Hi,

I thought I would try linux out, and decided I would download SUSE 10.

Here is what I want to do:
- Install to my external HDD (USB2)
- Use my USB memory stick as the boot loader - so that when I insert the memory stick, it boots the SUSE installation on the external harddrive.

I unplugged my windows HDD because I don't want to risk losing my work that is on it.

The installer picked up the desired installation partions correctly:
/sda - is my USB memory stick where I want to install a bootloader to
/sdb - is my USB external hardrive
/sdb1 - is a NTFS partition
/sdb5 - is the extended partition I want to install SUSE to.

The installer said that it would install GRUB on the MBR of /sda (the usb memory drive) with a boot option of Suse on /sdb5 - which is great.

I proceeded with the installation, selected a few custom packages.

The installation started, and started copying files off CD1. Once CD the packages for CD 1 were copied - it prompted to reboot (which I thought was a bit odd since there were packages to be installed off CD2).

I rebooted, and let it boot off the memory stick. GRUB loaded and launched the install on the external hard disk (/sdb5).

There was some warning about not finding my Synaptics touchpad (on /sd??).
Then straight after this came another warning - something like:

"Waiting for /sdb5/ to become available........... not found, aborting to /bin/sh"

And this is where things stop. I'm left at a command prompt.

Does anyone know what could be causing the problem?

Thanks

I'd assume that the problem is that the USB drivers are missing in initrd. SUSE does not seem to consider a USB drive as something to boot from. During installation, all drivers are loaded, but not included into initrd, so the reboot fails.

My suggestion: try to boot from CD. You should either get the option to boot from HDD directly (if the USB drive is detected), or you can enter the manual installation mode and load the drivers yourself (usbcore, sd-mod, usbstorage, ehci-hdc). Now you should be able to boot the installed system. After that, you need to run mkinitrd -m <the usb modules>. This is purely theoretical, since I have never attempted it myself.

An alternative option could be to boot a LiveCD (e.g. KNOPPIX), mount the USB drive's root partition, chroot it and run mkinitrd from there.

Hope you it helps!
(Please report if it does)