Installing Fedora on USB DiskOnKey and booting from different machine

[Phil Meyer]

On 10/30/2009 09:54 AM, Mark Ryden wrote:
> Hi,
>    I installed Fedora 11 on a DiskOnKey. I booted from this DiskONKey
> successfully on the machine
> on which I made the installation. However, when I tried on two
> different machines, it failed, and it reached the
> grub command line. On a third machine it reached a line containing the
> word GRUB only.
> I wonder - is there a way to install Fedora 11 on a DiskOnKey so that
> it will boot from any machine (which is capable of booting from USB )?
>
> Note: I had made my trials on motherboards after verifying  that these
> motherboards **do** support boot from
> USB disk on key.
>
> This is the grub.conf on the USB DiskOnKey:
>
> title Fedora (2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64)
> 	root (hd0,0)
> 	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=e73e50db-2420
> -4792-a347-3e15ed38c5b9 rhgb quiet
> 	initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64.img
>    

This is usually caused by the BIOS reordering the drives.  Some MoBo 
will see the thumb drive as the first drive, and some will see it as the 
last drive, thus confusing grub.

This can often be overcome by asking the BIOS to change the boot order 
to USB first.  On many BIOS this will reorder the drives according to 
the boot order.  However, the only way to guarantee a boot from thumb 
drive, is to remove all internal drives, which probably defeats the purpose.

Good Luck!