Ubuntu Installation :: Grub - Installing 10.04 64bit On An External USB Drive
Jul 15, 2010
The default (graphical) installer did not work on my PC (i7 quadcore 8 GB DDR3). I have installed Ubuntu using the alternative installer (Desktop, 64 bit) on my external USB drive. I installed grub on the MBR of the second drive (/dev/sdb) as I did not want to touch my (first) Windows disk. After reboot (chosing the USB drive as boot device, else Windows is booted) grub reports an error and enters the rescue mode. I tried all possible combinations of "root=(hdX,Y)" in grub.cfg to no avail.
I repeated the whole procedure but now disconnected the internal HD with Windows. Installation went smooth again (Windows disk was not seen this time), but after reboot (the internal drive connected or not) I again get (slightly different this time) grub error: can not find file.
I would like to install Linux Ubuntu 11.04 on an external hard drive - its partitioned and ready for Linux.I've downloaded and burnt the .iso file to a DVD so its all good so far...First of all... is this possible without messing up my macbook? I don't particularly want to break into my macbook to disconnect the hard drive (I read on a tutorial for a previous version of Ubuntu that I'd have to do that... - does it still apply to 11.04?) - as it voids the warranty (I checked ).The reason I ask this is because I had a friend who partitioned their internal hard drive and installed Ubuntu on it. But after installation was complete they couldn't boot up Windows 7 or Ubuntu... and it resulted in them having to clean install Windows 7... - I don't want to end up in that situation
Second... If it is possible to install it without messing up my macbook... - Do I just follow the install instructions but just make sure that where possible I make sure that everything is installed on my external hard drive?...I really need someone to put my mind at rest that everything will run smoothly and that I'll be able to run Mac OS X as usual but also that I'll be able to boot from my external hard drive to run Ubuntu.
I am trying to install 10.04 to an external HD (not flash). I ran the live CD, installed to it and all seemed to work fine, but I don't want to use GRUB. I ran 7 repair and did a bootrec /fixmbr and it's booting normal, but I can't boot to USB.I want it to boot normal, unless I hit F12 to boot to removable device. Not much of a Linux person, but I am trying to be.
I looked around on these forums and google and came to no solution so, I decided to make this thread. I'm using Windows XP and after I downloaded and tested out Ubuntu 9.10, I decided I'd like it as a second OS, can I install Ubuntu on my external hard drive (1TB)? would installing on an external hard drive take away the risks of losing data etc? If I installed Ubuntu on my external hard drive would it delete any files already on my hard drive?
I tried to do this and something went wrong, and caused so much trouble that I decided I didn't want to do it at all. Then I changed my mind today, and decided I'll try again even after all that happened.
I tried doing a search and couldn't find anything relatively recent on the topic so here is my question.
I am fairly new to the linux world and am in the process of trying out a couple different distributions. I am doing this by installing them to an external hard drive. This allows me to test them out without affecting my main system in any way. I have already tried openSUSE and it installed with no problems. I am trying to install Ubuntu, however when the installation tries to install GRUB2 it fails asking me for a different location to install it to.
When installing I unhook all drives from the computer except for the dvd drive, usb drive I'm installing from, and the external hard drive I am trying to install Ubuntu to. I'm not sure what else may be of use.
I've been running Debian Lenny kernel 2.6.26 w/ desktop kde3.5 on my laptop for a while, and im going to take a trip in which i will be unable to take wmy laptop with me. However, where i am going contains computers and i figured if i could install debian onto my external harddrive, i could just boot onto the other computers. I install it using the debianlenny-i386 dvd image. However whenever I try to boot it from a computer. Grub returns
Code: Grub Loading... Error 21 and then the blinkng cursor. On one site i found something saying "you may need to activat the drive" and some command-line instructions on how to do it. However the commands have faded from memory and i am now unable to find that site again. Could anyone offer insight on how to fix this "grub error 21" or how to activate it. I run primarily debian but i have a windows partition on one of my relative's computers. Thank you in advance for the help!!! btw I'm installing on a western digital 500gb "passport" external hard drive with ext3 and swap partitions.
I have Ubuntu/Vista dual boot desktop with Single HDD (200GB) that i cloned to an external USB HDD (320GB) using clonezilla. My intention is to use the external HDD as a backup to up running in case my 3 year old desktop HDD fails. To make sure the clone is good to use if need, i connected external HDD to USB port and tried boot from it but got "Error 18". I tried to Google got some infoDid a fdisk -lu and got the following.
Code: Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
i currently have lucid installed on my laptop hard drive. i took this drive out and then on a new drive in its place i have installed windows 7. reason why i couldn't put windows 7 on the same drive is that i have a BIOS based system and the hard drive is GPT based not MBR. therefore, i couldn't get windows back on it.
I figured that using an esata expresscard interface i should be able to use the Windows 7 drive externally without much speed penalty since ExpressCard in my case is implemented on PCI Express and not USB.
So i can update grub using Code: update-grub
and Windows 7 appears on the list. However, when i select this option during boot, it gives me errors that indicates that the external drive cannot be found (not surprising)
My guess is that when GRUB appears, the external hard drive has not been detected yet, and the modules for the expresscard may only be loaded during the boot process of lucid.
So I am wondering if there is anyway I can get this to work. meaning use lucid on my main drive and boot to Windows 7 from the external drive time to time.
I have got a hold of a extra hdd along with a hdd enclosure. I have tried looking for information on how to install linux on to one but haven't been completely successful on my search. So I turn to all of you. I was also wondering if its possible to have it were I can use it on multiple computers so I can use it for computer repair.
I've tried to be clever but as usual I didn't think before acting and missed a small detail.
I have recently installed karmic (dual booting with Vista) on my dell xps laptop. The install went fine, I'm very happy with my new OS.
I bought a new Seagate 500GB portable external HDD. I got a bit over-excited and installed karmic on the external drive. This worked fine and I got a lovely (but slow to appear) Grub2 menu showing my vista and both ubuntu options.
My problem is that now, when I unplug the external drive, Grub fails and I get a grub rescue> prompt. So I need the external drive to be plugged in if I want to boot.
It seems I have done something to the grub configuration. I have read around the subject but I am not confident about how best to proceed.
I understand there is an 'advanced' option in the installer which will allow me to choose where to install grub. Presumably I want it on the internal drive so that I can boot without the external one plugged in.
Am I right in thinking I can just pop in my install disk and redo the installation?
If I indicate I want to install Grub on the internal drive, which partition should I aim for?
Will I get a grub option for booting to the external drive?
Will I be able to plug the external drive into a different machine and boot from it?
I haven't done anything with the fresh install on the external drive so I don't mind losing that.
I have an hp laptop and i had ubuntu on it for 3 years. my hard drive started to fail a while ago (i had ubuntu 10 on it until 1 week ago) and a then it all went black...I took the laptop to a repair shop, they told me it was the disc, so i bought a new disc, installed it on my laptop and reinstalled the new ubuntu 11. so far so good. i have now a working OS, internet connection and i can in fact type this message.
The thing is: all my files are on the old drive, which doesn't load/boot/start/read anymore. I have tested it on some friends's pc, tried a few HD disgnostic tools, they all send the same message: "fail"
I then tried to mount my old drive (with all my precious files in it) on my laptop as an external drive (usb) hoping that ubuntu 11 could read it as an external usb key: it gets read by the system, but it shows no files at all. it also shows an error message saying the drive can not be mounted, with some "sdb1" thing. i am sorry but i'm really dumb when it comes to tech language.
Then i tried to boot it on start-up but i got the grub rescue> thing and nothing else, just a sad, blinking cursor to recover my files,i have also tried testdisk but couldn't understand very well how to use it, and then photorec, from which i recovered bits and pieces of files, with no name. some of them are just parts some of them are complete.
My problem is: i have to get access to my files, as I use them for work, i couldn't do a back-up recently and i have some real important deadline to meet... for which i need those files. is there any way i could solve the grub issue and have that drive load/mount again as external usb?
I installed unbuntu 9.10 on a dual partition for alongside windows. Grub failed during installation and now I can not boot to windows or ubuntu. I can not repair with the windows cd, I can not do anything in Windows recovery no format, no fixboot, no chkdsk, no anything, it tells me there is no valid drive when I am in dir C:. In Ubuntu live CD I can see all the files are there on the local disk. What do I need to do to fix this
I have a HP Compaq 6710b notebook with W7 on it. I want to use Ubuntu for hobby activities, but as this is a company notebook, W7 should remain intact. I decided to install Ubuntu to an external drive.I set BIOS boot order to CD-USB-HDD.I attached a 2.5" 250GB WD Passport usb hard disk and installed Ubuntu to it from the CD.As a result, the clean install doesn't boot, I get a mere grub console (normal, not rescue).
Examining the situation I learned, that during Live CD session the inner hdd is hd0 and usb drive is hd1. Grub.cfg gets compiled to use /dev/sdb.When booting from usb drive, BIOS makes it to be hd0 and inner hdd becomes hd1 so grub tries to load kernel from W7 partition (and can't find it, I wonder why? )How to fix problem? Although grub.cfg is supposed not to be edited, may I change every sdb to sda in it?
i recently started dual booting with Kubuntu using an external HDD. GRUB works fine, but it sees two Kubuntu's on the drive. In GRUB, i see "Ubuntu-Linux Kernel (for some reson its not identified as Kubuntu) on /dev/sdb1 (external drive)", then i see recovery mode beneath it, and the exact same line right below recovery mode, followed by another recovery mode. strangely, selecting either one boots into kubuntu no problem at all. is this a problem and is there anyway i can delete the duplicate entries?
I just bought WD External Hard drive for my laptop and found out that there is no support for Linux. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 and need advice on installation.
Is there a way to install 11.04 on a external USB drive. I tried the regular install but it will not let me pick the drive, it wants to install on my internal HD. I know I can use Startup disk Creator but It set it up like a install USB and it takes forever to boot up. Also if I use Unetbootin I won't be able to save files to the USB Drive.
I have windows on my box, I have fedora 14 on my external that goes through my usb. Grub is installed on my usb. Since the only thing stored on my external was fedora i really didn't have to do much to it. just go into bios and boot from usb. Now that im using fedora more, Id like to add Vista to my choices. I guess the numbers change once your using an external drive. Ive read some of the problems like mine but they didn't quite do it. Im going to inclose 2 screen shots of my drives/partitions and my grub.conf.
# grub.conf generated by anaconda # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
I have issues in installing HP Ultrium 448 external tape drive on HP ML 370 G5 server running Red-Hat-Linx OS. It has a SCSI interface & I thought it was suppose to plug & play but not. I got an information that all i need to do is echo "engage scsi" > /proc/drivers/cciss/cciss1 but unfornately i do not know how to do this because i just began learning about LINUX,
I am keen to start using Ubuntu and have installed it on one of 4 partitions on my new 1 TB external HD. I got to the reboot stage where I was expecting a new boot screen where I could decide to use either XP or Ubuntu. But there is no mention of Ubuntu just XP and the volume I installed Ubuntu on has disappeared. I can find the other 3 volumes on My Computer.
I tried to install Ubuntu on an external drive, but it doesn't boot, but it installed GRUB on my main HD, and now I can't even boot Windows. I only get a "grub rescue" prompt. I need to remove GRUB. How to do it?
I'm having the same problem this guy had. He got an error message when trying to install LinDVD, but since he realized he didn't actually need the software in the first place, the thread is still unsolved.
My computer has no CD/DVD drive. I just got a Toshiba External SuperMulti Drive that I want to use for reading CDs and DVDs. The drive included a CD with LinDVD on it, which I can put into the drive and use to install LinDVD. However, the Package Installer gives me the same status message as CKMBDavis had: Error: Wrong architecture 'lpia'.
I tried just hooking up the drive to my computer and inserting a DVD. It prompted me to open Movie Player, which I did, but when it tried to actually play the DVD, a pop up box came up that said, "An error occurred. Could not read from resource." VLC will not play the DVD either.
Here is my output for print architecture in response to adam814's first comment on CKMBDavis's thread:
Code: $ dpkg --print-architecture i386 I also tried adam814's suggestion in his second comment: Code: $ dpkg --force-architecture -i <lindvd.deb> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'
I've got Vista installed on my notebook and I've bought an external drive (1,5 TB, but its size shouldn't matter in this case) and after formatting it I left 10 gigs for future purpose. Now, I decided to install 64bit debian on the unallocated 10 gigs. And so I did. To be precise: I have SATA drive inside my lap and hard drive (it's also SATA inside the cover) connected to my lap through USB. Boot sequence was 1)CD/DVD 2)hard drive 3)removable drive. During the installation the installer detected my internal drive as /dev/sda and my external drive as /dev/sdb. I decided to install grub on /dev/sdb (it was logical to me, since I didn't want to mess up my regular drive's MBR). Installer created 5 partitions on my USB drive. After booting from my external drive (look below*) I've got a message saying
Code:
error: no such partition Entering rescue mode... and after that I was in grub rescue console. When I typed ls I've got an output
error: unknown filesystem This occured for all the listed devices... On my internal drive there were (during the installation and running the live cd) 3 partitions detected (vista os, data, rescue disk) so I don't understand the output that ls in rescue console gave me. about booting from external drive: I did that after pressing ESC - I've got a prompt to choose which device I want to boot from - this wasn't working properly; after changing the boot sequence the grub started but with the abovementioned error message...
If there's any info about exact names/types/devices of my installed partitions needed I will run live CD and check it. If any other info is required I will provide it (I tried to describe the problem in the most precise way ) What I was thinking about: maybe there is a problem with ordering of the devices - when I boot from DVD my removable disk is treated as the "second one" and after booting from the removable disk it becames the "first one" or something like that? If any of you have any good info on how mapping of the device names works it would be appreciated, since I couldn't find anything useful or I just don't know what to ask google about.
1) How to install Debian on a removable disk (I had no problems with installing Linux on pendrive but I did that from VirtualBox and it was some time ago) OR how to install GRUB on a removable disk? (unfortunately, I cannot install 64bit system through VirtualBox)
2) What's the logic behind naming devices under /dev? How come the devices in grub have their names mapped as hdx etc and I've read that hdx are the names for IDE/ATA drives and sdx is the proper name for a SATA or USB device
After installing ubuntu 9.10 on external HDD I cannot boot vista if external usb is unplugged(where ubuntu is installed). it says grub loading and after that recover grub ( i think that is what is says ... not certain in this moment ) anyway hope you get my dilemma. If you need more information I'll be glad to provide it.
i have installed fedora 14 with so many libraries ,development tools installed on my pc but i usually have to present some projects which can run on my system .........and can't be executed or compiled due to absence of libraries and tools there so, i there some way to so that i can use this current installation on my hard drive of my pc to some external media like external hard disk and plug and use that installation anywhere on any system..
It started when I wanted to dual boot Windows 7 and Opensuse off of my netbook (No DVD/CD drive) I tried install suse from an external hard drive and I botched it. I ended up erasing EVERYTHING off of my internal netbook hard drive. Windows and all.
Well, I had a couple of other computers so I studied up and eventually successfully installed OpenSUSE 11.2 on my external hard drive (11.3 being the one that I accidentally erased everything with, so kinda scared of it) and now I want to install openSUSE 11.2 on my internal netbook hard drive.
I can not use disks
I can not use a flash drive (For some reason, even if I make it bootable, it will not load up, this could be because it's actually a 8GB microSD card that is placed in a USB card reader.)
I can not use an external hard drive because that's what I'm running suse off of.
I've tried reading up on how to install suse on another drive off of the hard drive and I've gotten as far as whenever I boot up the netbook with the suse external hard drive connected it will ask to boot into OpenSUSE, the Fail Safe, or to install OpenSuse. When I select to install it it gives me the Error 18 Unknown File system.
I've tried formatting the internal hard drive twice. One as NTFS and again as EXT4. Neither seems to effect it other than when it's ext4 I can open it and it contains a Lost and Found folder.
When I interrupt the boot sequence by pressing c and going to the terminal and I use the root (hd +TAB command it tells me I have a hd0 and a hd1. The hd1 only has 1 partition which is ext4, which I'm assuming hd1 is the internal hard drive (I'm not sure how to check) and the hd0 is the external hard drive, which has three partitions. One with an unknown file system and two with ext4. When I try to enter the set up from the terminal it gives me the same error for any thing I put it (e.g. root (hd0,0) gives the same error as root (hd0,1), or root (hd0,2) and root (hd1,0)
Something like it cannot locate these two files I'm assuming it needs to boot. If anyone finds this relevant I'll retry it and post the files its missing.
I've been searching for awhile and can't find any threads that can solve my problem. From other threads, however, I have noticed that I should probably include my menu.lst, listed below
Code:
I have also ran the boot info script and received the RESULTS.txt file it generates. Listed below
I have received an Lenovo T400 as a gift and am going to get rid of the Vista Business OS on it! It is a resource hog and sometimes has trouble hooking up to our router. I was curious yesterday on how much RAM was being used on idle and it was between 900mb and 1gb! I'm downloading Karmic 64-bit and would like to use the old GRUB instead of the beta Grub2. At least with the legacy grub I could edit it easier than the beta one. I am also wondering if Karmic would run fine using ext3 instead of ext4?
I see the T105 is supposedly 100% certified but for the life of me I can get past go with the setup. I get to the first setup screen (after choosing the language) and I select the install option... the screen goes blank and nothing happens. The DVD stops working the whole things just sits there.
Im running Squeeze (in VirtualBox on a Win host), and I need to clone my drive to a bigger one and boot from that drive. I used gparted from a live cd for the cloning, and got the following result with fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1044 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I'm trying to make a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 Server 64bit but is stuck with the Partitioning Disk part and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS provides the same error. The installation wizard gives me a menu:
!! Partitioning disks This menu allows you to configure iSCSI volumes iSCSI configuration actions
