Re: Grub on USB

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:02:43 -0600, Douglas Mayne
<doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:07:14 +0200, Ravishankar S wrote:


"Douglas Mayne" <doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pan.2007.08.16.15.58.54.963484@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:03:41 +0200, Ravishankar S wrote:

Hello,

How can I install grub onto a USB drive so that I can have grub shell at
boot time. At present I dont have linux , only Vista.

Kind Regards,
Ravishankar

Are you trying to boot a GNU/Linux distribution which has been installed
on the USB disk? If so, then grub may help. I have a grub CD image
available for download. It was made according to the instructions which
are shown along with the grub documentation.

http://tinyurl.com/5ququ

If you want to _install_ GNU/Linux on the USB disc, then this may not be
the right tool. In that case, I'd advise using your distribution's setup
program. Be advised that you may need an initrd to boot from a USB
chipset.

This isn't exactly what you asked for, and I know of no method to install
grub from Windows. However, if you can boot from the CD, then you may
achieve your goal, whatever that may be.

The instructions for getting the grub bootable CD that I made, along with
the license, disclaimers, etc. are here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.setup/msg/602040b59e1eac50

p.s. I like your daughter's singing and piano work. ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Jones

hi doug,

thanks for the info.

firstly to set a notion right: I am not Pt. Ravishankar, the sitar maestro.
Lucky enough to share name with him! The Pt. stands for Pandit (a close
meaning is: expert).
Norah is great as is his other daughter Anoushka shankar.
I doubt if he would have ever installed any OS let alone grub or Linux , ha
ha.

Well, to the problem next:

I have installed ubuntu (fiesty fawn) on to a partition on the harddisk
(ext2 fs). But i dont want to install grub on my harddisk to have a dual
boot system.
Instead I want install grub on to usb drive and then boot linux off the hard
disk. I did change install the grub onto usb drive during ubuntu
installation. On restart, it boots off the usb , and prints GRUB and the
freezes.

Kind Regards,
Ravishankar

Caveat: I am not running Ubuntu.

If the grub menu is not displayed, then it is not installed correctly.
This appears to be the situation with the hang you describe. When it is
installed correctly, it goes through some bootstrap stages, ending with
when menu is displayed. So, if Ubuntu's installer did not properly install
grub, for whatever reason, you will need to do some debugging of what
went wrong. BTW, one thing which can cause confusion is if your system
has an internal SATA drive, and you are switching the BIOS to boot from
USB, then back to SATA for Windows. The drive ordering can be different
under that condition, than when booting from SATA. I am not sure
exactly what went wrong because there are a lot of potential errors in
this situation. Specifying the location of the bootloader is a
daunting problem to get right 100% of the time.

Like DM says, it sure smells like different drive ordering when
installing and booting. At boot time, the MBR portion of grub doesn't
look in the right place for the rest of the boot files.

[snippage]

The advantage of using the LiveCD is that it may show that the only thing
which went awry in setup was installing the loader. Your kernel, your
initial ramdisk (with all modules), and your complete Ubuntu setup are in
place. In that case, the fix would be fairly easy. To fix could be as
simple as installing grub properly on the USB disk. (CAUTION: make sure of
your intended target for installing grub.) I always advise users to read
grub's documentation in advance of setting up.

In particular, look for ways to force device ordering at _install_
time so the MBR code looks in the right place at boot time. I don't
know grub well enough to advise how to do this. Douglas has you on
the right track.

Bill
--
William D Waddington
william.waddington@xxxxxxxxxx
"Even bugs...are unexpected signposts on
the long road of creativity..." - Ken Burtch
.

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