Installing Linux on an external firewire (ieee 1394) drive

astromac · 05-11-2006, 07:41 AM

I downloaded ubuntu breezy and tried to install it on an external firewire drive. Install went great until it was time to put a bootloader in - it couldn't and my drive is unbootable. Googled a bit and saw that theres alot of hoop jumping to get it to work.

My question is this, is there a distro that will just allow me to install a bootable linux on an external firewire drive (i.e. it just works)?

Thanks so much for your help.

lord-fu · 05-11-2006, 10:40 AM

Hello,

Welcome to Linux Questions! Where did you try to install the bootloader? Is this a dual boot scenario/with XP? Are the right modules compiled into the kernel to boot the firewire drive?

I never have done this, but from what it sounds like the boot loader was not installed to the correct place or the correct modules are not compiled into the kernel to allow booting from your firewire drive.

Sorry if I am wrong or misleading, but I am sure someone will come along to correct me/help you.

astromac · 05-11-2006, 06:38 PM

Dual boot with OS X. The bootloader is yaboot.

I really can't tell you much else as I'm not terribly familiar with Linux.

Electro · 05-11-2006, 07:35 PM

The only way to make this work it is to use a CD/DVD with the drive. Use the CD/DVD to store the kernel and the ramdisk file. When the kernel and ramdisk loads from the CD/DVD, it should be able to boot off the IEEE-1394 device. Both GRUB and LILO do not have a way to boot off a external devices like USB or IEEE-1394. Yaboot looks like it is based on GRUB, so it may or may not boot off the external drive.