I have a Dell c400 laptop with only the internal hd, no cd drive.
I recently installed OpenSuSE 11 Live from my desktop computer to the 20gb internal hd via USB. During install it set it up in GRUB on the MBR as /dev/sda1 (root) and /dev/sda2 (swap). The laptop will see /dev/sda1 and 2 as USB devices, but still sees the internal hd as /dev/hda1 and 2 even though it was different on the computer I installed from.
On boot, it will init the USB subsystem first, the IDE subsystem second. I need to change the order it inits the USB and IDE subsystems. Can this be done?
I understand SuSE changed the naming convention of the drives to sda from hda, but when I boot in the laptop, SuSE still sees hda as the main internal hd. I can’t boot from live cd or otherwise from the laptop, as I have no cd connection on it.
I can boot from the internal hd (/dev/hda1) and it will fail asking to fall back to /dev/sda1, if I say yes it will boot fine from a USB stick I also have OpenSuSE 11 live installed on because it sees USB first. When I do boot to /dev/sda1 it will show /dev/hda1 shortly afterwards.
I’ve posted this in here and linuxquestions.org with no luck on answers. Just a flame there and not even a response here. Am I explaining it wrong? What do I need to do to explain this better? I tried including dmesg at linuxquestions, but got bashed for it because the person reading it “don’t have a wheel mouse on my laptop” awww… neither do I.
Sorry folks, just getting frustrated trying to figure this out. I just want to set this laptop up as a place for me to write. If I wasn’t worried about the USB stick being borken, I would be fine how it boots.
Well let’s get some info cleared up to start with. First, post the
contents of the following files:
/boot/grub/menu.lst
/etc/fstab
Second, explain a bit more about how you installed from your desktop to
internal HDD via USB. The more steps the merrier.
Third, a bit of clarification. SUSE didn’t change the naming convention
from ‘sda’ to ‘hda’. ‘sdx’ (where x is a letter from a-z) is the naming
convention for SCSI drives, and USB shows up as a SCSI drive. hdx is
for IDE/EIDE drives. I believe SATA also now shows up as SCSI (sdx).
So at this point it depends a bit on how you did your install. If you
installed to USB and then copied over the entire filesystem to your
internal hard drive, yes, that probably won’t work. Grub will look for
/dev/sda (USB drive where you installed) even though everything is now
on /dev/hda. This will show up in both /boot/grub/menu.lst and
/etc/fstab, so let’s start there and with the other data requested above.
Good luck.
noasprin wrote:
> I have a ‘Dell c400’ (http://tinyurl.com/4jyzsb) laptop with only the
> internal hd, no cd drive.
>
> I recently installed OpenSuSE 11 Live from my desktop computer to
> the 20gb internal hd via USB. During install it set it up in GRUB on the
> MBR as /dev/sda1 (root) and /dev/sda2 (swap). The laptop will see
> /dev/sda1 and 2 as USB devices, but still sees the internal hd as
> /dev/hda1 and 2 even though it was different on the computer I installed
> from.
>
> On boot, it will init the USB subsystem first, the IDE subsystem
> second. I need to change the order it inits the USB and IDE subsystems.
> Can this be done?
>
> I understand SuSE changed the naming convention of the drives to sda
> from hda, but when I boot in the laptop, SuSE still sees hda as the main
> internal hd. I can’t boot from live cd or otherwise from the laptop, as
> I have no cd connection on it.
>
> I can boot from the internal hd (/dev/hda1) and it will fail asking
> to fall back to /dev/sda1, if I say yes it will boot fine from a USB
> stick I also have OpenSuSE 11 live installed on because it sees USB
> first. When I do boot to /dev/sda1 it will show /dev/hda1 shortly
> afterwards.
>
> I’ve posted this in here and linuxquestions.org with no luck on
> answers. Just a flame there and not even a response here. Am I
> explaining it wrong? What do I need to do to explain this better? I
> tried including dmesg at linuxquestions, but got bashed for it because
> the person reading it “don’t have a wheel mouse on my laptop” awww…
> neither do I.
>
> Sorry folks, just getting frustrated trying to figure this out. I just
> want to set this laptop up as a place for me to write. If I wasn’t
> worried about the USB stick being borken, I would be fine how it boots.
>
>
> PLEASE help me figure this out…
>
> Thank you,
> noasprin
>
>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
Thank you for replying to this. I have changed the menu.lst and /etc/fstab to reflect how it should be to be able to use /dev/hda. It didn’t seem to help much.
I have an external case for laptop hard drives that connects via usb, thats how I was able to install from my desktop computer to the laptop drive. I just put it in the laptop after I installed, but made the changes to the menu.lst and fstab files fist.
Desktop is AMD64 dual core, laptop is a P3 1200 mhz. I know the hardware changes would make almost any OS blow chunks, I was just hoping it would work. I’m afraid I’m going to have to just give it up and get the external cd drive for the laptop, its $50± I didn’t want to spend is all.
Just wondering though, is the naming different depending on the architecture you use? I tried this again on an Intel P4 desktop, installing the live version from there to the USB connected laptop drive, and the OS saw the internal hd on that machine as hda, but the USB drive was still seen as sda. Just curious.