I admit I am a newbie.

Sofar this thread was very helpful, but now I am stuck.

I have a laptop which does not like Harddisks. Means it simply dies and needs about 2 - 3 days to recover.

Sofar I used linux live CDs/DVDs and it worked fine for days. But it is anying to configure it new every time.

Now I tried an external HD, as Windows cannot to do that and I am p... off by windows
I decided to use Ubuntu 7.04.

came sofar that I installed it, restarted with the live Ubuntu and mounted the HD.
can see the HD in /media/disk I can read the Grub device.map and it contains only
one line : (hd0) /dev/sdb
There is nothing like that in /dev on the hd.

I am not sure wether I got to change that. But the HD is read-only.

If I try '*sudo grub-install --root-device=/media/disk /dev/sdb'
it tells me '/dev/sda2 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive'
Do I try sudo grub-install --root-device=/media/disk /dev/sdb1'
it tells me '/dev/sdb1 : Not found or not a block device'

When I tried my way through I wanted it to install on sda but it refused. So I did it on sdb.
The mashine has just got one HD that an external 60GB HD parted in two.
The second partion has no system.

What can I do?? I am stuck.
First now I will try to make the system let me write onto the HD.
So back to search...

I'll be delighted about any tip.

yhtomit

I admit I am a newbie.

Sofar this thread was very helpful, but now I am stuck.

I have a laptop which does not like Harddisks. Means it simply dies and needs about 2 - 3 days to recover.

Sofar I used linux live CDs/DVDs and it worked fine for days. But it is anoying to configure it new every time.

Now I tried an external HD, as Windows cannot to do that and I am p... off by windows
I decided to use Ubuntu 7.04.

came sofar that I installed it, restarted with the live Ubuntu and mounted the HD.
can see the HD in /media/disk I can read the Grub device.map and it contains only
one line : (hd0) /dev/sdb
There is nothing like that in /dev on the hd.

I am not sure wether I got to change that. But the HD is read-only.

If I try 'sudo grub-install --root-device=/media/disk /dev/sdb'
it tells me '/dev/sda2 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive'
Do I try sudo grub-install --root-device=/media/disk /dev/sdb1'
it tells me '/dev/sdb1 : Not found or not a block device'

When I tried my way through I wanted it to install on sda but it refused. So I did it on sdb.
The mashine has just got one HD that is an external 60GB HD parted in two.
The second partion has no system.

What can I do?? I am stuck.
First now I will try to make the system let me write onto the HD.
So back to search...

I'll be delighted about any tip.

yhtomit

I believe it's normal for the disk to be read-only to normal users. For write access it has to be accessed by root or mounted with additional options.

To find out which device the disk is on you can issue the mount command with no additional options. It will list all currently mounted storage devices and their mount points. What sda or sdb devices are listed in /dev? It may help to use the chroot method to install grub.

1. cd /media/disk
2. sudo chroot .
3. sudo grub-install
4. exit

If you need to edit the device.map the way to do it is to open gedit from the commandline with sudo

sudo gedit /boot/grub/device.map

I'm curious. How exactly does it die and why does it take x days to recover?

Hi,

Try this for installation on usb drive.

When the livecd install MBR on usb disk, the internal disk was regarded as hd0 and usb drive hd1(suppose you have one internal disk and usb disk only).

After installation, do not restart immediately. edit menu.lst, change the linux start point from (hd1,0) to (hd0,0).

restart computer and set usb as the first boot device.

done.