Hi,

I have an EeePC 4g (the one with the very low capacity hard disc)which has Xubuntu on its HD. I would like to install Linux Mint 10 onto an SD card so as to e able to boot the netbook with it.

I have succeeded, in a way, by using UNetbootin but now the netbook will not boot into anything unless the SD card is in the card slot. Previously I had Mint 9 on the card and it didn't need to be inserted in order to boot from the hard disc.

I have reinstalled Grub2 on the netbook's HD and it now boots straight into Xubuntu when the SD card isn't inserted. However if I insert the card nothing at all happens when I try and boot - i.e. no Xubuntu and no Mint 10. Just a hung netbook.

Is there any way of correcting this problem? When I installed Mint 9 on the card it asked if I wanted it to be bootable and during the installation the hard disc light didn't flash at all but I wasn't asked about whether I wanted the card to be bootable and during the installation the HD light was flashing a lot when I installed Mint 10. The SD card was described by FDISK as /dev/sdc and that is where I asked for Mint to be installed. I assumed that Mint 10 would over-write Mint 9 but perhaps I should have formatted the card first?

can i ask why you need to dualboot?

What is you're intention to boot both Os ?
In that way that they do not interfere with each other .
Than you need to have two GRUB one on the HD and one on the SD card
Linux MINT treated you're SD card as a internal device so its mentioned in you're Fstab .
So you're FSTAB on the SD may not have a entry of the HD
And you're FSTAB on the HD may not have a entry of the SD card.
To change with OS to boot change the boot order in you're BIOS

First, change the options in your computer's BIOS so that the internal drive is the first boot option.

Then, simply boot Xubuntu and type:

This should magically detect the Mint on /dev/sdc and add it to your GRUB menu next time you reboot.

(This is assuming you are using a recent version of Xubuntu and that your BIOS supports booting from an SD card.)

If you need more details: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2

Why not buy a $4 usb flash drive and run it off a flash drive.

Some distro's offer a universal image that may be dd'ed to a flash card or usb. The problem here may be how internally the sd card attaches to the way the bios works.

Does any eepc boot from a sd card by default?

My eee 900ha can boot from an SD card. I don't know about other models.

Maybe get one of the universal images and dd it on the sd card. Boot it up and see what happens.

Hi,

I was wanting to dual boot partly so as to get to know Mint and partly because is seems to work better with WiFi than Xubuntu does.

Yes, it will boot from an SD card; one just has to press ESC when it begins to boot and a menu is produces asking what to boot from.

Mint 9 installed itself on the SD card without interfering with the hard drive. When the SD card was not inserted the netbook booted Xubuntu and when it was inserted and I pressed ESC while it was booting I got a menu asking if I wanted to boot from the SD card, and if I said yes it booted Mint 9 but Mint 10 won't do that.

If you press escape, then I am assuming that you are using grub on the hard drive. It would need to be edited maybe to find mint 10. Otherwise, I'd guess a problem with how 10 was installed to the SD card.

I've had a few issues using the 'startup disc creator' with Mint 10 to create a bootable USB. It worked fine with Mint 9 and not 10 as you are saying. So I don't think the problem is isolated to your SD card or netbook. Now you've got me thinking I might see if I can get it working and post the results to see if it helps.

I've had no luck as of yet.

I was just trying to use Grub2 to boot the iso from the USB but to no avail. But I must say I am enjoying trying to get it working.

Did you try "sudo update-grub" yet as I suggested in post #4? This should detect the OS on your SD card and update your grub accordingly. (You may need to have the SD card mounted first, the easiest way to do this in Ubuntu would be simply to open it in the file manager from the Places menu.)

Hi snowpine,

Yes, I tried 'update-grub' but it didn't do anything either to the netbook's HD or to the SD card. I have re-installed grub on the netbook and now it boots into Xubuntu like it used to, but as far as the SD card is concerned it won't work at all so I intend to format it and, possibly, try installing Mint 10 again

I run AntiX, Puppeee, and even Windows Xp off of external SD flash drive on my EEEPC 701SD 8gig internal SSD and 900 4gig/16gig internal SSD.

Doing Beta Testing for AntiX 11 at present time. All you need to do to make sure what ever bootloader you are using whether grub2,legacy grub,lilo,grub4dos, whatever.

Is pointed to and installed to your external flash drive and that when you formatted said flash drive. That it is flagged as "boot"

I run AntiX 8.5
on internal drives of both of my EEEPCs.

I use the Esc key to boot Windows XP, Puppeee 4.X, AntiX 11 Beta, and if I remove any of my external flash drives. My internal drives boot just fine. The Xp flash was made with dd so I could wipe the internal drive on the 701SD and have a backup of XP (runs slow as molasses on internal phison ssd drive ). Which came preinstalled on the 701SD.