I have Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 installed on an external USB HDD (40Gb) that I am able to boot successfully on my Desktop. This involved a bit of playing around, including:
- Install from CD
- Reboot into rescue mode
- Add "WAIT=12" to the top of initramfs.conf
- Add USB support modules to /etc/mkinitramfs/modules
- Create a script to get the machine to pause in /etc/mkinitramfs/scripts/init-premount
- Create the new initrd image with USB support
- Modify /boot/grub/menu.lst to recognise the new image and correct HD (0,0)
(Most of this came from a thread I found on ubuntuforums (thread 80811))
As I said, this works fine on my desktop, but when I try to boot from my Dell D610 laptop, it fails to boot saying that it can't find /dev/sdb1. This is the problem that I was having with the desktop, but I was able to fix it in the fifth point above.
I have tried the install process again using the laptop and it all works fine until I get to the reboot point, where it says it can't find /dev/sdb1. I'm sure this is the correct /dev mount point because the installation went to /dev/sdb1 and I installed grub to /dev/sdb.
It seems that this problem may be specific to the Dell D610, but it is years since I have had any in depth experience with Linux installations and I'm not sure if it is something that I am doing.
Can someone please help?