I'm pretty much doing all that though it is with Arch Linux.  What
seems to be at the core of the matter is When I use the installation
media from CDROM, The internal hard disk, containing original windows
partitions, is /dev/sda and the attached USB drive is /dev/sdb; so far
so good.

The instalation sequence proceeds along just fine with that
construct.  When it comes to grub, grub sees the internal disk as
(hd0) and the attached drive as (hd1); note this is while I'm still in
the live CD environment and when I chroot to the USB drive for
configuration.  Before chrooting, I mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev so my
devices can be found when I do the grub setup in my chroot
environment.  Hope I didn't lose anybody yet.

Now when I boot the machine and choose USB from the BIOS boot menu,
grub starts up but now the USB drive is (hd0) and the internal disk is
(hd1); no, I did not transpose anything yet in this message.  Now at
this point, I get the boot menu with the two Arch linux entries and
after choosing the first one, the initial RAMFS loads so at this
point, my USB drive is accessed fine.  But along here, my internal
hard disk is being discovered to be /dev/sda and shown accordingly.
This list time, /dev/sdb wasn't even mentioned.  After getting dumped
out into the emergency shell, I decided to try looking for /dev/disk
and then went into the by-label directory and saw entries for sda1,
sda3 and sda4.  No mention of my linux partition.

Again, the bottom line here is for some reason, it can't find my USB
drive during the boot sequence even though it just loaded the RAMFS
from that same device just a few moments before.  Does this make any
sense?

On Mon, Dec 06, 2010 at 01:23:35PM -0700, Dazed_75 wrote:
> Lisa, the 11th IS the "this Saturday" he mentioned.
>
> Steve, I cannot speak to your several attempts with Arch and other distros.
> I can say that if you INSTALL ubuntu to a USB drive (not use a loader with
> the .iso), then when you get to the end of the partitioning phase there is
> an advanced button on the lower right portion of the dialog box.  If you
> click that, you can tell the installer to put GRUB on the USB drive rather
> than your hard disk (you may need to have specified manual partitioning for
> the USB drive) and after doing that you should be able to use the BIOS boot
> menu to select booting from the USB drive.
>
> Larry
>
> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold@obnosis.com>wrote:
>
> > We have a joint install/hack fest at UAT next Saturday the 11th also?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Steve Holmes <steve@holmesgrown.com>wrote:
> >
> >> OK, Thanks for the advice.  Alas, that still didn't work.  What is
> >> still happening is the RAMFS boots fine and the final messages shown
> >> before it barfs indicate that it found my internal haard drive and its
> >> 4 windows partitions.  But then it shows /dev/sdb to be a mass storage
> >> device but it never shows the 2 partitions (sdb1 and sdb2) as I would
> >> expect.  I'm beginning to wonder if and how people are getting a
> >> system to boot strait from a USB device like this.  The pre-built ISOs
> >> work and the system is running under the live image but For whatever
> >> reason, the UDEV stuff isn't discovering the existing partitions on
> >> the USB drive when it is the same device being used to boot in the
> >> first place.  I may need to bring my laptop in to either Thursday's
> >> east side meeting or this Saturday's install fest to show the errors
> >> to someone who might know more.  It seems like what should have been
> >> an easy solution but I think the USB stuff is getting in the way some
> >> how.
> >>
> >> Another thread on the list here shows a guy doing exactly what I'm
> >> trying to do; have my machine remain native windows for now and boot
> >> with a full distro on a portable hard disk.  I wonder what else I
> >> might be missing here.
> >>
> >> On Sat, Dec 04, 2010 at 06:35:40PM -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> >> > Steve,
> >> >   I would start over with ext3, and this time I would recommend using
> >> UUID as the drive identification method, as that method is resistant to the
> >> reordering/remapping that you're experiencing (UUID was introduced exactly
> >> because modern controllers may reorder drives on boot).
> >> >
> >> > ==Joseph++
> >> >
> >> > Steve Holmes wrote:
> >> > > Well, I have some more progress or updates on this problem.  I still
> >> > > can't get the thing to but from the USB external drive but here is
> >> > > what I have so far.  Sorry for the lengthy details.
> >> > >
> >> > > 1. I found out that when I start the HP laptop and use the boot menu
> >> > > to choose the USB drive, grub picks up the devices in the opposite
> >> > > order than what I knew them to be while running from a live CD.
> >> > >
> >> > > 2. So I reconfigured the menu.lst file in grub to use (hd0,0) instead
> >> > > of the former (hd1,0).
> >> > >
> >> > > 3. When I boot now, grub starts up and when I pick the menu item, the
> >> > > RAM FS begins to load.  But then I get a message saying that it is
> >> > > waiting for a device and after 10 seconds, it dumps me to an emergency
> >> > > shell - probably inside the RAMFS.
> >> > >
> >> > > At this point, I could determine that the kernel was scanning devices
> >> > > and was now mapping the internal hard drive to /dev/sda and it showed
> >> > > the 4 windows partitions.  But for /dev/sdb, no file systems! It
> >> > > looked like UDEV was seeing the device but not able to recognize the
> >> > > file systems.  Yet, this very drive is what I installed the stuff on
> >> > > to and when I run from the Arch install CD, this USB drive shows up
> >> > > just fine.  I thought I would try ext4 as the file systems on this
> >> > > drive; I'm beginning to wonder if I should scrap the whole thing and
> >> > > do it over with ext3 instead.  I thought if Arch installer supports
> >> > > ext4 when building that it should be able to boot with it.  Is there
> >> > > any chance the kernel wasn't built to support ext4 or something?
> >> > >
> >> > > Should I look for anything else?
> >> > >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> > --
> >
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> > (623) 688-3392
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
> --
> Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
>
> The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
> that I wish it always to be kept alive.
>   - Thomas Jefferson

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