On Jan 23, 2008 3:22 PM, John Andersen wrote:

On Jan 22, 2008 4:56 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

...

Listmates,

I can't recall who suggested it, Aaron or Patrick, but somebody made the suggestion to get a simple use to ide adapter to access spare laptop drives, etc. Well, I purchased one, and it is absolutely the sharpest thing since sliced bread. I have several drives for my laptop and murphy's law dictates that what you need is always on the other drive (theme, notes, etc.)

I connected the usb cable to my spare 2.5 inch drive, changed the bios to boot from (1) removable devices (2) hard disk (3) cd/dvd drive (4) network. (Laptop is a Toshiba P35-S629) I turned the computer on, the usb drive started right away and it looked like the system was booting from the usb drive. However, the system booted from the installed hard drive instead.

The usb drive was mounted automatically as:

media/disk /dev/sdb7 spare 10.3 /home media/disk-1 /dev/sdb6 spare 10.3 / media/xpdrive /dev/sdb1 spare 10.3 XP partition

Is there a grub boot parameter like (boot=/dev/sdb6) that will tell grub to boot from the usb drive? The reason being is that I would like to boot the install to update it. Any help will be appreciated and thank you whoever it was that recommended the usb to ide solution!

I too would like to see this. I use both USB and Firewire enclosures that I would occasionally like to boot.

But I'm betting you won't get that to work because you would have to load some software just to get it to see that drive, and I'm not sure those pieces are going to be in the initrd.

I've booted the CDs / DVDs via an external USB optical drive numerous times, so I suspect the initrd has all the pieces for working with USB connected drives. Most likely just a matter of editing the right grub entry and the fstab on the external. I havn't tried it, but it does not sound that hard. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Aaron Kulkis (akulkis00@hotpop.com) [20080124 11:23]:

So, part of the solution is recompiling the kernel to include the USB module (and all the others which the USB module depends on).

Nonsense! You add the necessary modules to INITRD_MODULES in /etc/sysconfig/kernel and then afterwards call mkinitrd. It's that simple! Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

John Andersen wrote:

On Jan 24, 2008 9:29 AM, Philipp Thomas wrote:

...

* Aaron Kulkis (akulkis00@hotpop.com) [20080124 11:23]:

...

So, part of the solution is recompiling the kernel to include the USB module (and all the others which the USB module depends on).

Nonsense! You add the necessary modules to INITRD_MODULES in /etc/sysconfig/kernel and then afterwards call mkinitrd. It's that simple!

Philipp

Have you actually DONE this? It sounds like speculation to me.

NAME mkinitrd, mk_initrd - create initrd disk image Sounds correct to me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Jan 25, 2008 8:15 AM, Philipp Thomas wrote:

I haven't tried with USB, but with any other boot media I've encountered.

Nuff said. Presumably the OP wanted to boot some other OS off of the USB disk. You are going on about initrd like you ASSUME he is going to boot linux off of a USB. Say he has Windows on the USB device. Then what? You expect that to boot with linux drivers? GRUB is a boot loader, a mini operating system all to itself. It does not relay on Linux. It can boot almost any OS, BUT ONLY if it can read the media. I see no reason to expect Windows or Solaris to run with Linux drivers found in the initrd. -- ----------JSA--------- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

John Andersen wrote:

On Jan 25, 2008 8:15 AM, Philipp Thomas wrote:

...

I haven't tried with USB, but with any other boot media I've encountered.

Nuff said.

Presumably the OP wanted to boot some other OS off of the USB disk. You are going on about initrd like you ASSUME he is going to boot linux off of a USB.

Say he has Windows on the USB device. Then what? You expect that to boot with linux drivers?

GRUB is a boot loader, a mini operating system all to itself.

Not really. Grub is just a boot loader...although a very fancy bootloader, in that it actually understands multiple filesystems of several different operating systems. It's not even functional enough to be a monitor, let alone an operating system.

It does not relay on Linux. It can boot almost any OS, BUT ONLY if it can read the media.

I see no reason to expect Windows or Solaris to run with Linux drivers found in the initrd.

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Exactly. If grub loads from the usb device, it doesn't have to be told about the usb device. Chicken or egg thing. Lincoln Rutledge Network Engineer OSC Networking 800-627-6420

...

...

Bill Anderson 01/24/08 7:33 AM >>>

On Jan 23, 2008 3:22 PM, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Jan 22, 2008 4:56 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

...

Listmates,

I can't recall who suggested it, Aaron or Patrick, but somebody made the suggestion to get a simple use to ide adapter to access spare laptop drives, etc. Well, I purchased one, and it is absolutely the sharpest thing since sliced bread. I have several drives for my laptop and murphy's law dictates that what you need is always on the other drive (theme, notes, etc.)

I connected the usb cable to my spare 2.5 inch drive, changed the bios to boot from (1) removable devices (2) hard disk (3) cd/dvd drive (4) network. (Laptop is a Toshiba P35-S629) I turned the computer on, the usb drive started right away and it looked like the system was booting from the usb drive. However, the system booted from the installed hard drive instead.

The usb drive was mounted automatically as:

media/disk /dev/sdb7 spare 10.3 /home media/disk-1 /dev/sdb6 spare 10.3 / media/xpdrive /dev/sdb1 spare 10.3 XP partition

Is there a grub boot parameter like (boot=/dev/sdb6) that will tell grub to boot from the usb drive? The reason being is that I would like to boot the install to update it. Any help will be appreciated and thank you whoever it was that recommended the usb to ide solution! I too would like to see this. I use both USB and Firewire enclosures that I would occasionally like to boot.

But I'm betting you won't get that to work because you would have to load some software just to get it to see that drive, and I'm not sure those pieces are going to be in the initrd.

I've booted the CDs / DVDs via an external USB optical drive numerous times, so I suspect the initrd has all the pieces for working with USB connected drives.

Most likely just a matter of editing the right grub entry and the fstab on the external. I havn't tried it, but it does not sound that hard.

Greg To find the initrd and vmlinuz files, GRUB uses the BIOS. Consequently, if the BIOS doesn't allow booting from a USB port, then you can't boot

Greg Freemyer wrote: directly to the USB drive. It make no difference what it on the end of the USB cable, it is still goes through a USB port. You would have to create a boot CD that would boot a minimal kernel that was smart enough to know about USB and then boot from the USB drive itself. You might find more details at pendrivelinux.com. I believe there is also a openSUSE howto on this subject. Bill Anderson WW7BA -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

John Andersen wrote:

On Jan 24, 2008 4:33 AM, Bill Anderson wrote:

...

To find the initrd and vmlinuz files, GRUB uses the BIOS. Consequently, if the BIOS doesn't allow booting from a USB port, then you can't boot directly to the USB drive.

This might be true for some values of "boot".

Grub is launched (booted?) by the bios. After that, it is explicitly told where to find its initrd/vmlinuz/command.com or whatever by lines in the /boot/grub/menu.lst.

As long as enough drivers can be made available to handle the USB port, Grub itself imposes no limitation on which devices it can "boot" from

But if the BIOS doesn't have USB capability, then it can't find grub on a USB device, forcing you to install grub on something else. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org