Hi,

I am having problem booting Fedora 11(x86_64) / OpenSUSE 11.1 (x86_64) from USB Hard Drive using my laptop.

Laptop configuration is as below:

OS : Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) (factory installed OS).
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 2.0 GHz
RAM : 4 GB

I installed Fedora 11 on separate USB drive with 23 GB allocated for linux partition and 2 GB for swap partition. No errors were encountered during installation.

But when system was rebooted and boot option was selected as USB boot Fedora was not getting booted from external USB drive. Only black screen with cursor blinking was appearing. Waited for 10-15 min., but no luck.

USB boot is enabled from BIOS as well, but still it is not booting from external HDD.

Also, Linux GRUB bootloader was installed on external HDD.

Same problem was occurring when tried to installed openSUSE.
In both cases 64-bit OS Installation was used.


Thanks in advance.

Can youŕe system boot from the USB ?
Is in youŕe BIOS the usb hd mentioned as a boot device ?

Yes, USB HD is mentioned as a boot device and it is enabled also. During boot F9 is the key to select boot device and there I have selected USB HDD but after selection black screen with blinking cursor comes and nothing happens.

Please help, if having any idea ??

Boot from a Live CD , mount you're external drive.
Give us you're menu.lst and the result of the command fdisk -l (L lower case)

have you tried with liveusb-creator? it's a easier/better way to install fedora in a external hdd/flash drive. There are also a windows executable to perform this task.

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

Regards
Matías

Hi
tried to boot from Live CD but it is not booting. It is showing I/O error for dev sr0. Not sure which device it is mentioning.

Any other way to know menu.lst content ??

Most likely that you're CD or DVD is not good , damage
Or that the CD OR DVD drive it self is not good.

Will try one more time today and will let you know if it works.

Finally it worked by booting Live CD image from USB Drive, but still not able to boot from USB HDD where Fedora installed.

Here is the content of menu.lst.

===================== menu.lst - starts =========================
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sdc1
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sdc1
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=c906a8e2-e2dd-478a-a4d3-3fc9d4cf7626 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
==================== menu.lst - ends ===========================

I tried following things but they didn't work.
1). Uncommented boot=/dev/sdc1
2). Changed splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz to

splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

3). Changed root (hd0,0) to root (hd1,0)

Also, here is the output of fdisk -l command.

======================= fdisk -l ============================

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2cf04d55

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 37272 299379712 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 37272 38913 13187072 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 8036 MB, 8036285952 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 977 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 * 1 976 7839698 b W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/dm-0: 3221 MB, 3221225472 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 391 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000


Disk /dev/dm-1: 3221 MB, 3221225472 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 391 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000


Disk /dev/sde: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xed63c461

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sde1 1 3003 24120320 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sde2 3004 14593 93096675 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sde5 3004 3265 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sde6 3266 7182 31463271 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sde7 7183 11099 31463271 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sde8 11100 14593 28065523+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Error received on error console:
Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
======================== fdisk -l ===============================

How do you install Fedora ?
I can not find the boot partition of Fedora 11.
Fedora 11 should have boot partition in ex3 rest in ex4
GrUB can not boot from ex4

Total USB HDD is of 120 GB out of which 23 GB is formatted as ext3 (Primary partition) and 2 GB is formatted as swap. Rest is formatted as NTFS.

During installation whole 23 GB partition is used for installation of OS which amounts to approx. 3 GB and rest is used for storing data.

23 GB partition is mounted on /. After installation boot directory is created under /.


One thing to note is that when I rebooted machine in Windows Vista and plugged USB HDD in, Vista was showing linux 23 GB partition as RAW partition. Also, output of fdisk -l is showing 23 GB partition as FAT32.
/dev/sde1 1 3003 24120320 c W95 FAT32 (LBA).
Not sure how it got changed to FAT32


With previous release such as Fedora 9/10, I used to install like this way only and it was working although it was on 32-bit processor with 32-bit version of Fedora.

Please suggest any tool/software to format partition as current available Linux partition for Windows Vista. Partition magic is not working in 64-bit Windows Vista

Fedora installer is unable to format NTFS partition as ext3/swap/ext4 etc. Format as radio button disappears when NTFS is selected and Edit button is clicked.