Hardware :: Booting Slackware From An External USB?
Aug 31, 2009
I've spent two whole days trying to get this to work and I believe I may be on the verge of insanity.
In any event, my goal is to have Slackware 13.0 be installed on an external USB drive and for any computer I use to be able to boot from that USB drive and load Linux.
I used fdisk to completely repartition the external hard drive making the first partition for '/' and toggling the boot flag on it.
I installed lilo on the USB drive, rebooted, disabled the internal hard drive, and instructed the computer to boot from USB.
"No boot options available."
I assumed there was a problem with the MBR. I booted into Slackware setup, performed a lilo -mbr on the external hard drive. Rebooted.
Still "No boot options available."
What could possibly be wrong? Yes, my computer does support booting from USB.
Do all hard drives have MBR's? Does fdisk overwrite the MBR when you partition it? If it does, do I have to ignore the first 1MB when I partition my disk so that lilo can boot from it? I remember having to do similar with 'parted' when I had to format a flash drive for being bootable.
The other problem I have is that the /dev/sda can change. Just because a USB drive is /dev/sda today doesn't mean it won't be /dev/sdb tomorrow. Is it even possible to have a boot loader load correctly, considering that you hard code the device name into the /etc/lilo.conf? I was thinking of using grub to manually choose where to boot at load, but that doesn't seem to be an option as grub looks like (i may be mistaken) it tries to find a root and then looks for the grub config info in that drive. I also don't think that grub loads USB drivers at runtime, nor do I think lilo does either, which makes me wonder even more if it's remotely possible.
View 2 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Mar 1, 2010
I'm fairly new to Linux so I'm going to need a step-by-step guide to get me out of this rut. The install of Linux was fine but when I booted up I got this error. VFS: Cannot open root device "302" or unknown-block (3,2) append a correct "root=" boot option;here are the available partitions;
0800 78150744 sda driver:sd
0801 47428608 sda1 <-- this is my Windows partition
0802 30719552 sda2 <-- this is my Linux partition
0b00 1048575 sr0 driver:sr
0b01 1048575 sr1 driver:sr
Kernel panic - not syncing:VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (3,2) I guessed from reading this error Lilo isn't pointing to the right partition to boot from? How will I fix this? I read another thread about boot problems on these forums and a guy said to do this:
#mkdir /slacktemp
#mount /dev/device /slacktemp
#chroot /slacktemp
#cd /slacktemp/etc <-- for me it told me that doesn't exist
#vi lilo.conf <-- couldn't do nothing and was frozen
#lilo -v -t -b /dev/device
#lilo -v -b /dev/device
The above solution did not work for me. Can anyone shed a light on a Linux rookie?
View 14 Replies
View Related
May 19, 2015
Yesterday I tried to install some packages via synaptic manager and it rendered my system without GUI and without network so apt-get does not work to fix it.
I made a clone of my hard disk with dd a month ago and have daily backups of my data.
My hard disk in the laptop is a SSD. (sda) the external hard disk is an laptop hard disk connected via a USB IDE connector (sdb)
today my system booted from the sdb hard disk. Which was unexpected. I am updating the data on sdb now. the problem I have now is that I can not access sda. How am I supposed to mount it ? My plan was to overwrite sda with sdb
after shutting down, disconnection sdb, rebooting and connecting sdb again I tried
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda bs=4096 conv=noerror, sync
then I get the message dd invalid conversion
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 17, 2010
My old GoBook IX250 won't provide option of booting from any external sources (hdd, flash drive, etc.), but I would think there should be some editing done to end of the boot fs on internal hard drive which would instruct the boot loader to allow choice of OS on external hard drive for booting -- have no idea just what should write there to obtain this result;
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jan 29, 2010
I prepared my external harddrive to become bootable correctly, xcopied ubuntu iso onto it, and restarted my computer with the usb mode as the primary boot sequence and I got the error of no BOOTMGR?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Mar 29, 2009
i want to boot a live version of linux from as an external hdd.. wat are the procedures to be carried out for tat?..
View 1 Replies
View Related
May 13, 2011
I bought a new laptop HP Pavillion dv3-4170ee that has Core i5 2.53ghz dual core with hyper threading, intel hd graphics and Ati Radeon HD 5470 512 mb dedicated. It came with windows 7 64bit. It also has 6 gb ram(2gb in first slot + 4 gb in the second one).I installed slackware 13.37 64 bit. It installed just fine. installed lilo onto mbr. When it boots up it shows the slackware screen. I am able to boot into windows just fine. When I select Linux it boots into linux bios data check successful. lots of stuff goes on the screen the normal linux boot stuff. and then it goes to the next screen and stays blank
Nothing happens and even the hard disk light is not blinking.By the way the HDD is Western Digital.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jan 21, 2010
I was given an external USB drive which has Windows XP Pro on the first partition. I can mount and access the partition with no problem. When I run update-grub, it finds the XP partition and creates a menu entry for it. But when I select it from the Grub menu, I get an error that the device is not found.
Results of sudo fdisk -l
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00086c27
[Code]....
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jun 6, 2010
I been meaning to install some linux distro on my external hdd to enjoy the renowned desktop experience, so far I installed sabayon first but it wasn't working very sharply and a friend of mine recommended me to just install ubuntu. Anyhow, since the first time I installed sabayon I could not boot vista when the external HDD is not plugged in. I get a grub rescue command prompt. I don't have a vista cd because my laptop came with the whole recovery function installed on a vista partition. I can boot that from the grub menu, from there I did a boot system restore, but I still get the same error. I'd like to be able to boot vista without having the external HDD on of course.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 14, 2014
Debian not booting from USB external SSD drive. Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae been installed on new SSD, attached to Windows 7 laptop. When I select "USB storage" in Windows boot order menu and try to boot, Linux not booting, every time loading Windows. Is it ever possible to boot linux with such setup?
[URL] .....
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 21, 2010
I installed Ubuntu on a portable harddrive so that I can use it independently of my computer (when I visit my parents or my g/f). I performed the installation using a bootable Ubuntu thumbdrive, everything went fine but when I unplugged the thumbdrive and rebooted I got a kernel panic. I was able to boot into Ubuntu on my external drive once (I think it might have been due to reordering boot order in BIOS). My guess is that the kernel panic occurs due to the drive letter changing (sdb -> sdc) depending on which external devices are plugged in, but I'm not sure how to make sure that's the case. And if it is, how would I prevent this from happening?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 5, 2010
installed Ubuntu 9.10 in an internal SATA drive and used it for quite a while, but yesterday my laptop's graphics card decided to die, and it looks like it will be a full month until I get replacement m/b. Therefore, I bought an external USB SATA Hub for my laptop's drive, but I can't seem to be able to boot ubuntu from this drive. I'm trying to boot with this external usb hub attached to an old P4 machine with USB booting enabled.I get till the grub screen, but as soon as the message "Grub loading" appears, I get a message saying:error: no such partitionand I get a prompt as follows:grub-rescue>I guess grub is trying to boot to a different device name... It's weird, I thought Ubuntu should boot irregardless of which interface I use, be it SATA or USB.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Oct 25, 2010
First time user of Ubuntu and first post on this forum. So i installed Ubuntu on an external hard drive, it took me a couple days. I followed the web sights direction and when i saw the option for windows or Ubuntu, clicked Ubuntu and that brought me to this:
GNU GRUB Version 1.98+2010...
Minimal BASH-like line editing is suported. For the first word, TAB list possible command completion. Anywhere else TAB list possible device or file completions.
GRUB>
No tricksters Im having a profetional check this stuff before i use any of it
View 1 Replies
View Related
Sep 14, 2010
I am booting a certain system of mine with ubuntu 9.10 from external HDD. I am satisfied with the setup and it works fine, however I would like to modify it so that I can choose which graphic card drivers to load during the boot time. Specifically I would like to choose between:
nvidia proprietary driver
ati proprietary driver
generic driver
Currently if I am using proprietary drivers then dont boot into X, delete xorg.conf, start gdm and reconfigure the system using jockey (for hardware drivers).
What would be the steps to make this (semi-)automatic and avoid restarting X?
Where could one find examples of such scripts?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jan 29, 2011
I'm not exactly a computer pro. I had copied Ubuntu netbook on to a USB with the program given at Ubuntu.com. I plugged it in and booted it via F12 on my Alienware M17x and I chose to try it. When I selected to try it, it wouldn't work at all and I sat there for about an hour. I turned the laptop off, and now it says I'm "Missing" the OS. Which means my Windows 7 is gone.
My friend had told me to do something with Gparted, but it didn't help. He did say that my files could possibly still be there (which would be AMAZINGLY awesome. I just wish I could get things back to the way they were yesterday. I need to know what is wrong with the partitions though, since I think that the errors are related to the partitions. It is a Solid state drive. My priorities are:
1. Save my files (if they are there still) to an external HD
2. Re-install Windows 7 (if needed)
3. Install Linux alongside Win7
View 4 Replies
View Related
Aug 4, 2009
When my 2 external usb hard drives (just storage based on ext3) are plugged and I'm booting Linux, it starts spamming plenty of output about these devices. I think during loading sensors daemon. At the end hangs. Previously I've noticed that the same happened on terminals. It was annoying, because spam was flooding even vim editor. I see this after major system update or rather new Linux installation. What I supposed to switch off to avoid this unwanted output?
Code:
MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes" #MOD_BLACKLIST=() #deprecated
MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq_powersave !dm-mod !speedstep-centrino r8169 iwl3945 !ipw3945 !snd-hda-intel !snd-mixer-oss !snd-pcm-oss !snd-hwdep !snd-page-alloc !snd-pcm !snd-timer !snd !soundcore evdev psmouse !loop !bridge vboxdrv !autofs4 !capability usblp usbcore ohci_hcd ehci_hcd uhci_hcd !dm-crypt !aes-i586 !sha256 !osscore)
# # DAEMONS
# # # Daemons to start at boot-up (in this order)
# - prefix a daemon with a ! to disable it
# - prefix a daemon with a @ to start it up in the background
# DAEMONS=(syslog-ng acpid sensors network netfs hal avahi-daemon cups crond oss)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Aug 12, 2010
would putting ubuntu on an external hard drive and booting it from refit work? and would i was starting up my imac 11,2 my ipod was bootable for some reason?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 2, 2010
Is it possible to create a boot CD to boot external volumes on an Apple iMac 7.1 (which has an older firmware version and cannot boot external disks, unlike the MacBook Pro 5.1 which can do it, at least with grub-legacy which is all I'll ever use until EFI boot becomes available). There is some promising stuff on www.pendrivelinux.com, and I'll try it, but the instructions are for Windows, and I am not sure how to translate the menu.lst entry to linux (I suppose it would have to be entered in the "automagic" section). Of course I don't want to create a bootable flash drive but to use my external volumes that already boot on the MacBook Pro without altering them, except for installing the ATI video driver (but I have no problem booting in low graphics mode).
Until karmic there was a trick to make the iMac mistake the external volume for an internal one (the root partition had to have the same UUID as the internal root partition), but this does not seem to work for lucid. Anyway this UUID trick is dirty and causes problems when you want to edit the internal partition (which is the point of the external boot - you get a customized maintenance environment that boots much faster than the CD).
View 1 Replies
View Related
Oct 18, 2010
I saw that /isolinux / kernel was updated in current. So I thought time to give it a try.
My installition and computer stops after
Parsing Elf OK
Booting Kernel
This seems to happen because the kernel or initrd.img is being overwritten. I solved this in 13.1 with PV's help by inserting the /isolinux and /kernel directory from 13.0 into the 13.1 files before running growisofs.I have again tried all the other suggestions from my previous post with 64-13.1. no success only using isolinux from 13.0 works I am running the current kernel on my main system 2.6.35.7 since the day it was put on kernels.org this was my previous thread on this problem
[URL]
would love to hear some suggestions on this as I just assumed it would be solved for 13.2 or whatever is next where to find the source for the initrd.img used in /isolinux.Possible the rest of the boot source would help. I have been trying to decode what happens on the DVD boot. Looked at arch/x86/boot/compressed/
View 13 Replies
View Related
May 27, 2010
Dell optiplex 740 running slackware64-13.0 2.6.34 #1 SMP Mon May 17 13:50:21 EDT 2010 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux downloaded install DVD using Eric's mirror script burnt two dvds
I get the screen asking if I need to enter anything press enter the dots run across the bottom of the screen then jump to the top and machine dies after line "Booting kernel" even the 'elephants can't get it to move' power off is only option other dvd's are bootable including ones burnt on this machine after the 13.1 dvd
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 7, 2010
Well, I noticed this by accident while trying to use dash for the rc.d scripts. I messed up and forgot to link it to /bin, and as such, the system failed to boot properly and would not respond. I rebooted (forcefully), but this messed up the filesystem. I booted the sw64 install DVD and tried to mount it, and it would not mount.
I tried to run fsck on it, but it said that fsck.jfs in NOT available. Eventually I booted my old slamd64 12.1 DVD and it had fsck.jfs. Any reason why this rather useful program was removed ? Or is it a bug, or is my DVD messed up? I guess I should just keep around another live CD, I do keep knoppix, but it boots so slow and I don't understand it at all, it's so hard to do anything with it.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jan 9, 2010
I could go on for pages with the different things that I've tried. The end result with all of them is that the Kernal isn't found by any bootloaders. Lilo won't install and errors out. I don't remember the specific error, sorry. I can't use the usb boot stick it has me make during the installation, it just doesn't boot. My CPU is a dell optiplex GX520, Pentium 4 2.8 ghz, 512mb ram, SATA hd. Nothing too out of the ordinary. I want to believe there's something incompatible in the hardware with the standard kernal, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Feb 21, 2011
before login form appears while booting slackware, my pc gets into this error loop: mysqld_safe error. And there is no way to stop it. My cdrom is broken so I cant run slakcware 13.1 dvd to see if I could do smth. How can I repair this.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 31, 2010
I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on a spare partition, but didn't want to install Grub since I'm sure Ubuntu isn't going to be around for more than a little test drive. The problem I have is that lilo doesn't like the initrd.img file, complaining that it's too large. I'm assuming this file should be in the initrd line for the lilo entry. If someone is booting Ubuntu 10.04 with lilo it would be nice to see the lilo entry or any tips.
View 4 Replies
View Related
May 15, 2010
after update to tle latest -current using slackpkg my slackware not boot. After hit enter after bootprompt the pc restart.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jan 9, 2010
I put a larger drive in my netbook and stuck the old in an external USB enclosure so I could use it for backups. It had three partitions on it, ntfs and linux so I deleted all the partitions and created one big linux partition. Every time I write and exit fdisk the removable disk utility in KDE pops up and says ntfs drive. If I ignore it and try to formatit wants to use ntfs, if I fsck.ext3 it saysThe superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2filesystem. If the deviceis valid and it really contains an ext2filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblockis corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:e2fsck -b 8193 <device>2fsck -b 8193 doesn't work either.It seems like its caching something, I can print the partition table and see the one linux partition I created.
Code:
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
[code]...
View 3 Replies
View Related
Apr 6, 2011
Yesterday, I bought a 1TB WD Passport, for backup and storage. It uses NTFS, and I've had no problems manually mounting and moving files to and from it from root. However, I don't like having to be root to in any way modify the data on the drive. In order to avoid this I decided to create a line in fstab that would allow permissions to the user, so I added this to my fstab:
Code:
/dev/sdb1/mnt/external ntfs defaults,
noauto, noexec, user, uid=1000, gid=users, umask=0022, nls=utf8 0 0
This allows me to mount, unmount, and peruse the external HDD - however, if this is active, neither the user NOR root have permission to make any changes. The HDD acts as read only, even though there is no "ro" option on my fstab.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Feb 14, 2011
Here's the idea -- be able to boot slackware 13.1 DVD from a USB stick, but without using anything like an initrd or loading the contents of the slackware install all into memory first. So the USB stick is behaving like a hard drive (but with one disadvantage, just don't take the usb stick out while you're using it!). It has the advantage of saving on memory though .
In the above thread I had this idea working ok but only with slackware 13 and earlier. In fact I still have the CF card with it on, and it works fine. Only snag is it won't work with the newer 13.1.
Right now, I'm trying to use qemu for the following (not what I wrote above!). The idea is to use qemu to install a minimum slackware 13.1 to the USB stick, set it up and then boot from the USB stick itself (so I'm using the USB stick as the storage medium as opposed to say a hard drive image file).
So let's say (this is what I'm doing) I boot slackware 13.1 (32 bit) and make two partitions;
Code:
I then do a minimal installation of slackware (just "A" and jed from "AP"). Lilo is not installed as later I'll be using GRUB2 to try to boot.
I'm using a slackware package, grub-1.97-beta4-i486-1.tgz for slackware 13.1/GRUB2.
I then boot off the slackware 13.1 DVD but at the boot screen I choose to boot from /dev/sda2 which is the linux install I created earlier. Success, it boots ok and I can get into the slackware 13.1 install on the USB disk (which is /dev/sda2).
I then label the ext3 partition by using e2label;
Code:
And also change /etc/fstab;
Code:
Now I need some sort of bootloader to put onto the USB stick so I don't need the DVD any more. To do this, I'm trying to use GRUB2.
But here's the problem!
When I install slackware onto the USB stick using qemu, that partition is /dev/sda2. It's the first usb/storage medium that slackware detects so it gets the name sdaX. (X=1, fat partition, X=2 EXT3 linux).
But here's the problem. Suppose I take the USB stick over to another PC with a hard drive already inside it. Slackware would see the hard drive installed in that PC as (say) /dev/sda1 and the USB stick would then become the second drive, so /dev/sdbX (X=1, fat partition, X=2 EXT3 linux).
If I specify a specific device (lets say /dev/sda2) then it won't work in another system because if I take the example above, another PC with a hard drive installed in it the USB stick becomes /dev/sdb2 and the GRUB2 boot program would be expecting /dev/sda2 which won't work. What I need to do is to somehow find the install, the root on the USB stick automatically without having to specify it manually.
So here's what I've tried with grub (First thing I did was to install grub with grub-install /dev/sda).
Code:
Snag is it dosen't work :-( I get this booting from the USB stick:
Code:
If I try this:
Code:
I get a very similar result ....
Code:
So what I'm wondering is .... if the "search" line in grub is doing the searching for the root GRUB2 needs to use to boot from - how can I tell the next line, "linux /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.33.4-smp root=...." where to boot from? I can't use /dev/sda2 or /dev/sdb2 because if I try the usb stick in a different PC the stick will be a different device name. Trying to use LABEL= or /dev/disk/by-label/USB/ also dosen't work .
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 2, 2011
I'm considering trying out Slackware just because I want to try something new. I've used Ubuntu for a couple of years and Debian for nearly a year so I do have some Linux experience. I do have some questions before I begin though. I've read that all configuration is done through text files. Does this include things like changing resolution and keybindings?
- I've also read that Slackware lacks a package manager. So does this mean that I'll have to download what I want from the internet and keep it up to date myself? Is there no repository? How are packages installed in Slackware? Is it a fairly simple process?
- Is installing multimedia codecs and Microsoft's True Type Core Fonts a fairly simple procedure? What about dependencies? I've heard that it has no dependency checking. So would I have to look up a list of dependencies for every package that I wish to install?
- How is LILO? Does it work well dual booting with Windows? In Ubuntu and Debian as soon as I install the OS, I can immediately access the internet from my wired router. Would I have to jump through any hoops in Slackware or can I expect similar results?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 4, 2010
I'm using Slackware 13.0. When Slackware starts to boot up, there is the picture of a Penguin displayed at the top section of the screen. How do I specify a different picture? Is it in some script that I can modify?
View 2 Replies
View Related
