Hi
I've installed the suse 10.3 on external hdd.
the problem that the second boot stage is installed on the external disk and the first one is on the local disk . So i can't start the computer if the external disk is not plugged in.
Is there a solution to change the first boot stage to the external disk and restore the mbr state of the local disk.

Thanks ..

This is what worked for me when I had that problem. (ubuntu not suse though).

I got the supergrub disk and used it to repair my MBR. It can also boot your linux partitions on the external drive. You can also use your windows disk but this screwed my install up.

The other reference that I have found useful is Hermans grub guide

(google both - I cannot right now)

To avoid writing to my main hard drive I changed my BIOS to look for my USB drive first and then I did not have the problem of overwriting the MBR. The if my USB was not plugged in the main hard drive would boot just like a regular window machine.

It works for most distros but not all.

In order to make a grub menu then for your USB drive I got to a terminal through a live CD and ran grub.

It will list the available partitions, maybe something like this

(hd1,0)
(hd1,1)

(the first number is the drive the second is the partition. Note grub counts the number 1 partition as 0 and number 2 as 1 etc).

Choose which one you want for root - for example

then set the grub menu to the (for example) USB (external hard drive) drive

Like I said that works for me on Ubuntu (hundreds of times) but don't exactly know your distro.

There are lots of googles on this subject.

Hope it works for you.