Mandrivia LE2005 does not see USB hard drive

[oldman]

I am new to linux and have been trying several LiveCD's. I have been able to install SimplyMepis on a USB hard drive with no problem.

 

I would like to install Mandriva LE2005 but the installer does not see my USB drive. Does anyone have a clue about how to proceed? I have ordered Ver 10.1 disks as Mandriva sells that version already installed on an external HD. It may be that 10.1 is more tolerant.

 

Thanks for your time and thoughts.

 

Jim

 

Computer: Dell Dimension 3000, Pentium 4, 512MB

Main drive (hda) 80GB- 3 partitions, 2 for Dell and C: for Win XP

USB drive (sda) 80GB- 4 partitions, 3 for linux and 1 for windows

Linux are / 15GB ext3 swap 2GB and /home 32GB

[steppenwolf1984]

Aargh, the usb thingy! My problems had to do with a VIA chipset and the 2.6 kernel, so my USB devices were not found. Check for errata at the mandriva home page, youd be suprised at the specific problems that crop up over hw....i finally got sudden USB recognition when I installed once and clicked on a " force no acpmia" option when installing came to loading the bootloader. In subsequent installs I found some USB devices with the help of "configure tools" in Hard Drake, and it often involved having the correct name for the given device. Iomega USB cd burner was sr0, not cdrom3....sorry I cant be more helpful about installing via a USB drive, but the trial and error I just described may bring you closer to USB functionality...good luck

 

 

[copy of preceding post removed by spinynorman - please use 'add reply' button]

[AussieJohn]

Greetings Jim (oldman indeed !!!)

Welcome to our world at MUB. Go through the search threads here and I am sure you will get a lot of valuable and useful info. That way you can try some things and ask more questions as you go. You will not get the rtfm nonsense here,

 

By the way you only need about a 5gb for / and about 500 to 600mb for /swap. Remember that whenever you do a reinstall then everything in / is wiped, so you won´t want to be keeping a lot of your saved data there. Also reduce /Home to about 4gb because sometimes it is necessary and helpful in early experience to flush /Home as well. Make a new additional partition with the balance of space you saved and keep your music, videos, graphics and photos there. Since it would only contain data and no settings then it never has to be cleaned out when you do a reinstall at anytime. Give the new partition a name of your choice.

 

Only make the suggested partition size changes when you do a reinstall, since trying to do it with an installed OS is next to impossible except for the true expert. It can get impossibly messy and still result in having to do a reinstall.

 

Cheers. John.

[crazyspongebob]

Hi Jim,

I was able to install LE2005 on a 40g usb drive, but unable to boot. I installed LE2005 by typing alt2 (kernel version 2.6.8.1 I believe) at the boot prompt. Somehow LE2005 does not recognize usb drive by the default kernel. I also don't know how to make a boot disk since my laptop is a prostar 1ghz usb1.1 with no usb boot. I have tried my usb drive with some latest hardware systems which support usb boot but I get kernel panic because init cannot mount the usb drive (/dev/sda).

 

J.T.

[oldman]

John,J.T and all:

 

I was able to install Mandrakelinux 10.1 Offical with no problem. Before installing I partitioned and formated my USB drive using Norton Partition Magic. During the installation MDK suggested I install on the existing linux partitions on sda which is the USB drive. The only problem was that MDK would not boot. I had used 3 partitions: 1 for /, 1 for swap and 1 for /home. After playing around I reinstalled using only / and swap, home being place in / , ie only two partitions. Wrote lilo in MBR of sda did the configurations, Quit. REBOOT and started to run MDK 10.1. I have found that MDK is a fight compared to Windows, the password protection is driving me crazy- it takes a lot of getting used to. Now to get the system to do what I want. Next problem is compiling the modem driver. I do have the Intel driver but have had trouble compiling it. I will get there though. This 67 year old dog does not let a bone go.

 

Thanks to all

 

Jim

[AussieJohn]

Hello oldman.

Changing from 3 partitions to two partitions should not have made any difference

to being able to install the OS. I suspect that you did something a little different elsewhere in your later attempt to install the OS, I think it was just a coincidence that you changed the partitions at the time of your success.

Try to work out what that difference was so that you can reinstall with HOME on a separate partition as most recommended practice.

 

Cheers. John.

[crazyspongebob]

Hi Jim,

I was able to install LE 2005 without a hitch several times using the alt2 option. However I was not able to boot that installation without a boot cd or floppy. I tried the installation on my brother AMD 64 laptop without a hitch. After the successful installation, I tried to boot and got kernel panic error since init could not mount the drive even though usb driver was loaded at boot. I don't know what to do to get it boot

 

J.T.

[oldman]

AussieJohn

 

When installing MDK 10.1 I used the automatic install system. I used the install on existing partition option. MDK detected my linux formated USB drive and offered it for installation. I tried some of the other options later but as long as I had the linux usb drive available it did not even offer to install on my windows based internal hd. It just used my preformated swap partition and even did not show the option during the install. When I indicated to install / on sda1 and /home on sda3(swap is sda2) it asked if I wanted to formant the partitions or not. On different installs I have chosen both. When MDK did the format it said it would format / as ext3 and /home as ext2:vfat. No changes were allowed- just turn off the format. When trying to format the /home as ext2:vfat I got a message that MDK did not know how to do this and entered a loop of repeating the format ext2:vfat message. The only way out was the power cutoff. Then I Installed by not letting MDK format the partitions. I got a complete install and everything seemed ok. Reboot then boom a whole series of error messages starting with: There was an error setting up inter-process communications for KDE. .....could not read network connection list. //.DCOPsever_localhost_0... please check the "dcopserver". Then another series of messages in the same vain. Finally I got the KDE splash screen. It stopped at )% Setting up interprocess communications. After approx 90 seconds I got the following message: No write access to $HOME directory(/). KDE is unable to start.

 

When I install with /home located in / MDK runs fine. I do realize that a separate /home partition in much better. I think the the problem may be related to installing on an external USB drive.

 

It is interesting though that I have had no problem installing pclinuxos (a MDK livecd clone) using a seperate /home partition on a USB drive.

 

As yet I have not tried a manual install- it maybe that it would not have the problem.

 

Again thanks for the advice and help. This forum is great- lot of information to read and digest.

 

Jim (oldman)

[crazyspongebob]

I have tried both 10.1 and 10.2 installation without any trouble. However, booting from the drive is another story. It just frustrating when the older kernel is able to see the ext usb drive but not the newer kernel. I'll try ubuntu to see what happens.

 

J.T.

[crazyspongebob]

Hi,

I just installed 2006 RC2 on my usb hard drive during the weekend and had to choose the alt1 kernel which is the default kernel for 10.1(version 2.6.8.1 I think). I was able to boot from the usb drive this time. It's really weird that the same kernel throughout three version but one cannot recognize the drive (10.1), the other recognizes and installs but cannot boot(10.2), the last installs and boots (2006 RC2). However, there is a little quirk with X. When I log out, X hangs. I have to use CTR+ALT+Backspace to shutdown X.

 

J.T.