrote:
[boot linux from USB drive]

have you tried google? a search for 'boot linux usb' gives me quite a few
pages that look interesting.

--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 08:40:41 -0600, ray wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 07:25:11 -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> them a Knoppix live CD. If the
> bios has an option to boot from a USB drive, I don't see what the problem
> is. I have a distro I can boot from a USB flashdisk.

Mepis is pretty good as well.

JB

ray wrote:

Four lines, and added them to sixty lines of quotes, why? Please trim
the quoted material. http://home.online.no/~shughes/a57998/quote.html

--
Two Ravens
"...hit the squirrel..."

Hi
I have no experience with usb external HD but I'm sure that it i
possible to install Slackware on a SCSI disk. I'm guessing, but
think that the install procedure will end successfully using th
default bare.i kernel, because the install disk is a virtual SCS
disk that is seen as SCSI by the usb-storage kernel module
BUT the problem will rise at the first boot... the kernel will no
find root device /dev/sdaX because at that moment usb-storage and th
usb subsystem will not present in the kernel
My idea is: from another Linux box make a bootdisk using Slackwar
bare.i config file but with usb-storage and the usb hosts driver
statically compiled in
Then use this floppy to boot from the external usb disk: surely yo
will get many error messages, but at this stage the important is onl
booting the system
At last you can make your definitive kernel with usb, usb hosts
usb-storage, scsi, scsi-disk support statically compiled in, an
modify /etc/lilo.conf to boot the new kernel from the external us
device
If anyone has a simpler and better solution I will be very glad t
learn it!!
Best Regards
St

Message posted via
====================
www.linuxpackages.net/foru
www.linuxpackages.ne
Expanding the world of Slackwar
=====================

Two Ravens wrote:

Two lines of totally unhelpful, uninsightful nonsense.

Sadly your AUTHORITAR does not apply in this realm. Go hide in a bush
and get smited by a thunderbolt.

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ste wrote:
>
> BUT the problem will rise at the first boot... the kernel will not
> find root device /dev/sdaX because at that moment usb-storage and the
> usb subsystem will not present in the kernel.
> My idea is: from another Linux box make a bootdisk using Slackware
> bare.i config file but with usb-storage and the usb hosts drivers
> statically compiled in.
> Then use this floppy to boot from the external usb disk: surely you
> will get many error messages, but at this stage the important is only
> booting the system.
>

No floppy drive to speak of... it's a new(er) IBM ThinkPad.

Perhaps it'd be easier to use an initrd image to turn around and mount
the root partition? The only thing then is that my guess is that it
would make upgrading the kernel a PITA because then you'd need to
regenerate the initrd every time you compile the kernel, right?

I'm not exactly sure how it works, as I've never needed to use one.
I've seen them used, but... is it easy to implement, or am I going to be
banging my head for a couple of hours after the kernel building is done?

- Mike

- --
Michael B. Trausch <fd0man+spam@gmail.com>
Website: http://fd0man.chadeux.net/spm Jabber: mtrausch@jabber.com
================================================== =================
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bmgz wrote:

> Two Ravens wrote:
>
> Two lines of totally unhelpful, uninsightful nonsense.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. I was pointing out that where one does
not follow the conventions usual in the group in which one finds
oneself, one is likely to be disregarded by some within that group.

> Sadly your AUTHORITAR does not apply in this realm. Go hide in a bush
> and get smited by a thunderbolt.

Whatever an "AUTHORITAR" is, neither mine, nor yours, applies, thus it
is extremely unlikely that I will suffer the fate you seem to desire.
(Incidentally, I think the word you were grasping for, was 'smitten'.)

--
Two Ravens
"...hit the squirrel..."

Authoritar -> "Authority" from that fat guy from South Park.
Smited -> you were right, it is "Smitten".

I suppose it's foolish for ONE of me to lash out to TWO of you. apologies.