I originally installed SlackwareLive64-Current onto a 1.5TB USB drive and it has been great! I recently got a new drive, an ADATA SD600Q external USB SSD and I wanted to set it up the same way, so I followed along with the instructions and when it boots, it comes up with an error saying it can't find the live media. It starts booting fine.

I tried it on a couple of different computers, all the same error. I then did the same instructions on another thumb drive I had, a Samsung Usb Fit 3.1 64GB, worked like a charm.

So it worked on a WD Passport USB 1.5TB drive and a Samsung USB Fit 64gb drive, but not on the ADATA SD600Q USB SSD drive. Any clues as to why it would not work on that? Why is this one special?

Looking at the screen, when it gets to initializing the USB ports, it loses the USB SSD and the tries to boot from the internal drives, either the eMMC on one device, or the m.2 nvme drive on the other.

Here is link to the drive: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PLM9K7W/

James

Ok,coming back to this because I still have not figured it out.

When it boots from this drive it stops and says it can't find the live media. Checking with fdisk -l it only shows the internal drives, not the USB drive. When I check with dmesg, I get this in the list:

usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=125f. idProduct=a88a, bcdDevice=93.01
usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3

Then it lists the product, manufacturer and Serial Number. Like I mentioned, when I check the drives with fdisk, it doesn't show up.

Trying lsusb I get

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 125f:a88a

That is the USB drive that has SlackwareLive on it. It doesn't list it as a device though, but it's there. When I list the files with ls from the directory I am in it lists the files from the USB drive.

It says I can mount the root directory/device as read only and continue, but it's not recognizing it or listing it as a device. It boots from the USB drive, then it tries to switch to booting from from the internal drive and that's when it fails.

It's ONLY this drive that causes the issue. As mentioned, I've booted from a Samsung Fit USB 3.1 thumbdrive without a problem. I've also booted from a USB 3.0 1.5TB USB Western Digital passport drive without a problem. This ADATA SD600Q drive is causing me fits trying to boot from it on any device.

What else should I be looking for?

Really this question should appear in Linux-General since all that is in play here are the Linux kernel and the BIOS/UEFI... not a distribution. If you have successfully booted from this arrangement with some other distro, then I suggest you rebuild Live with that kernel version.

If I may ask, what chipset does your motherboard employ? and what year was the BIOS/UEFI image created?

When this happen , is caused for a lost kernel module inside initrd , you can talk to ERIC , to try find a solution , (probable adding some SSD or USB drivers inside initrd)

I've tried this on a Lenovo 1st gen Yoga 11e Chromebook with the Mr.Chrombox bios, a Lenovo P51s laptop and my AMD Llano APU equipped desktop. They all do the same thing. From 10 years ago to a couple years ago.

I haven't tried any other distros.

James

Some more info.

I decided to format the USB drive and try again as it's been a while. I tried with SlackwareLive Current.

Downloaded the lastest version, used

./iso2usb.sh -i /home/live/Downloads/slackware64-live-current.iso -o /dev/sdd

to format and write to the drive, it completes. I reboot the PC and try to use it, nope. Same problem.

When I get back I try this

./iso2usb.sh -d

It does NOT list my USB drive as a removable drive. fdisk lists it's as /dev/sdd

lsusb gives me

Bus 007 Device 005: ID 125f:a88a A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd. SD600Q

I believe this has something to do with iso2usb. It's not detecting this drive as removable and whatever magical voodoo is does to write to the drive for USB isn't working on it.

Wait a second! You try to make a live system within a "gargantuan" external SSD of 240GB?

WHY? You can just install Slackware in an USB hard drive, and I do not talk about a live system, compressed in squashfs files, BUT about a real system installed in a ext4fs partition.

I for one, I have since years Slackware installations in USB hard drives and I consider them as being a must have.

You just have to install Slackware as usual into USB hard drive, then to use in fstab and bootloader(s) the UUIDs, finally to setup both LILO and eLILO if you want your portable Slackware to boot everywhere.

Yes...well, the Plasma5 is quite nice...and all the apps are updated. I use SlackwareLive on an NVME drive installed on a PCI-E card on my older AMD APU system. It's great!

I was waiting for Slackware 15 or 14.3 to come out. I don't want to use -current in case something breaks what I have. I don't want to install 14.2 only to format and start again in X amount of months. I haven't had much luck with upgrading and usually end up just formatting and starting again.

I might try that for this particular drive. I originally started with SlackwareLive because I wanted a bootable USB drive that I could also use to boot in VirtualBox. I have done that with my Samsung Fit 64GB USB thumb drive. I can plug it into my laptop and boot to it, or I can boot to Windows and run VirtualBox and run it in VirtualBox. Or, I used to be able to do that until my work disabled the ability to plug in external hard drives via USB. I am still trying to solve that problem.

In case you weren't aware, Slackware Live pretty much is -current. If you use his Plasma5, it's basically -current with KDE4 swapped for ktown and few extra packages that Alien Bob feels is worthwhile. If you use the regular Slackware Live, it is a snapshot of -current when that ISO was generated.