Installing FC4 on USB drive (newbie)

[John Austin]

On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 01:01 +0100, Jenz Nilsson wrote:
> Hi guys!
> 
> Im a newbie, and i have a problem (unusual isnt it ^^)
> 
> I have installed FC4 on my external USB hard drive, and followed the
> guide on http://www.vigla.eclipse.co.uk/
> 
> I have med three partitions, /boot, /, and swap. I have made mkinitrd
> as told to in the guide, but i havent written any changes to
> grub.conf, because i dont know how to do. Instead, as the guide told
> me, i wrote what kernel and initrd to use directly in grub. When im
> booting it up it says like
> 
> Mounting root file system
> mount: error 6 mounting ext3
> Switching to new root
> ERROR opening /dev/console!!!!: 2
> error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 0
> error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 1
> error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 2
> unmounting old /proc
> unmounting old /sys
> switchroot: mount failed: 22
> Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
> 
> And then some very strange lines with like 01020x0213 blabla, if those
> lines are important i can write them down.
> 
> What can be the problem? Is it that i havent changed the grub.conf? Or
> is it some kind of timing problem thati read about in the guide?
> Please help me! I know you can 
> 
> //Jenz

Hi
My feeling is that there is a problem with the
new initrd_usb.gz the generation of which is described in Section 4.2.2
The ext3 module appears not to be insmoded
and the console device is missing

Suggestions
1. Remake a second new initrd_usb_2.gz say to be sure
its  as per 4.2.2.  This should be possible without
making any other changes.
Try booting with the new version

If this fails
2. Boot into rescue mode and have a look inside
initrd_usb.gz as per Section 8. Save somewhere
(floppy, USB stick if possible)
It is possible to add echo commands into the init file
Section 8.2.1, to trace the progress of the execution
during the boot sequence.

I have not had any timing problems on the three machines
that I have booted from USB so if that really is the problem
life is very difficult!!!!

Hopefully it is "finger trouble" somewhere!!!!

John