External Drive- Booting ubuntu

blackbinary · 07-14-2008, 05:15 PM

Alright. Here is what I want to do.

I have a 1TB drive inside an enclosure. It uses e-SATA so it is just as fast as any internal drive (actually faster then my 320GB and 80GB internals).

I want to partition it and have Ubuntu on that partition. This is no problem. I want it to boot from there. Again, no problem.

So whats the problem?

Well, I would like it to be able to boot off another computer as well. This second computer has completely different hardware. This means Ubuntu will some how need to use different drivers based on which computer It is booting from.

If need be, grub can be on both computers (which also have XP installed internally).

Is there any way to do this?

It only has to be these two computers. I may need it to work on 3 or 4 maximum, but at that point it would just be repeating the same steps. However, it doesn't have to boot on *all* computers ever. In this case I do(or will) know the hardware of each computer. Its a matter of telling ubuntu 'no, im on computer 1, use those drivers'. But i have no idea how to do that.

I plan to use Hardy Heron, by the way.

So thanks for any helpful posts & responses

!

blackbinary · 07-14-2008, 11:10 PM

Well, i've posted the question in a few other forums, but no responses

.

Hopefully you guys can help me out!

IndyGunFreak · 07-15-2008, 05:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackbinary

Well, i've posted the question in a few other forums, but no responses

.

Hopefully you guys can help me out!

I have a feeling you're not getting responses because this will be an exercise in futility. Would you install Windows on a drive, put it in another PC, and expect it to boot perfectly w/o reloading drivers, etc. if it even managed to boot?

Why not just put a live CD image on the partition and boot it? With a drive that big, you could create a folder to save files you want.

IGF

blackbinary · 07-15-2008, 02:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IndyGunFreak

I have a feeling you're not getting responses because this will be an exercise in futility. Would you install Windows on a drive, put it in another PC, and expect it to boot perfectly w/o reloading drivers, etc. if it even managed to boot?

Perhaps. As for the windows question, it does work. Thats why I want to know if Ubuntu will. Windows has a 'hardware profiles' features, usually for laptops, but you can tell it to swap most of the hardware, which means there are only a few things that need to be similar. It is pretty hard to do, but It can be done.

Quote:

Why not just put a live CD image on the partition and boot it? With a drive that big, you could create a folder to save files you want.

I did not know you could do that. What would be the difference between using a live cd version and using a full install? Obviously when it is running off a CD it is slower, but that wouldn't be the case if it is on a harddrive.

I guess the other option is to have two seperate installations of ubuntu.

IndyGunFreak · 07-15-2008, 03:34 PM

I'm not exactly sure on the specifics of booting an image off of a drive, but I know it can be done, as thats how people w/o optical drives install..

IGF

PTrenholme · 07-15-2008, 03:38 PM

Well, I have Fedora 9 and Kubuntu on USB drives I schlep from computer to computer, and all I usually have any problem getting to work is the video system when the video driver and screens are different.

The "trick" is to have a driver "what-you-need" line in the video device section for each driver you want the X-server to try on each different computer. For example:

Code:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    Driver         "fglrx"
    Driver         "intel"
EndSection

Clearly more is possible since the "Live CDs" out there recognize different hardware during their boot. I'd suggest you download the Ubuntu Live CD and look at what it goes through during the boot.

I'd also suggest that you install GRUB on the removable drive, and have your hardware boot from the removable drive before the internal drive. That way you only need to maintain the menu.lst file on the removable drive.

Note, however, that mixing 32-bit hardware with 64-bit hardware can be more problematic unless you run a 32-bit OS on your 64-bit system, which does work.

blackbinary · 07-15-2008, 03:44 PM

I know computer #1 is 64bit, but I don't see much reason to stick with 64bit when I only have 3gb of ram.

If i understand your code correctly, for 'device 0' which would be the graphics card in that slot, it will try using nvidia, fglrx, and intel drivers?

could i get this to happen with a regular installation of ubuntu? So every time it boots, it trys driver 1, driver 2 etc.?

PTrenholme · 07-23-2008, 11:12 AM

Sorry for the reply delay - things have been hectic here.

Anyhow, you could try it to see what happens. Sometimes it seem to work for me, other time it fails. When it fails, I just comment out the unneeded driver lines and do a startx. (Having mc installed on the USB drive makes this quite easy.)

Perhaps I should take my own advice and look at how the "Live CD" boot process does it, eh?