Fedora Core 3, External Drive, & Grub

tommcfarlin4 · 12-08-2004, 08:34 PM

Hey everyone,

I've got a Dell D600 laptop. I've used Fedora Core 2 with it for quite sometime; however, I was stuck using Windows this past semester (since programs required for some of my school work only work in Windows). I had Fedora Core 2 installed on a USB hard drive so I'm familiar with installation, creating the custom initrd, etc, etc.

Today I sat down to install Fedora Core 3. I installed it and everything with fine (here comes the inevitable) BUT I hit a snag. I've got grub installed on the external hard drive, I've got NTLDR configured to boot to the drive by loading a 512byte Linux.bin file and I've made my custom initrd image.

My problem is this...
Once I tell NTLDR to boot to Fedora, all that displays is
GRUB

At the top of the screen.

Just to cover all of the bases:
1. I have grub.conf pointing to my new custom initrd image.
2. I'm using kernel 2.6.9-1.667 (but I really haven't gotten to experience it yet

3. My USB drive is /dev/sdb
4. My grub.conf:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd2,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sdb2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sdb1

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd2,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu

title Fedora Core 3 (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd2,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667custom.img

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

_anyone_ that has any idea what to do, help!

Thanks a lot!
tom

jjmerelo · 12-17-2004, 11:56 AM

I had exactly the same problems with a Compaq Evo1050v. Did you manage to fix it?

tommcfarlin4 · 12-23-2004, 04:16 PM

Yes, I was able to fix it.

My main problem was that I had two external hard drives - if you do, then this may be the problem:

I had to plug the linux hard drive into the FIRST USB port, /dev/sda, and the other drive in the second, /dev/sdb

After that, everything worked perfectly.

Let me know if this helps (or doesn't..),
Tom