Install to external hard drive

leofwine · 09-12-2005, 04:48 PM

Hi Group,

I've just bought the Suse 9.3 pro box but having trouble getting past the fact that my PC has two hard discs on a sis 180 raid which the Suse installer doesn't seem to recognise. Browsing the forum I get the impression that I'm stumped there.

But...

It does recognise my Maxtor 1 touch USB2 external hard drive! I suspect this would be bootable if there was something to boot to as if I leave it on when booting the pc it'll tell me that there's a non system disc. I turn it off and all proceeds normally.

So, my question is whether it's possible to install a usable system to this external hard drive instead? Has anyone tried this or any thoughts on the matter?

Thank you for your help

abisko00 · 09-13-2005, 02:31 AM

Actually, I read about a lot of attempts, but no reports of success.

The installation should work just fine, but it seemed that in former versions of SUSE the required USB drivers (usbcore, ehci-hcd, usbstorage, sd-mod) where not included into initrd, which rendered the system unbootable. However, maybe they have changed this in 9.3 or you can add those drivers manually after booting from CD.

leofwine · 09-13-2005, 12:27 PM

Hi Abisko00,

Thanks for your reply. Will hold fire for a while in that case I think...

All the best!

abisko00 · 09-13-2005, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by leofwine
Hi Abisko00,

Thanks for your reply. Will hold fire for a while in that case I think...

All the best!

Come on, give it a try and report your experience here! I didn't plan to discourage you.

It's always worth a try.

leofwine · 09-13-2005, 02:20 PM

Thanks,

You didn't discourage me, just made me realise I shouldn't just jump in with both feet lol!

Will definately report back about what happens

Wish me luck!

abneru · 09-14-2005, 05:14 AM

Hi,

I actually just stumbled across this thread and that's exactly what i'm trying to do.....install 9.3 on an external drive. The first disk installs just fine but after the initial reboot, the system comes up with a 'cannot connect to tty' error message and bums out.

Error1312 · 09-14-2005, 05:39 AM

Just tried this about one hour ago, without success. The installation goes fine, but booting gives an error about the usb device not being found.

abisko00 · 09-14-2005, 06:51 AM

Here's what I would try (purely theoretical, since I have no external drive):

Instead of rebooting (which does not work) you boot again from CD and enter the manual installation mode. Here you load all drivers required to access the USB drive: usbcore, usbstorage, ehci-hcd, sd-mod, reiserfs (and some I may forgot). Now select 'Start Installation -> Boot installed system' and refer to /dev/sda1 as your root filesystem (sda1 may be the drive if no other USB or S-ATA or SCSI drive is connected). Hopefully you will be taken to your installed system. Maybe the scripts to finish the installation will be started automatically, maybe you need to find another way to login to the system. Once you have access to the command-line, run 'mkinitrd -m <all-the-modules-you-loaded-manually-before>'. Now the reboot should take you to your system.

Good luck!

abneru · 09-14-2005, 07:18 AM

Will try that now thanks.

leofwine · 09-14-2005, 12:54 PM

Thanks for all the ideas and it's encouraging to know others are looking to do the same!

Any thoughts about where to install Grub? I put it on a floppy on my previous computer but was wondering if it might be better on the external drive itself this time as the PC looks to boot from it at startup...?

But then if the USB modules need to load first will Grub need to be before the point where the external drive would boot...

Good luck everyone!!!

Thanks for the help

leofwine · 09-19-2005, 10:56 AM

Well... I installed it fine onto the external disc and managed to get it to boot in a clumsy manner... but it booted! I had a bit of trouble as the mouse wasn't recognised but managed to get round that and unfortunately it didn't want to connect to the internet through my network card. What finished it for me though was that it was very unstable.

Will try again later when there's a version that will recognise the Sis 180 RAID jobbie that caused me to have to try this route in the first place lol!

I do have it installed happily on another machine though (not internet) so will be content to tinker with that in the meantime.

Thanks for all your help everyone

abisko00 · 09-19-2005, 11:03 AM

Great to hear that it works! Hopefully you'll be able to get it more stable.

I'd be interested in a short HowTo, or did you do just a standard installation?