Booting from a USB Drive

Wed Dec 1 10:00:11 MST 2010

Hi Steve!

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Steve Holmes <steve at holmesgrown.com>wrote:

> The drive boots after all but only as far as grub.  I found out
> earlier today that the grub menu comes up but it fails to find the
> file systems for booting the actual system.  It looks like I will have
> to rebuild the grub configuration or something.  So yes, you're right;
> the drive should boot and the MBR does work; it's just the rest of it
> that doesn't but that sounds more like a grub issue now rather than
> booting from the USB drive.  Somehow while preparing this disk with
> the Arch Linux installer, I think grub's identification of drives may
> have been off or something.  I almost wrecked my windows internal disk
> doing this some how but at least I salvaged that for now so I need to
> walk on some egg shells while doing this I guess.
>

Yea!  I have had terrible luck with all but the MANUAL directions on
building systems:

Steps:
fdisk - (partition/fstype/bootableflag)
mkfs
grub

All available from any linux system.

If you are building a Slax system, you want to google slax bootable USB
directions (which will be the same).

>
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 05:34:31PM -0700, Lisa Kachold wrote:
> > If the drive is bootable, it will boot.
> >
> > Check the bios to ensure you have allowed boot from bios, and use spare
> > systems before rebuilding your drive.
> >
> > You should be able to fdisk -l /dev/sdN  (or whatever it is) plugged in
> and
> > verify the boot.  You should be able to verify your MBR and GRUB settings
> > also.  You can always REPEAT setting up the MBR?
> >
> > If you can't boot it, it's not built.
> >
> > Rebuild with a better set of instructions!
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Stephen <cryptworks at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > newer machines should be able to boot directly to USB hdd just fine...
> > > just never have had a drive that really worked with that.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Steve Holmes <steve at holmesgrown.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > That's rather annoying when some drive manufacturer forces us to
> leave
> > > > their junk on the drive when we wish to do otherwise with it.
> > > > Actually, my drive came out of an old laptop and I stuck it inside a
> > > > portable drive enclosure so I would think we should be able to boot
> > > > with it.  I used grub to make this disk bootable or at least attempt
> > > > to do so.
> > > >
> > > > I might have to do a grub-install to the /dev/sda MBR but I hesitate
> > > > to do so at the moment.
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 07:25:08AM -0700, Stephen wrote:
> > > >> I have an external drive that has the same issue. in my case there
> is
> > > >> a small "firmware" that resides on the USB-PATA bridge that has
> about
> > > >> 3-400 MB of stuff on it and mounts as a CD. this definitely fouled
> all
> > > >> my attempts at booting to the device.
> > > >>
> > > >> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:23 AM, Steve Holmes <
> steve at holmesgrown.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >> > I got a new machine which (of course) has Windows pre-installed
> and
> > > >> > I'm not ready to dump it entirely just yet so in the meantime, I
> built
> > > >> > out a complete Arch Linux 64-bit system on a portable USB external
> > > >> > drive.  I also used or tried to use grub to set it up to boot.
>  During
> > > >> > the original settup session, it appeared to do all this OK but I
> can't
> > > >> > get the laptop to recognize or boot from this device.  I did not
> > > >> > modify the master boot record on my laptop; instead, I figured on
> > > >> > using the boot menu on the laptop to choose the USB drive; this
> method
> > > >> > works beautifully with an ISO image I burned to a small thumbdrive
> but
> > > >> > I cannot do the same with my larger USB portable drive on which I
> > > >> > installed Arch Linux.  Do I have to do anything else to make this
> > > >> > thing bootable?
> > > >> > ---------------------------------------------------
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> > > >> >
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> --
> > > >> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you
> from
> > > >> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze
> button.
> > > >>
> > > >> Stephen
> > > >> ---------------------------------------------------
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> > > > ---------------------------------------------------
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> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
> > > rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
> > >
> > > Stephen
> > > ---------------------------------------------------
> > > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> > > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> > > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
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> >
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-- 
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