Arch Linux

ore

Member

Registered: 2008-11-09

Posts: 8

Website

[solved] booting from usb

Hello, I'm not sure if this post should go here but this board seemed the most "generic".
I have an acer aspire one with 8GB of SDD and no swap partition. That's ok for webbrowsing and some of the tasks I would like a netbook for. When I want to compile large programs boot from an arch installation in an external 500GB HD wich I use to bloat and install programs I will probably use once. This worked for me untill I upgraded to HD to 2.6.27 which I needed in order to use it in the AAO (hardware support). Now the USB won't boot.
I start the computer with the HD plugged and puch F12, choose to boot from the external drive and grub appear. Now no matter if I choose the first or second option it will start to boot but won't finish. It complains of the partition not existing. It suggest to add rootdelay=8 or greater to menu.lst, which I tried and doesn't work. When in ramfs$ I do
cd dev
echo *
there is no sdb4 which is the root partition nor any sdb? . When I boot my local install it boots ok and I can se /dev/sdb4.

Any idea?

Last edited by ore (2009-03-23 17:00:51)

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: [solved] booting from usb

when grub comes up hit "e"
then edit initrd line to read like this

initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

if that doesnt work try boot of install cd
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Boo … recovering
once in you id say you need to edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf  make sure usb is in hooks. if you have sata or ide drive inside notebook make sure usb hook is after sata or ide hook otherwise usb gets sda & internal drive gets sdb
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Con … mkinitcpio
then run

mkinitcpio -g /boot/kernel26.img

reboot should do it

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: [solved] booting from usb

Use uuid=... instead of /dev/sdx in menu.lst and in fstab and it should work.

---

R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

ore

Member

Registered: 2008-11-09

Posts: 8

Website

Re: [solved] booting from usb

rayjgu3> I already tried fallback.img before posting
ROOKIE> I'm already using uuid

Rayjgu3>
I can't use the recovery CD as I don't have CD reader so I tried it with the usb img, but I don't see any boot prompt, first grub and then login prompt. In the login promt you can login as root or arch, but I don't think it says that you must login as root=/dev/sdb4
Also, I can see that the problem was that usb was missing in the hook array. I mounted sdb4 in /mnt and chrooted to it. And tried to add usb and mkinitcpio -g /boot/kernel26.img -k2.6.27-ARCH
I hoped it would work, but no luck...
:-/
Am I missing something?

ore

Member

Registered: 2008-11-09

Posts: 8

Website

Re: [solved] booting from usb

I did it. Just for reference:
I
mount -o bind /dev /media/helpos/dev
mount -o bind /proc /media/helpos/proc
mount -o bind /sys /media/helpos/sys
before chrooting in order to mkinitcpio do its job correctly
then in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf I moved usb right before keymap and issued
mkinitcpio -g /boot/kernel26.img -k2.6.27-ARCH
then added rootdelay=8 to menu.lst
and rebooted.

I'm not sure what change did it...

Thanks to rayjgu3 and ROOKIE :-)

Cotton

Member

From: Cornwall, UK

Registered: 2004-09-17

Posts: 568

Re: [solved] booting from usb

Please mark the title as [Solved].