I am 4 days into a DIY learn linux attempt. I think I have corrupted the MasterBrainRecord in /body/head(0,0) which has resulted in an internal circular reference. I was unable to make sense of reading the GRUB information I found, and other reading has me confused.

My setup is
1. 300G Seagate IDE Drive with Drive overlay software to overcome BIOS limits, with C and D drives under XP (179GB and 111GB respectively)
2. External USB drive with:

/dev/sdb1 4G ntfs
/dev/sdb2 769MB swap
/dev/sdb3 4,9G / ext3 (where I want to boot to)
/dev/sdb4 5G /home ext3

openSUSE sees /dev/sda = 298GB
/dev/sda1 = 7.8GB


I have installed openSUSE onto an external USB drive by running the install CD initially from M$ XP. This set up a boot menu to do:
1. Windows XP
2. openSUSE 10.3 Installation

During initial install, I overwrote the MBR using GRUB, but managed to restore as openSUSE made a backup (luckily). I have installed wireless network card and scanner, system seems to run OK. The only problem is the boot.
When I boot option 2 (linux) it runs the openSUSE installation, during which I have the option to boot an already installed system (which is the one set up on my USB drive from the install CD) - this is what I am using to post this. My PC won't boot directly from USB, I think. What I want to learn is how to point option 2 in the boot menu to go immediately to the USB drive installation, without first going through the install screen that pops up. I would be appreciative if you could type the answer slowly, because I am just a newbie . Thanks in advance.

OpenSuse supports booting from a USB disk but requires a patch done to its initrd.

So you must be a faster learner to have done it within 4 days getting into Linux.

If you haven't done so it would be just flogging a dead horse to boot a standard OpenSuse 10.3 from a USB device.

Thanks for the response saikee, as it is appreciated - I guess I am going to read and learn about patching initrd's now! I'll post any progress back here.