Installing FC3 to a USB HD requires a drivers disk or something similar?

[Victor Marquez]

> sergiu at zergiu.com wrote / ha scritto on /il 07/05/2005 04:18:

... removed ...

>> vanilla) or the patch is available separately, but ... it doesn't work 
>> out of the box, thats for sure.
>> Sergiu.

Thanks for your comment Sergi

... removed ...

Antonio Montagnani wrote:

> I am happily running Fedora Core 3 from an external USB disk (actually a 
> EIDE HD in an USB envelope)
> No problem for installation, but after installation you have to create a 
> particular initrd.You can read a good document here at 
> http://www.simonf.com/usb/ and I have also a document written by John 
> Austin (I do not remember where he posted this document!!!)
> I understand that your disk is not recognized when hooked.What is the 
> output of lsusb???

Hi Antonio

Thanks for the information. In fact I just found the document of simonf 
after some googling. I will try it later today.

In the mean time i will make an update of this issue:

I was able last night to install to the external USB Hard Disk by 
following the instructions of the "RFE: Add USB install support" from 
Bernd Bartmann at 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=151690

The instructions and my results (MR) were:

1. enter "linux expert" at the syslinux prompt (expert is important 
because the USB storage devices are only available in disk-druid in this 
install mode)

--- MR: OK

2. you should now be able to partition the USB storage device as you like

and

3. install as usual but switch to Console #2 before the final reboot

--- MR: I just started the installation and partitioned the disk as
--- usual. I tried both manual and automatic partitioning (with and
--- without manually changing the automatic partition settings). Every
--- time I went over this process a pop up window came lots of times
--- complaining about several functions failing (example: Assertion ((c
--- * heads + h) * sectors + s == a) at disk_dos.c:494 in function
--- probe_partition_for_geom() failed).

--- MR: Every time this error window was shown I just clicked "continue"
--- and every time the installation just continued and at last it ended
--- (apparently ok).

--- MR: Some times I selected GRUB to be installed to MBR and sometimes
--- I selected it to be installed to root. Again, installation process
--- finished apparently ok every time.

--- MR: I was not able to switch to console #2, I think this was because
--- I installed in graphical mode but not sure if this is the cause.

--- MR: Anyway I created a rescue CD (from iso found in setup CD as
--- C:\xx\fedora3\images\rescuecd.iso) and after boot the rescue cd
--- found the installation made to USB disk and mounted it to
--- /mnt/sysimage, so I just ignored next step (step 4).

4. chroot /mnt/sysimage

--- MR: Ignored this step in my case, read previous step results.

5. mkinitrd --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod 
--preload=sd_mod /boot/usbinitrd.img 2.6.11-1.1177_FC4

--- MR: OK. I just changed the kernel version from 2.6.11-1.1177_FC4 to
--- 2.6.9-1.667 (FC kernel version of my FC installation).

6. edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to use the new initrd

--- MR: I did not found grub.conf at this directory. It might be 
somewhere else and/or with other name. Or maybe grub uses a different 
file name/format on FC3. I will investigate this later today.

7. Reboot

--- MR: Of course, my system wont booted. I tries to boot but displays
--- some errors. I will manually copy these error messages and send
--- another post later to see if somebody knows the answer.

(8.) This seems to be a bug:
When system booted it found my CF card but could not mount / although 
the e2label was created during installation. So I changed root=LABEL=/ 
to root=/dev/sda1 in grub.conf and was finally able to successfully boot 
from my CF card.

--- MR: I haven't checked this.

Conclusions:

I was able to install FC3 to my external USB Hard Disk. Partition and 
some installation steps showed lots of errors but it apparently finished 
  ok as I was able to "boot" to this installation by chrooting it with 
the rescue CD.

I was not able to complete Mr. Bartmann's steps because grub.conf was 
not in the pointed directory. My installation can't boot by itself.

Next steps:

- Locate grub.conf or check if grub is configured somewhere/somehow else 
in FC3 and try to finish Mr. Bartmann's steps.

- Try and/or adapt Mr. Simon's steps.

- Try to create a bootable "disk" in my USB memory card with grub or 
lilo and boot from there (my laptop lacks of Diskette Drive).

- Try to create a bootable MBR (master boot manager) "disk" in my USB 
memory card and boot from there (my laptop lacks of Diskette Drive).

I'll keep you posted.

Anybody have more information?

Regards and thanks again.

Victor Marquez