Knoppix boot hangs after Loading minirt.gz....... when booting from an USB disk (with the Knoppix CD content on it) and there are other disks recognized as SCSI disk.

Background

I have an IBM T43 with a PATA (IDE) HDD (see http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T43#footnotes) which is recognized as a SCSI disk under linux due to the SATA-to-PATA bridge. Furthermore I have an USB 20 GB FAT32 hard disk (the COWON iAUDIO M3) that contains the Knoppix 5.0.1 CD image (/knoppix and /boot directories with syslinux boot-enabled).

Detailed diagnostics

Negative: My USB HDD enabled Knoppix doesn't boot on my T43. After supplying the standard, expert or debug boot mode it hangs (doesn't continue) after the message "Loading minirt.gz.....". I think it's related to the internal HDD that is recognized as SCSI disk sda. Therefore the Knoppix USB HDD recognized as a SCSI device becomes not the first but the second SCSI device (sdb) assigned. I checked this with a Knoppix boot from CD drive (which is hdc).

Positive: As already stated, Knoppix is booting and running very well on my IBM T43 when using the CD drive as Knoppix root since the IDE drive hdc is used which doesn't conflict with the internal PATA disk aka /dev/sda. Additionally, I can also state that my USB HDD enabled Knoppix is working well since boot on an IBM X30 and a Dell D600 worked -- where the internal HDDs are recognized as IDE drives hda.

Solution?

I think I have to adapt the linuxrc script which is searching for the location of Knoppix and SCSI devices? Or does booting fail in an earlier state? How to enable Knoopix boot from the second SCSI drive (the USB HDD)? The solution must be flexible to cope also with a configuration where there's another internal HDD (sdb) -- where the USB disk becomes sdc -- and even if there are no IDE or SCSI devices.


TIA -- Sebastian