Problem booting from hdd to root on compact flash disc

loosec · 2008-01-20 21:46:57

Greeting!

I found a compactflash drive on my thinkpad and thought about running the computer without a HDD. Sadly the thinkpad does NOT support booting from this cf-device, from what I understand it cant be done through BIOS.

So I thought about running GRUB on the HDD and pointing to the CF-cards root-partition and then just shut down the HDD in rc.local to save battery time.

The Arch boot-cd finds the card under /dev/hda and the HDD under /dev/sda. The already installed arch system on my HDD finds the CF-card as /dev/sdb.
Not sure why there is a difference, legacy-ide maybe, anyway:
Used partitions:

HDD: Old regular system
/dev/sda1 (boot)
/dev/sda2 (root)
CF: one partition 4GB root fresh install
/dev/sdb1 (root)

So my HDD boots with root (hd0,1) in GRUB as it should be, but I cant get GRUB to find (hd1,0):

Grub Stage2 Error wrote:

21 : Selected disk does not exist
This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full file name refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system.

and I'm back to the choice-menu.
Do I need to create some custom initrd that has a certain driver and points to the device?

Note that this is an internal CF-reader.

*confused*

Last edited by loosec (2008-01-20 23:38:16)

lilsirecho · 2008-01-21 00:56:38

I have a cf device connected through an adapter on my desktop to the secondary master IDE.

I boot FaunOS live flash CF card into ram/or into normal flash r/o. It performs without any problem.

I assume your cf reader is IDE interface compatible an should repond in your ststem.

In my system, the faunos is around 900MB so a dvd can be burned with the .iso provided.

However, in my system, it would not boot.

Thus, I found that if I used a usb flash drive to supply the grub boot, and remove the flash when DVD was selected, I could boot up and run.

Additionally, if I tried to boot direct from USB with my older computer, it would not do so. No usb boot.

I had to utilize a CD boot disc to enable the USB device to complete the install .

These techniques are not necessarily useable with your laptop but may be helpful.

I also had a CF card that wouldn/t boot so I changed the boot option to DVD and the card then booted.

Some of the problems are due to the cards design. Another card boots in that machine just fine without dvd option.

My system boots to Faunos KDE desktop in 33 seconds. I can't boot into arch any where near that!!!

gradgrind · 2008-01-21 06:15:28

It does sound like you might need a custom initrd. In any case it would be worth considering running a 'live' system (such as faunos - new version coming soon) because of the limited number of write cycles that flash memory can manage. A normal installation would probably finish off the device pretty quickly.

loosec · 2008-01-21 09:43:53

So I\m off to the wikis then. Since the X31 doesn't have an internal cd-drive I will probably have to use a usb flashdrive for grub. It does boot from a usb cd-drive so I guess any usb-drive might work. Faunos sounds interesting.

Thank you for very interesting information!

gradgrind · 2008-01-21 11:26:10

You can put the kernel and initramfs for the 'live' system on your hard drive and boot them from there using GRUB. The initramfs system will then find the stuff it's looking for on your compact flash device (once you've put it there).

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-20 21:46:57

Problem booting from hdd to root on compact flash disc

#2 2008-01-21 00:56:38

Re: Problem booting from hdd to root on compact flash disc

#3 2008-01-21 06:15:28

Re: Problem booting from hdd to root on compact flash disc

#4 2008-01-21 09:43:53

Re: Problem booting from hdd to root on compact flash disc

#5 2008-01-21 11:26:10

Re: Problem booting from hdd to root on compact flash disc

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