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View Full Version : Help! How to boot linux installed to external USB HD Drive.


mikekgr
10-13-2003, 07:55 AM
Dear Friends,
These days I am trying to do the following:
I have an external USB Hard disk and this is connected to a PC that doesn’t support Booting from USB.
I installed Knoppix on this USB Hard disk (using Knoppix-install) and everything went perfect. So far so good BUT I have not found any way how to boot this Knoppix-Linux Installation.
I tried to use boot disk, Grub, LILO… but without success because at the booting time the USB device (My external USB Drive) is not possible to mounted as root nor to fetch the kernel from there. (This can only happened after loading kernel with the help of the related modules…). Also the standard Knoppix-Linux kernel doesn’t have USB support at the kernel only compiled as module. So it is not possible let’s say to copy the lilo and the kernel to a boot floppy Disk and to instruct lilo to boot kernel from floppy disk and root file system from USB (that should be sda?).
So I don’t know what I do in order to achieve Knoppix-Lilo booting from USB Drive.
Is there any way to do that? Is there any of yours that can help me???
Please keep in mind that I am very new in Linux so please try to explain me thinks in a very step-by-step way.
Thanks for your time.


Best Regards
Mike Kranidis
reecegeorge
10-13-2003, 08:19 AM
hi ya,

this distro might give you some clues, their archives might have a bit more info too.

http://flonix.tuxfamily.org/

reece
mikekgr
10-13-2003, 09:10 AM
Dear reecegeorge,
thanks a lot for your reply.
I have already seen your fine work but it is somehow different from what I am looking for. (My case is not live linus but insteed normal knoppix-linux installation). I am very new so it is not very possible to "convert" your solution to my case. If you can further help me...

Best Regards
Mike Kranidis
reecegeorge
10-13-2003, 09:50 AM
no dont know a lot about it myself, just came across the post a while back and thought it might be helpfull.

have you seen

http://www.ncsu.edu/resnet/runt/

i know this sounds basic so i am just want to say it as a reminder; have you tried googling "boot usb"? surely there is a foppy boot disk somewhere that will do it for you.

but then maybe there isnt. what a pain!

looks like this guy had to remaster dam small knoppix before he could get it boot from his usb

http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/

quote "You need to modify linuxrc in miniroot.gz and put the relevant usb modules in modules/usb/."
mikekgr
10-13-2003, 10:07 AM
Dear reecegeorge,

thanks for the link and the info. I will try these later on

Best Regards
Mike Kranidis
reecegeorge
10-13-2003, 10:12 AM
no worries, i am just sittin here trying to motivate myself to do some work.
danix
11-24-2003, 07:24 PM
You can boot knoppix 3.3 installed on hd with ext2 fs using the RUNT 3.0 bootfloopy.img. Hope this helps you.

Dani