Yes, it's possible. I use a boot floppy to load the kernel and an inital ram disk. The ram disk loads the relevant scsi and usb modules (not all can be compiled into the kernel). The USB drive gets detected, then the kernel mounts the "real" root on the USB hard disk.
Great for a portable linux system. Don't need the whole computer, just take the hard disk and plug it into any machine. I use it on at least four different PCs. I use SYSLINUX as the floppy boot sector, I can fit 2.4.17 kernel and a compressed ram disk on the floppy. The ram disk is the inital root, I use BusyBox statically linked as a shell and to load the modules. I found the file Documentation/initrd.txt in the kernel source very helpful. I can post you an image of my boot disk if you'd like... Regards, Andrew ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roelof Burger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 2:53 PM Subject: [Linux-usb-users] Booting into a USB hard drive > hi, > the idea is to have only a USB hard drive on which your whole OS is > loaded. > then use a boot disk to boot directly to your USB hard drive. > you could then use your boot disk and hard drive to boot on almost any > PC? is this possible? > thanks > roelof > -- > Metsys/SAWS, P/Bag X15, Bethlehem, 9700, South Africa, <>< > tel: +27-58-303-5571, fax: +27-58-303-2352, cell: 082-563-9776 > > _______________________________________________ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe, use the last form field at: > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-users _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, use the last form field at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-users
