can't boot from USB HDD

[bglynn]

I installed Mandrake 10 to my USB HDD, everything goes fine until it finishes and reboots. It POSTs, then freezes with an L on the screen, just before LILO should come up. Iv'e tried installing without a boot loader also, and the same thing happens.

Help?

[bsm2001]

did you install the bool loader in the mbr on hda or on the firs sector of the usb hd?

[mdwatts]

Is the USB HD the only hardrive in your system? Does your system bios allow booting from the USB HD? And what bsm2001 requested, where did you install the Lilo bootloader?

[bglynn]

I unplugged my two SATA drives while messing with the USB, and yes my BIoS allows booting to it. I installed LILO to the MBR, I also tried a reinstall choosing to skip the bootloader option. I used the whole drive and let it auto partition.

[mrBen]

As per http://sdb.suse.de/sdb/en/html/kgw_lilo_errmsg.html

Just getting an L is either a media failure (lets hope not) or it is not correctly understanding the drive geometry.

Check whether or not it has installed a /boot partition - IIRC this error can sometimes occur when the kernel is placed beyond the 1024th cylinder, although I thought they had resolved that.

And I thought Mandrake used GRUB?

[bglynn]

I'll redo it and check the partitions or just do them manually tonight.

10 at least, usues Lilo.

I don't get L error, as indicated in the How To, it's just 'L'.

The drive is fine, I used it to transfer gigs of data off my PC just before I put mandrake on it, and the install flew by.

[bglynn]

OK, tried with manual partitions, still no go. I'm going to try another distro, see if I can isolate the problem.

[bglynn]

OK, could this be that the system isn't seeing USB devices at boot?

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by bglynn
OK, could this be that the system isn't seeing USB devices at boot?

Have you successfully booted other operating systems that were installed on the USB HD? Did you install Lilo into the mbr of the USB drive?

Can you boot to the USB HD using your installation cd in rescue mode? If you can, then please post the results of

fdisk -l /dev/??? (whatever device is your USB drive)

the contents of both /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf.

If Lilo is installed in the mbr of the USB drive and you receive a 'L' during boot, then I would imagine the system is booting from the USB HD.

[knute]

Ok, first of all, there is an assumption in this thread that is leading you all down the wrong path.

Because it's a USB drive, it is not on the IDE bus.
It is considered a mass storage device, and would need to use scsi notation to be recognized.

What needs to happen is that the usb stuff needs to be loaded by lilo options so that lilo knows where to go to access everything. That's what that media failure means in this case, because it is looking for IDE.

I don't know exactly what options need to be passed, but that's where your problem is.

[bglynn]

That's exactly what I'm thinking.

Now if someone can help with the boot options? ;)

[mdwatts]

Good point knute though I was wondering why bglynn would even get the 'L' from Lilo if it was installed in the mbr of the USB HD. How could it find Lilo in the mbr of the USB drive if none of the usb-storage and supporting modules were not loaded to begin with.

With Grub you could use a initrd (initial ramdisk) to load any module that are required to boot.

What does Lilo use for a initrd? I don't remember ever seeing mention of the 'initrd' in any lilo.conf examples. Does Lilo automatically load the initrd if found in the /boot directory even though it is not defined in /etc/lilo.conf?

Can the "append=" option load the usb-storage module and any others that are necessary?

[knute]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Good point knute though I was wondering why bglynn would even get the 'L' from Lilo if it was installed in the mbr of the USB HD. How could it find Lilo in the mbr of the USB drive if none of the usb-storage and supporting modules were not loaded to begin with.

With Grub you could use a initrd (initial ramdisk) to load any module that are required to boot.

What does Lilo use for a initrd? I don't remember ever seeing mention of the 'initrd' in any lilo.conf examples. Does Lilo automatically load the initrd if found in the /boot directory even though it is not defined in /etc/lilo.conf?

Can the "append=" option load the usb-storage module and any others that are necessary?

Very interesting questions, indeed.

What did a G4L search turn up? ;)

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by knute

What did a G4L search turn up? ;)

Wouldn't know as I've never used it. Only MSN Search (http://search.msn.com/) for me. :p

They are indeed very interesting questions of which I wish I knew the answers. :(

[bglynn]

So I take it I'm the first one on here that's tried doing this? Are there any other good forums I can look to?

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by bglynn
So I take it I'm the first one on here that's tried doing this? Are there any other good forums I can look to?

It is kinda hard for us to help if we ask questions and do not receive replies. :(

Did you install Lilo to the MBR of the external USB HD?

(Copied and pasted from my previous posting.)

Have you successfully booted other operating systems that were installed on the USB HD? Did you install Lilo into the mbr of the USB drive?

Can you boot to the USB HD using your installation cd in rescue mode? If you can, then please post the results of

fdisk -l /dev/??? (whatever device is your USB drive)

the contents of both /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf.


You could look/search in the Installation forum as I seem to remember a few threads on installing on a external HD.

[bglynn]

I found the answers searching www.linuxquestions.org

"I did an install of mdk9.2 on my externel usb hard drive and got the same result as pmpatrick, i.e. the installation program recognized and allowed me to install to the external hard drive but I got a kernel panic when I tried to boot. Reinstalling and putting the root partition on my internal hard drive and everything else on the external drive worked for me; no more kernel panic.
I'm now running mdk10 and the usb and scsi modules that are needed to recognize the external usb hard drive are definitely being loaded as modules so I think you will have the same problem with mdk10. The solution would be to first install to an internal hard drive then recompile the kernel to have those modules built in the kernel instead of loaded as modules. Then image your mdk partitions and transfer them to your external drive, edit your fstab on the external to correspond to the new location of your mdk partitions and make a boot cd(kernel is too big for a floppy) and edit the boot cd config file to point it to your root partition on the external hard drive. "

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by bglynn
Reinstalling and putting the root partition on my internal hard drive and everything else on the external drive worked for me; no more kernel panic.

Depending on the answers to the questions above, I would have either suggested putting the /boot partition on the internal HD (but you said you unplugged them) or creating a initrd (initial ramdisk) with the required modules (if you said you can successfully boot with your installation cd in rescue mode).

Glad to see you got it resolved.

[bglynn]

Just to clarify, that's not me in the quotes, it was from another discussion with the same problem. I did unplug my other HDD, as I want everything isolated. I will recompile a kernel, as soon as I figure out how.