Arch Linux

aerosurf

Member

Registered: 2011-10-18

Posts: 1

Portable USB - first time user

Hello,
I would like to run the Archlinux from my usb flash, not the live on usb, the installation (but i'm facing some minor set backs)
I am new to all this, and I used a really complicated method to get it done (sorry in advance, but I was finding the fasted way to get it on my usb)
So, I have a 16 gb flash drive. I partitioned it using gparted with sdb1=1.5gb (where the live image is using linux live usb creator) and sdb2=13.5gb (where I want to install the Archlinux). after installing I want to delete sdb1 and merge that space to sdb2.

First question, does it matter if sdb2 is ntfs?

ok, so I went ahead and got it installed on sdb2 and the problem arises at the boot up.

I noticed the uuid for sdb2 was different in the [ramsfs /]# command line than the one in /boot/grub/menu.lst

and I keep getting this error on boot up.

ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/"The one that was in fedora"'
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
        Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[ramsfs /] gives a different uuid (I dont remember the command)

I would really appreciate if someone could help me out get this installed on my 16gb flash drive (I dont have a cd-rom drive in my labtop nor do I have another flash drive, that's why I had to create a partition on the flash drive)

Thanks in advance for your help

Newbie
(BTW.. how should I set the flags in gparted for sb1 and sb2?)

Last edited by aerosurf (2011-10-18 14:43:26)

swanson

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2011-02-05

Posts: 759

Re: Portable USB - first time user

I did this and found out that usb module needs to be built into the initrd image. I'm not able to help more now, but check the wiki.

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: Portable USB - first time user

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=128992

I have a USB drive that I carry with me witha 4GB NTFS partition and a full installation of Arch.  You need to fire up a working linux system, plug the USB drive in and mount it edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and add the "usb" tag to the HOOKS section, bind mount /sys, /dev, and /proc to its own sys, dev, and proc directories, chroot into it, and run mkinitcpio -p linux.  On the console, the session would look something like this:

mount /dec/sdb1 /media/usb
vim /media/usb/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

... add "usb" to the HOOKS section ...

for a in sys dev proc; do mount --bind /$a /media/usb/$a; done
chroot /media/usb
mkinitcpio -p linux

... verify everything went okay ...

exit
for a in sys dev proc ""; do umount /media/usb/$a; done

This will make the Arch vmlinuz usb-aware when it's looking for a root device.

Last edited by synthead (2011-10-25 14:44:55)