chittu

[Log in to get rid of this advertisement]

Hi, This is chittu and an absolute newbie to Linux installation. Got myself into serious trouble with my Linux installation.

What I did:
-----------

1. Installed Linux (Kubuntu) to a detachable hard disk (USB).
2. The boot loader I think was written to this hard disk.

The problem:
------------
I cannot boot my PC without the USB hard disk attached. I am having to carry the disk all over the place .

Gone through some of the queries on grub, but did not get much out of it. Most likely that is got some thing to do with my ability to understand whats written there.

Help I Need:
------------
1. How do I move the loader to the main hard disk?
2. Will all the OS on my system be usable after this transfer? (I understand that I will need to put in the USB HDD to be able to use my Linux installation.)

Pleeeeaasseee Heeeelppp.

pixellany

It seems more likely that grub was installed to the first drive (internal), and that it cannot find its files when the USB drive is disconnected.
What happens when you attempt to boot up?
What else is installed on this machine?

masonm

Grub needs to be able to read the /boot/grub/menu.lst file in order to work. While this is often a good thing, in a situation like yours it's a bit of a drawback when the disk containing that file isn't connected.

Perhaps Lilo would be a better choice for this type of installation as it only needs to read the config file when it's installed or updated, and is self-contained at all other times.

chittu

> pixellany

Not really sure how I could find out where GRUB has been loaded and what it is missing. But it gives and "Error 21" on boot up and from what I could find out this basically means a missing disk.

How can I make sure that GRUB and all its requirements are on the main hard disk and not on any detachable disk? Is there a configuration or installation step i need to follow for that.

Since I have just installed Kubuntu and not stored anything on this partition I can re-install, if that helps (?)

pixellany

This may help. GRUB needs to be pointed to a partition to find it's files. I have always assumed that this must be a Linux partition, but I can't say that absolutely.

You can create a small Linux partition on the main drive and put the essential GRUB stuff there. GRUB will have to be re-installed since it gets "hard-coded" to point to its "home base".

What is on the main disk? Would it maybe be easier to setup dual-boot with Linux on the main drive?

dracolich

This might help, too.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=549353

I had given another user some help with the same issue - an issue I recently experienced for myself.

Post #6 is the instructions for putting GRUB onto the USB disk. More details are in #12. Post #9 is how to fix the MBR of the internal disk.