grub on laptop with external hard drive
 

I've been using openSUSE 10.3 for about half a year now. I have XP installed on the internal SATA hard drive of the laptop (/dev/sda) and openSUSE on the external USB hard drive (/dev/sdb).

I had grub installed on a small /boot partition (~100MB) on the internal hard drive. It booted and showed me the menu. I could always boot into XP, and also into openSUSE when the external hard drive was plugged in. However, I had to reinstall openSUSE and don't remember how I got grub configured last time.

Now, if the external hard drive isn't plugged in, grub gives Error 21 (hard drive not found). If it is plugged in, it gives Error 15 (file not found). I can still boot into either OS using the "Rescue installed system" option on the openSUSE CD.

Does anyone know how to configure grub in my case?

Thanks

that error shows on re-install of grub....you put the bootloader link files to the external

just redo grub in mbr to re-link to the internal ones.

a live cd is best

2) if you have no live cd...suse should have a recovery mode or rescue mode where you can re-install the bootloader...hopefully with an option to go to internal drive but maybe not....in which see if it has an option to go to console mode...then try above commands

if you do not understand grubspeak after reading my sig tell us your internal drive partitions pls

Thanks A LOT for the quick reply.

Well, I did as you instructed (except I used (hd0,4), because the /boot partition is /dev/sda5). Now it will boot XP. I see the menu flash for a split second before it boots XP. I'm assuming I need to edit the menu.lst file.

However, after I edit menu.lst, will I need to redo the grub setup? Or will the changes take effect on the next reboot?

Thanks for your help!

now the beauty of grub is...once embedded in mbr and linked to the balance of the booting files...from now on just edit that menu.lst WITH root powers as file is owned by root

a split second suggests you need a
timeout 3....means 3 seconds

depending on whether title for xp is b4 title for linux add a
default 0....means boot first title system unless you arrow down and press enter at menu

see the signature if you need more hints

Thanks a lot for all your help. I now have grub working the way I had it before.
Thanks!