Installing Mandrake on USB 2.0 Disk

[Compugen]

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

Edited May 25, 2006 by Compugen

[ianw1974]

Welcome to the board

 

Your error message seemed to show it was trying to format two filesystems on the same partition ext2 and vfat. This is impossible, so no idea how you managed to do this.

 

However, I'd probably not use ext2, unless you meant to put ext3, since you mentioned journaling which is ext2+journaling = ext3.

 

I would suggest attempting the install again, and choosing custom partitioning when prompted. Clear the USB disk of all partitions, unless you have stuff on certain partitions that you want to keep. Then create yourself three partitions:

 

swap

/

home

 

and allocate maybe 512MB to swap, 8GB to / and the rest to /home for a simple partitioning scheme.

 

Also, I tend to use reiserfs, I find it much better than ext3.

[Compugen]

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.

[ianw1974]

Shouldn't normally automatically choose it unless it defaulted to ext3, which I think it does :unsure:

 

Using custom, you'll be able to control it a bit more, and see how it gets allocated. Post back let us know how you get on.

[Compugen]

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:(

[ianw1974]

I normally choose reiserfs, I find this a much better filesystem than the others. I have this on all my systems, never really choose anything else.

 

I only ever use ext3 on Red Hat, because that's all that is available without hacking the system to get something else like reiserfs.

[Compugen]

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?

Edited May 26, 2006 by Compugen

[ianw1974]

When you connect the disk and boot Custom, does it show these duplicates? If not, does it show these when connected in Windows?

 

If so, I would use the Disk Manager in Windows to delete all but the FAT32 partitions, returning your disk to how it was in the first place. Then I would reboot and into the install again and choose custom partitioning to configure the partitioning again from scratch.

 

Sounds like it's gotten screwed up somehow.

 

The HDLIST issue sounds like a CD problem, as if it was corrupted either when downloaded or when burnt to CD, but then if you've installed using this CD on another machine without problems, then I wouldn't have thought it was this, but it's possible.

[Compugen]

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.

[ianw1974]

You could do this.

 

Boot and install of your master hdd. Then boot your system and login to it normally. Since you'll later connect it to your USB port it will become /dev/sdax where x is the partition.

 

Now, what you would do once booted normally, is look at /etc/fstab. This will list things like /dev/hda1, hda2, etc, etc for each of your partitions. Change the hda or hdb or hdd part to sda instead.

 

Then look at /etc/lilo.conf and make sure all references to hda are changed to sda as well.

 

Now, shutdown and remove the disk and connect to USB. Of course, your BIOS needs to support booting from USB to allow this to work, and the USB would need to be before the internal hard disk as part of the boot process.

 

It will fail to boot the first time, so boot the Mandriva CD, press ESC and type:

 

linux rescue

 

then when menu appears mount your partitions, and exit to prompt and then do:

 

chroot /mnt /bin/bash
/sbin/lilo

 

this will update lilo and allow you to boot from the USB disk.

[Compugen]

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??

[ianw1974]

No, that'll be fine. You just need to update lilo and the /etc/fstab as mentioned, and hopefully that should do the trick.

[Compugen]

No, that'll be fine. You just need to update lilo and the /etc/fstab as mentioned, and hopefully that should do the trick.

 

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.

[ianw1974]

This is after the install, and you booted normally? What partitions did you create? /etc/fstab should list all of them relative to what's on the disk when connected to ide controller.

 

Post me results from:

 

fdisk -l

 

this is lowercase L and lists partitions so I can see what is there. Also post the contents of the /etc/fstab from when you booted the system normally.

[Compugen]

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.