booting to USB HD ...

[star]

I have a usb hard disk but the boot floopy does not seem to be able to bring up the usb and detect to boot the disk.

There is a utility that does help called RUNT. www.ncsu.edu/resnet/runt/
but the the kernel of RUNT is 2.4.18 and not 2.4.20 which does cause some problems as the system will be referring to 2.4.18 but the modules, etc directories are of 2.4.20.

Can anyone help me to boot to my usb hd?

Thanks in advance!!

[BlckJck]

My solution to boot using a floppy disk might help. I boot of the floppy and am able to run from my USB CD-ROM. You will need to boot from the Knoppix CD first to get to the modules you need.

1) Boot up Knoppix, with your USB HDD attached and do an lsmod from a shell or command prompt. Locate the stuff used for USB. In my case, my USB CD-ROM uses usbcore for the bus, usb-uhci for the interface on the drive, and usb-storage to access the drive.

2) Then go to /lib/modules/2.4.20-xfs/kernel/drivers/usb. There you should find usbcore and usb-uhci for example (notice they and in .o). I also had to cd to storage to get usb-storage.o.

3) Copy the needed module files to a blank floppy. (This can also be used for you config saves)

4) Make a boot floppy from the CD using another floppy.

5) Shut down and reboot with the floppy. Choose expert mode when booting. It will go to spot where it asks you if you want to load additional modules, and it will list all the ones that are on the boot floppy. You do not want any of these so continue. It will then ask if you want to load additional modules from another floppy, yes you do. It will prompt you to insert that floppy, do so. Then it will list the modules you coppied. In my case I first load usbcore.o then usb-uhci.o and lastly usb-storage.o.

6) Then continue, it should locate your device and search it for a Knoppix install.

Good Luck, let me know if that works for you.

[Demon Worship]

I too have found the RUNT boot image and have curiosly considered into modify it to boot USB Drives (KNOPPIX/Linux system) on computers that don't support USB booting in the BIOS. I think it's clearly possible but haven't had time to make serious effort. It boots with USB support ( from Floppy/CD?) and then waits for a moment to allow the USB drive to come available. If anyone is looking into this keep the posts coming. I think this would have real possibilities. This would make a real portable system in your pocket. And would allow you to modify pakages and drivers without remastering and burning CDs. Always adaptable and with no size restrictions.

[laurentbon]

This would be a SUPERB fonctionnality.
Let me get that right before I get to excited: you keep your internal drive as it is for, say, windows, then you have the ability to boot from the, say, usb or firewire external Hard disk containing your nice Linux OS? Did I get that right?
And you don't need to partition in any way your internal hard disk!

If it is what you mean, that would be SUPERB. A truly portable operating system that you could even -I am pushing my luck here- use on any computer. I am very interested!

Keep me posted.

On the same theme, Demon Worship, do you know how I can find out if my bios supports booting from usb hard disk?

Thank you.

[Demon Worship]

Should be a boot option in the BIOS. Like the boot order. If your Bios Supports it. Typically you would have, to boot Knoppix CD: CD as 1st, Floppy as 2nd and HD1 as 3rd. Or any order You set up.

[laurentbon]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunatly my computer doesn't support booting from an other disk... I managed to take a look in the bios.

[niteshrink]

I've been trying it one way and another for a couple of days. Doesn't work. I can get the boot floppy to make my 'puter look at the usb hard drive by using expert mode (with the usb utilities on a second disk, as dscribed above), but it looks for a cd rom, not a hard drive. Can't find anywhere in plain text that fact can be changed, and I'm a rank newbie to Linux, so I am unable to edit anything that's compiled.
This is a swell an informative discussion, though. Thanks for the tips. Any help getting it to look for a hard drive (sda6) would be appreciated.

[c123]

I've been meaning to try the same thing with a 1394 external HDD. Would be good if this was amd possible... Anyone?

[iron hat]

Ok, i tried a USB hard drive installation, but LILO won't boot. The BIOS refers to the USB harddrive, but only the L of LILO is displayed on startup. I prefer Grub to LILO, so making the switch now and installing Grub would be the best method to resolve the problem. How would I go about this with a Knoppix CD?

[_Iz-]

I have the same problem as iron hat. Just the L shows up on boot. Anyone find a solution?

My system is capable of booting from USB as I got a 64meg flash drive to boot flonix straight from USB.