Suse 11 - problem with booting from external HDD
 

Hello ppl :) i am new here and new to linux.
I have problem with SUSE 11 booting from external HDD. All works ok but i cant automatic boot from ext HDD because when i start my laptop, set up temporaly boot device, i got blinking _ in left corner of my monitor. BUT
When i start live CD and then choose "Boot from HDD" then is all ok. My question is: How i can make automatic SUSE boot when i plug in my ext HDD?

I was working by this tutorial: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/usb-sus...inux/#more-356

Hello,

You must configure your BIOS settings. In BIOS, enable the option "Boot from other device". This problem is related to BIOS only, as it failed to recognise the device during the initial boot stage.

I dont have that option in BIOS :(

press F11 And F12 in Boot time and select that drive by which u want to boot ...

You dont get me :) I already make boot priorty USB but laptop cannot start showing GRUB on my ext HDD

I don't think you should be following that article - click on the link to the author.

God damnit :D What now ? any idea :)

Been (more than) a few weeks since I did a openSuSE install, but I can't believe a normal install onto /dev/sdb (or whatever) wouldn't work same as internal. Just make sure the boot loader gets written correctly to the external.

Can you please explain procedure? i am new to linux so i know low basics :)

There is more than one possible...

For the first, do we understand that neither your BIOS, not the one-time-boot menu that you can open at POST by pressing the correct key, will let you boot from a USB-HDD or USB-CDROM? Exactly what choices do you have?

Secondly, when you open a terminal in SUSE and as "su" type the command "fdisk -l" do you see a boot flag "*" in the SUSE partition table? It might be opposite the "/"(root) partition, opposite an extended partition or opposite a "/boot" partition depending on how things are set up.

Posting the results of "fdisk -l" will let us all have a look at the partitions.

Here is my fdisk -l

EDIT: I try change boot priority (not one-time) but same problem.
my noob opinion is thats something wrong with GRUB. Because LiveCD stop working when i get message " Grub stage loaded.."

You don't need...

In fact, linux does not need a boot flag, but will usually set one when it installs a boot loader. A question is, is there one that the BIOS can find?

What do you have on the first partition(c) of the HDD containing linux?

What is the answer to the first question? Exactly what devices does the BIOS let you boot from?

You may not be able to boot to any USB device without going through a bootable CD or USB flash drive.

1st question answer: I have option for boot from HDD,DVD ROM,USB-HDD,PCI-LAN (also USB legacy is enabled)
At POST all disks are recognized

2nd answer: USB-HDD was NTFS (because i have XP on my internal HDD). I run openSUSE install throught LiveCD (35gb partition for SUSE) rest of partitions are empty.

Get booted (from the liveCD), go to sf.net and download and run the bootinfoscript - with the external disk plugged in.
That will generate a RESULTS.txt - post it here, that will show us what is bootable.

It should boot...

Now we know that the BIOS should boot the USB-HDD.

Open a terminal as "su" and type "kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst" to open the grub file and then post the results.

I expect the correct listing would be "root (hd0,1)", that is, since grub begins to count at 0, the first HDD and the second partition. I am not altogether sure if "mbr" would work as well as "root"