Hi,

I'm installing RedHat 7.2 onto a laptop hard disk in a USB caddy with the intention of subsequently installing the drive into a laptop that has no floppy or CD ROM drive, however I'm having a problem getting the destination machine to boot.

I've tried both Lilo and Grub and they both hang almost immedately (or errors just a flashing cursor) and I believe the problem is due to the fact that the install has configured the boot sequence for the USB caddy drive and not for the primary master IDE controller that the drive ends up being attached to.

The default kernal parameters during the install are...

sda1=ide-scsi

I've been able to work out that sda1 is the first scsi drive in the system (I'm assuming its treating the external USB caddy as a scsi device) and ide-scsi is an instruction to use scsi emulation for this device, assuming I'm right the problem I have is translating this into what it _should_ be for the destination machine.

Since its going to be the primary master IDE drive in the target system I _believe_ I need to change sda1 to hda however I am unclear if I should retain the ide-scsi or replace it with 'something else' (and if so what the 'something else' needs to be)

Appreciate any pointers

if it's gonna be a regular ide disk you won't need scsi emulation...

Ok so the parameters would be what?

well, you wouldn't need any "ide-scsi", and you'd have to make sure your bootloader is pointing to the correct root device, for example, /dev/hda...

you might want to post your /etc/lilo.conf for discussion...

See thats the problem I cant get at it because the system wont boot once I've moved the drive to the target system, and if I booted it in the install system then I know it would be wrong (because its an external USB drive on that system)

Basically I need to know what I should be putting in the kernel parameters box instead of sda1=ide-scsi during installation to get it to boot from the primary master IDE device

can you boot the target system to a cd???

if so, then you can use a linux cd to edit the lilo.conf file on the disk and to re-install lilo with the new configuration...

the ide-scsi parameters tell the ide driver to ignore the drive and not set it up, because you plan to set it up with the scsi driver later. it's mostly used for ide cdrom burners.

No, the target system has no drives other than the hard drive I am installing to (which is why the install needs to be done in another machine)

Ok so if I dont need ide-scsi what do I need? (IIRC I've seen references to ide-hdd) (or are we saying I dont need to specify any parameters at all?)

yes, that's what i'm saying... you don't need special parameters... you just need to have lilo properly configured...

you could probably configure it right there on the "caddy" before transferring the disk, so that it's ready right away, i guess...

why don't you post your lilo.conf???

Ok I tried an install leaving the parameters box empty and still no dice.

If someone can tell me how to access ext3 parition under Windows XP (the native OS of the install machine the USB caddy is attached to) then I'd be able to post the lilo.conf

Ok I have managed to get into the drive so here it is (this is not a cut and paste so any typos might be my fault)

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda2
append="hda=ide-scsi"


Please be aware that any instance of hda was originally sda1 and has been manually modified by me since being able to access the drive. I have also made the same modifications where applicable in the fstab and device.map files.

My partition layout is as follows

/boot 47MB
/ (rest of disk space)
swap 500MB

The system hangs at boot displaying 'L' (presumably the start of 'Lilo') and a flashing cursor

get rid of that hda=ide-scsi line, and
rerun lilo.
however you booted, and mounted the partition,
say it's at /mnt/hda2,
run
chroot /mnt/hda2/ /sbin/lilo

if you post your exact and working /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab (do a copy/paste), as they are on the source system, someone here might be able to show you exactly what you need to change so that when you put the disk on the target system, it'll work right away...

=)

I dont have an exact and working lilo.conf because neither the install system nor the target system will boot from this disk (the install system wont boot from an external drive, and the target system hangs with 'L' as I have already explained).

I've only been able to get this info by attaching the drive to a 3rd system which is running linux and has the neccessary USB support to read the external caddy.