USB drive boot in different hardware?
 

This is Slackware 14.1 but I don't think this question is specific to the distribution.

I managed to install Linux on my USB hard drive (1TB Toshiba), and also made it bootable. The bootloader is LILO. On my home machine (which is an Intel 64-bit motherboard), I set the BIOS to boot to the external drive and it boots fine. On my office machine, (which is ASUS 64-bit motherboard), it hangs with "LILO 99 99 99 ...". It also hangs on another 32-bit machine I tried it on. The BIOS are all of course different, but all the USB settings appear to be similar. I would appreciate any ideas on how to solve this.

i think you would have to create a linux install specifically with hardware compatibility in mind.

i take what you installed is indeed 32bit? 64bit install won't run on 32bit hardware.

Thanks.

The linux I installed is 32 bit. The problem I think is the boot sector. The stall with "LILO 99 99 99" usually indicates a corrupt boot sector. However, it boots fine on one machine and not on another. So there is probably something different about the sectors are being read on different platforms.

have you tried the same with grub2?

i'm totally no expert in these things, but i think grub is more tolerant and better suited to adapt to different hardware.
or, at least it's easier to edit the command line.

I haven't used LILO in decades so I can't answer. I too might guess that lilo is the fault. Someone with lilo skills may be able to fix it. Grub2 ought to fix it as ondoho suggests.

There was another thread recently about that lilo 99 99 99... problem. No indication to show if it was solved, though.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nf-4175517001/

I'd guess you'll have to create a mbr or generic mbr and install lilo to that to fix this.