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Installing Mandrake On External HD...Possible?


Guest gigahorsepower
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Do you know a good documentation how to make a new kernel with usb-support for unexperienced users? Maybe for Mandrake 10? Or is it possible that you send me your kernel?

 

Here's a great article with a detailed howto on this problem from ibm but it's probably not for newbies:

 

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linu...-lnxw02FireBoot

 

In spite of the title, the article covers in detail the problems of installing to usb or firewire drives and the steps needed to make this happen.

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An announcement was made last month about Lacie and Mandrake joining hands to come up with a mobile drive with Linux installed. Its what anyone would call Mobile Linux. Its very convenient in the sense that anyone can plug it into any computer with a USB socket and is on the desktop in minutes all ready to get going with the work. Very nice offering indeed. Ideal for those who cannot or would not ditch Windows but want to get familiar with what Linux is all about.

 

I had earlier reviewed the drive itself in the month of June when this annoucement was not made and the drive was available as a simple 20,40,or 80 GB USB and Firewire version for mobile storage for those on the go. The drive by itself was a very good offering but with the Linux now bundled with it it is a must have for anyone who wants to have the luxury of working on multiple systems without the worry for dual booting and its drawbacks. on a single machine.

 

Here is the link to my review of the drive for those who are especially interested in its performance and usability.

 

Review of LaCie Mobile Drive (Back-up Solutions)

 

Lacie Mobile Drive 40 GB Review

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Guest nemihome
Here's a great article with a detailed howto on this problem from ibm but it's probably not for newbies:

 

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linu...-lnxw02FireBoot

 

In spite of the title, the article covers in detail the problems of installing to usb or firewire drives and the steps needed to make this happen.

I have read this article. And I have learned some things now. linke umask mount and so on. I changed the initrd file and added the usb drivers. But now I have two problems. The first one: The Initrd files has a limited size. To add all this drivers it should be bigger. I don't know how to change this.

 

And the bigger problem. All the kernel versions I have got with my Mandrake Linux are so big, that it is not possible to bring it on a disk togehter with the initrd file. So I think I need a smaller kernel.

 

Thats the reason why I wantet to make my own kernel. That has also the advantage that no boot disk is needed anymore. Now the problem is how to do it :)

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  • 1 month later...
Here's a great article with a detailed howto on this problem from ibm but it's probably not for newbies:

 

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linu...-lnxw02FireBoot

 

In spite of the title, the article covers in detail the problems of installing to usb or firewire drives and the steps needed to make this happen.

I've read this article, too, and a few others. I've learned how to increase the size of initrd to accomdate more drivers (using "dd"). I've put most of the drivers refered to in the "ibm" article in initrd, and uncommented the "modprobe"s.

 

(From the "ibm" linuxrc I've extracted the modprobes and the loop that waits for the drive to be recognized and inserted these things into the existing Mandrake initrd a few lines from the top ... sorry I can't tell you exactly where right now, I'm typing from memory. I think it's right before the Mandrake tries to load the two drivers that come with the original initrd. I include the REAL_ROOT=/dev/sda1)

 

I set up a new entry in grub making root=dev/sda1, and pointing to the new initrd. The bootloader is on the MBR of the USB drive. *Everything* is on the usb drive.

 

The good news is that the bootloader runs, grub runs, my new linuxrc runs and gets past the modprobes without apparent error. When it gets to the part of linuxrc that waits for the drive to be recognized the errors come and scroll by so fast I can't see them. I commented out that part of linuxrc that waits, and now I can read some of the errors, but they still scroll off the top. (is there some way to capture them?)

 

The first one seems to be (but I may be wrong)

mount: error 6 ext3 fs

 

I'm getting closer here. Can any one suggest a plan / debug stratagy / idea?

 

-gap

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I notice that the linuxrc in the "ibm" instructions makes calls to /bin/ash and /bin/devfsd. Well, neither of these are in my inird *or* my main Mandrake file system. (btw, I notice that urpmi installs devfsd into /sbin. )

 

So while I work on installing them, perhaps someone can help me understand something.

 

The initrd contains nash. The man page for nash describes internal and external commands. Are the calls to /bin/ash and /bin/devfsd supposed to be external nash commands, directed via nash to the main filesystem? This doesn't make too much sense to me, because the filesystem hasn't been mounted yet. Can nash magically find them?

 

Or should ash and devfsd be in initrd?

 

A statically compiled ash is rather large ... would the non-static one do the job if simply copied into initrd?

 

Or will /bin/sh work just as well in this context?

 

these references to /bin/* have me confused.

 

I'm also have another idea that I'll relate when I get a chance.

 

-gap

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I will be doing this eventually.

 

The Linux partitioning tools don't like dealing with external drives, i had trouble partitioning my LaCie with cfdisk and mkfs and friends. However partition magic did it perfectly.

 

One workaround to the usb-storage problem is to build your own kernel with it included, i myself include all my drivers in the kernel itself, excepting wireless and audio.

 

iphitus

 

Mandrake is selling a LaCie USB drive with MDK 10.0 installed and booting from it, checking hardware of the host machine to adapt to it. But the kernel is also modified accordingly. How would you do to make the installation if you depart from the regular distributions discs, pls? :help:

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