Greg Freemyer wrote: > On Jan 23, 2008 3:22 PM, John Andersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Jan 22, 2008 4:56 PM, David C. Rankin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Listmates, >>> >>> I can't recall who suggested it, Aaron or Patrick, but somebody made >>> the suggestion to get a simple use to ide adapter to access spare laptop >>> drives, etc. Well, I purchased one, and it is absolutely the sharpest >>> thing since sliced bread. I have several drives for my laptop and >>> murphy's law dictates that what you need is always on the other drive >>> (theme, notes, etc.) >>> >>> I connected the usb cable to my spare 2.5 inch drive, changed the >>> bios >>> to boot from (1) removable devices (2) hard disk (3) cd/dvd drive (4) >>> network. (Laptop is a Toshiba P35-S629) I turned the computer on, the >>> usb drive started right away and it looked like the system was booting >>> from the usb drive. However, the system booted from the installed hard >>> drive instead. >>> >>> The usb drive was mounted automatically as: >>> >>> media/disk /dev/sdb7 spare 10.3 /home >>> media/disk-1 /dev/sdb6 spare 10.3 / >>> media/xpdrive /dev/sdb1 spare 10.3 XP partition >>> >>> Is there a grub boot parameter like (boot=/dev/sdb6) that will tell >>> grub to boot from the usb drive? The reason being is that I would like >>> to boot the install to update it. Any help will be appreciated and thank >>> you whoever it was that recommended the usb to ide solution! >> I too would like to see this. I use both USB and Firewire enclosures that >> I would occasionally like to boot. >> >> But I'm betting you won't get that to work because you would have to load >> some >> software just to get it to see that drive, and I'm not sure those >> pieces are going to >> be in the initrd. > > I've booted the CDs / DVDs via an external USB optical drive numerous > times, so I suspect the initrd has all the pieces for working with USB > connected drives. > > Most likely just a matter of editing the right grub entry and the > fstab on the external. I havn't tried it, but it does not sound that > hard. > > Greg To find the initrd and vmlinuz files, GRUB uses the BIOS. Consequently, if the BIOS doesn't allow booting from a USB port, then you can't boot directly to the USB drive. It make no difference what it on the end of the USB cable, it is still goes through a USB port. You would have to create a boot CD that would boot a minimal kernel that was smart enough to know about USB and then boot from the USB drive itself. You might find more details at pendrivelinux.com. I believe there is also a openSUSE howto on this subject.
Bill Anderson WW7BA -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
