Compugen

I was able to install UBUNTU to external disk. Its done. Figured out why mandrake is not booting from USB disk. I have to make a new initrd image which loads USB modules and sleep before reading everything from the disk. But when I do this it says "No space left on device..." Second, is it possible to install 2 linux on same drive? I want that /root should be common to both OS. I mean cant i create /root/Mandrake during installation? So that the system knows where to take things from? Or is there any other way to it?

I dont think it can get worse anymore. I wiped off my hdd and then did partitioning. I was thinking that the first partition as FAT32 might be creating problems. But then i swiped it off. Now I am having following situations:: sda 1 ---> Root, Reiserfs Sda 2 - --> fat32, (last part of the drive) sda 3 ----> Swap Sda4 ---> home. I have taken off the boot this time. Now the issues. Linux went flying as I attached hdd to primary ide. Opened linux as root, changed fstab,menu.lst, lilo.conf and device.map to sda from hda. Now I tried compling new initrd image since I read over the net it might be the fact that USB devices communicate over the ide channel at a burst rate; and also if the device is left idle for a second or two then it takes couple of seconds to transfer the thing back and forth since it doesn't get hooked to the RAM. For this they have a simple structure where in they load the USB modules first and then after mounting file systems they reread the partition table by "/sbin/sfdisk" and before this they let the sys sleep so that USB device can be mounted... they use "/bin/sleep 5". Now problem is during this procedure I get error "CP: filename, No space left on the device". Meanwhile I am on track to install UBUNTU since it can easily support laptops. Secondly, mandrake doesnt verify my laptop's screen that is wide screen 15.1 inch. Laptop Make : HP 2136

It was done using IDE and then later connected USB. Selected UPGRADE option and then it was loaded using USB only...the last screen is after all this process. Just a thought stuck me. Now i wiped the drive. Starting from scratch using another HDD. After install i ll select upgrade by connecting the drive to the USB. Secondly, i ve done the following sda 1 ---- 2GB ---Boot sda2 ---- 5gb --- root sda3 ---- 800mb ----swap sda4 ---10gb ---- home.. However, i am planning to wipe off sda4 and have 15gig of root instead. Any suggestion? The reason is earlier sda1 was a vfat partition. And also m selecting Primary partitions this time under expert mode and not Logical drives. After all done am planning to put up UBUNTU in for my laptop... so ide connect would be for the desktop and for rest it would be USB... Ubuntu. Then i ll try figuring out what UBUNTU is having for booting from external disk.... gosh!!!!! Hell pain in here

i checked everythin.. :(

what should i do now? suggest me some other distro pls...i ll load it on same disk. Will load mandrake on desktop by connecting it to ide and on laptop the new distro:)

It is having "/" but after a space The system is not able mount the root filesystem, if i am nt wrong. what could be the possibility? Any idea? Can you send me the image of the one you are using? I'll change the fstab accordingly...if its possible. Might be there is just a minute prob which we are unable to look at ??? I think the only issue is with the sleep thing. Might be the USB devices are a bit slower and thats why it is happening....

The last screen of halt... md: autorun ... md: ... autorun DONE. RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). Red Hat nash version 4.1.9mdk starting Loading reiserfs.ko module Mounting /proc filesystem Mounting sysfs Creating device files mounting tmpfs on /dev starting udev Creating root device Mounting root filesystem with flags notail mount: error 6 mounting reiserfs flags notail well, retrying without the option flags mount: error 6 mounting reiserfs well, retrying read-only without any flag mount: error 6 mounting reiserfs pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed:2 umount /initrd/sys failed: 2 umount /initrd/proc failed:2 Initrd finished. Freeing uinused kernel memory: 200k Freed Kernel Panic. No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. My guess was that there is a lag between USB2.0 External and the init. Thought putting /bin/sleep 5 command but for that i need files in LIB folder of the image. When i try to copy i get error "No more space left on the device". Any guesses where am I going wrong? If anyone suggests any patches to do the thing... or if I can get this kindda image from anyone or anywhere which i can copy to the root folder?? :unsure:

I am sorry ian. It was a typing error. It is hd0,4 only. I tried with all options but none is working :(

If someone could reply back as to what was done to resolve the problem, it wold help others having similar problem.

FSTAB /dev/sda5 reiserfs notail 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 /deb/sda7 /home reiserfs notail 1 2 /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0022, user, iocharset=iso8859-1, codepage=850, noauta,ro,exec,users 0 0 none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0, fs=ext2:vfat, --, umask=0022, iocharste=iso8859-1, sync, codepage=850 0 0 /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows vfat umask=0022, iocharset=sio8859-1, codepage=850 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/sda6 swap swap defaults 0 0 Menu.lst timeout 10 color black/cyan yellow/cyan default 0 title linux kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 devfs=nomount acpi=on resume=/dev/sda6 splash=silent vga=794 initrd (hda0,4)/boot/initrd.img title windows root (hd1,0) map (0X81) (0X81) map (0X80) (0X81) makeactive chainloader +1 title 2681-10 kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 devfs=nomount acpi=on resume=/dev/sda6 initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img title linux-nonfb kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 devfs=nomount acpi=on resume=/dev/sda6 initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img title failsafe kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 failsafe acpi=on resume=/dev/sda6 fs=nomount initrd(hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img Device.map (hd0) /dev/sda (hd1) /dev/hda

Ok its not working still. I am completely dead right now. Bootloader got installed, grub, shows those menus and stuff. But it is still not working. Says Kernel panic. pass init= option. Before that /sys image is not mounted. This is what i saw... any help?

LONG LIVE IAN :) :D was just praying you to reply. That init prob is still there. Checked device.map where hd0 = sda; fstab is having sda entries,. lilo is fine too... still m getting problem getting pass with kernel panic. It says mount problem for sysimage just before that kernel panic...

Stuck again..... Finally!! Here is what i did:: i booted the laptop with new dvd that i burnt for mandrake and chose the option to upgrade the Linux on usb drive. Worked.. checked the packages and installing bootloader. Now the heck prob with grub in installation itself: This is the Menu linux ---> boots at sda5 Root partition on usb Windows ---> laptop hdd 2048-381 ---> /boot/vmlinuz on sda6 linux-nonfb --->/boot/vmlinuz failsafe --->/boot/vmlinuz alt-win --->sda fat partition windows 1 ---> /dev/sda1 again fat partition why do i have these many copies???? Can i delete them?

How do i install grub from rescue? I have mounted device to bash. Did grub-install /dev/sda and then it says "/dev/ram3 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive." I went to grub prompt and typed root (hd0,4) and then setup (hd0,4) Now what should i do?

Ok...It worked till bootloader part. then it shows a blue screen with codes and all. So back to square one. I'll stick to your way. Let me reinstall and re do everything you said and then i ll update... If installation is this tough I am scared what will it be like

It just stuck me that what if i upgrade the thing on sda? I mean I ll boot from install cd and will select upgrade using GRUB as the option. In that case the system will find the drive sda and will mount it to the linux fs. Then prob'ly gonna search the packages and then gonna edit bootloader. Just a guess.... giving it a try will post the results. So far I am in a situation where m about to tear my hair... its frustrating: 5dAYs trying to install Mandrake :( It gets stuck on the init loading process. Kernel panic :( I thought might be problem with pc since my desktop is having the award bios and have option to load USB-FDD or USB-zip from BIOS but not hdd. I thought that might be a problem so installed on a system which recognized things but same problem it is not booting..kernel panic.

I downloaded things again started from scratch. Did verything you said and noticed one thing. It issues error while performing /sbin/lilo saying nothing being assigned to proc partition. Still not able to boot :(

Ok here are the things.. I created 3 partitions as: sda5 - root sda6 - swap sda7 - home sda1 - Default from the harddisk having the setup (note: it is the first partition on the drive). Now i did what all you said. It booted off from USB and showed lilo. I selected lilo linux partition and it started loading. It then stopped showing "kernel panic. try passing option to init by initd = " something. Fstab is having all the partitions: /dev/sda1 /dev/sda5 and so on. But for cd rom it says something like /dev/hdd = cd rom. Same for floppy it says fd0. I am unable to boot into linux the reason being now USB is not booting it in and from master i cant boot since i changed fstab contents. It gets stuck on initrd parameters.

Booted into linux. Now in fstab one line says: /dev/hdd/mnt/cddrom Doesn't it should be hdd only coz its pointing to cd rom.

Ok off to doing this. Fingers crossed!! I dont need make new init image or do i? i mean that mkinitrd command need to be executed??

Yes the windows shows it and Linux doesnt. I deleted everything started off again. Now i did everything in expert mode under partitioning; formatted them; mounted them. Clicked done and tadaaa it is back "HDLISTS error". But worst part is when i put back hdd to master and not usb it get installed like the way i want. What should i do now? Basically what i want is to boot off from external USB and firewire. The reason being I am learning linux right now. I dont want to screw any of my system. Second, installing linux again and again is a problem. I ll install this to external disk. Whichever distro suits me i ll get it on my laptop. And the reason why i want mandrake is I had been working on it since a month now. WHatever i have learnt will be wasted if i shift to anyelse. TIA and thanks a tonne for your time.

I chose reiserfs only. Now its killing me. Linux dont like me or something, i guess :( I chose not to format anything and it said "Mounting /dev/sda6" and all of a sudden popped up "HDLISTS not found" and back to partition screen... :EDIT: Found a problem now. I took off hard disk and plugged it to laptop did PTDD and now again ptdd is showing me duplicate partitions with different fs. And i never selected these.... any help?

Ok here it is. Just what I thought. I opened the drive under xp with PTDD and it showed me 8partitions out of which I am aware of 4 namely: 1 FAT32 for setups and iso's of linux 1 swap 1 root 1 home Some empty space, thought i ll format it later after asking someone so that i can place my music and shared things in that accessible by win and lin both. I have cleaned every partition but the first one. Now i ll go to disk partitioning thing and will try the one you told me. Also, i would be grateful if you could tell me which is better ext3, linux native or the one you said. I am quite new to linux but been years in windows. so i cant just let go with windows. All my programming things had been good in windows. And being into security i ll definitely need it. All the help is really appreciated. TIA EDIT UNder custom partitioning: Swap -- 1GB (1912 to 2047 cyl) formatted Root-- 5GB (2048 to 2688 cyl) formatted Home -- 10gb (2689 to 3971 cyl) formatted I clicked done and now the *&%^ problem ***** Choose the partitions you want to format: sda5(1GB swap, ext2:vfat) sda6(4.9gb,/,reiserfs) sda7(9.8gb,/home, ext2:vfat) why its doin this to me:(

Thanks for the reply. I chose EXT3 only but setup itself chose the other partition. I dunno how is it doing it. For swap its having 484MB max.. and it is linux swap (green colored). For root the setup chose ext3 and for home as well. I ll try with the one you just told me.

Hi I am new to the forum. Before posting this up I actually searched forum for installation on USB disk and was all the open threads. I would like to know if by any way we can do this. I have read all over the net that there are work arounds. But since I am new to Linux I am quite a bit lost. I have tried booting with the hdd disk attached and Mandrake 10.1 had /dev/sda1 option in the installation. I started the process. Now the problem comes. As soon as it asks for the partition. I create following in the drive: Its 40GB Disk 14GB -- Reserve for shared and other iso 248MB - Swap 5GB - /root 10GB - home Now under custom partitioning i select following types as under: Swap Linux Swap RootExt2 (Journalised FS) HomeJournalised FS ext2 Formatting swap...done Formatting root.....done formatting home-----Failed error it shows is something like "I do not know how to format sda7 in type ext2:vfat file system." At times it does the formatting and as soon as I press done it shwos "Hdalists not found." it takes back to partitioning. Please help with it coz i know after installing it like this we can make a custom kernel to load the USB by default or atleast a script so that it checks for USB first and if found it will boot the device TIA :::::Update::::: I tried installing it again by attaching the IDE to primary port instead of USB and it went flying well.... Any idea why is that happening? Sda thing gets error like "HDlists not foudn" and so on... and now where should i change hda to sda now? secondly, cant linux get to knw what i am attaching. Like here i ll have to change sda in fstab as well. Any idea to update these things automatically. TIA All the help is really appreciated