The info on the USB Flash Drive (using GParted) is:
Formatting MBR
File System FAT 16
Size 953.50 MiB
Used 523.50 KiB
Unused 952.98 MiB
Flag Boot
First Sector 8
Last sector 1952766
Total sectors 1952759
The Grub 2 manual says that a special (smaller) image to be embedded in the MBR, is used in case of Floppy and USB Flash Drives because of the less space available. Not very likely, but could it be that the openSUSE install program does not cater for this.
Regarding initrd, the problem cannot be due to bug in the kernel as this is the first install from the downloaded DVD, so no new kernels. I saw the error message during the installation process itself! I did not provide details as I do not have Linux running and so could not immediately check the install log. I will have to prepare a live Linux disk to examine the partly installed 12.2 log files.
Another thought, is it possible to install Grub 2 to the USB Flash Drive from Windows Vista?
Unless this disk is using 4K sectors, it is by far not enough to embed working GRUB2 image. If you can reformat this drive, I suggest you recreate partitions and start first partition on 1M (2048 sectors) boundary.
The Grub 2 manual says that a special (smaller) image to be embedded in the MBR, is used in case of Floppy and USB Flash Drives because of the less space available.
There is no way bootable GRUB2 image can fit into 4 (actually 6) KB. Please show link to this manual.
I am reading grub.pdf downloaded from GNU GRUB manual - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF). Chapter 3.2 read in conjunction with Chapter 10. The boot.img file requires 512 bytes and that does not appear to be available with the present partitioning of the USB Flash Drive (memory stick) as the total capacity of 1 GB should suffice for installing Grub 2 in entirety. Or am I making a bloomer!
boot.img has the sole responsibility to load core.img which is the bootable grub2 image. When it says about “embedding” it always means core.img.
If you can change partitions on your USB drive to free up more space after MBR, it is the most simple way because it would then work with standard installer (at least I have all reasons to think it will work). If you cannot change partitions, it is still possible to install grub2 on this drive but it needs manual commands and cannot be done using installer.
On 2012-11-10 06:46, PrakashC wrote:
>
> Hi arvidjar, robin_listas,
>
> The info on the USB Flash Drive (using GParted) is:
>
> Formatting MBR
> File System FAT 16
You can not install grub here. Use a Linux filesystem.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
He does not want to install GRUB2 there. He wants to boot from this drive. This is of course possible. Either GRUB2 is embedded in post-MBR gap (which is too small in this case) or GRUB2 core.img is copied onto filesystem on this drive and GRUB2 boot.img is configured in block list mode (pointing to this file). In the latter case it does not matter whether filesystem is Linux or not - what matters is that GRUB2 understands it. And GRUB2 understands FAT just fine.
In both cases GRUB2 part that is located on this drive will contain code to search for /boot/grub2 location using UUID, so it is independent of actual BIOS disk numbering.
Whether this can be done using installer is another question. I think it can for the former method and can’t for the latter.
On 2012-11-10 13:36, arvidjaar wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2502790 Wrote:
>> You can not install grub here. Use a Linux filesystem.
>
> He does not want to install GRUB2 there. He wants to boot from this
> drive. This is of course possible. Either GRUB2 is embedded in post-MBR
> gap (which is too small in this case) or GRUB2 core.img is copied onto
> filesystem on this drive and GRUB2 boot.img is configured in block list
> mode (pointing to this file). In the latter case it does not matter
> whether filesystem is Linux or not - what matters is that GRUB2
> understands it. And GRUB2 understands FAT just fine.
>
> In both cases GRUB2 part that is located on this drive will contain
> code to search for /boot/grub2 location using UUID, so it is independent
> of actual BIOS disk numbering.
>
> Whether this can be done using installer is another question. I think
> it can for the former method and can’t for the latter.
I see…
But I do not see the purpose of booting from a fat disk, though. :-?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Hi,
I think I am beginning to understand whats happening.
As I said earlier that I wish to leave the internal hdd unchanged to boot Windows. And my external hdd is not bootable. So I am looking to boot either from CD/DVD drive or a USB Flash “memory stick” for Linux. Since I do not have any Linux OS installed on my system I cannot install Grub 2 without installing Linux. Sort of Catch 22. I certainly can have any partition system on the USB drive i.e. FAT, NTFS, ext3 or ext4. I did try with NTFS and it did not work. What I was trying is a “cross disk” install, as I gather from the error message which says there is not enough space to embed “core image” hence failure to generate the initrd file. Looks like the “core image” has to be on the same disk as the “boot image” in the MBR.
I think that I should first make a live 12.2 CD which can be done from Vista. Boot into 12.2 and create a bootable USB Flash drive with Grub 2 installed as described in Chapter 3.2 of Grub manual. This would serve as the booting device for whatever linux distributions I install on my PC external hdd.
By the way, would it be possible to remove such a USB drive after booting into the OS! Otherwise one USB port would be blocked.
> By the way, would it be possible to remove such a USB drive after
> booting into the OS! Otherwise one USB port would be blocked.
Let me see if I understand. You have a HD into which you want to install
Linux. Grub in that disk fails because Seagate says they do not support
booting from that external disk (!) - right so far? So you want to put
grub into another usb disk, a flash disk this time - right? And this
flash disk can not get grub installed because you get problems embedding it.
Wow.
No, you need both plugged in, because grub has to read the second disk
to boot it… After booting you can remove it if the /boot partition
is not that one.
Wow.
And I say my computing life is complicated…
Can’t you ditch that external disk and get a standard USB enclosure that
does not have that stupid seagate limitation?
(All my disks are Seagates, internals or externals, but 1: none of my
enclosures are from seagate, 2: I don’t install Linux on them, they are
data disks; I have several bootable flash disks, though)
Mmmm.
What is in the main internal disk, Windows? Why don’t you get the
‘bcdedit’ utility to instead customize the Windows boot system? It can
be configured to boot Linux in another partition, that I know. What I do
not know is if it can boot a system in another disk, but you can not
loose anything by trying… just some more time
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Good news first. I have been able to do what I wished!
I do not wish to complicate matters for other members of the family sharing this PC. So internal HDD is left untouched. If bcdedit to present a menu then why not Grub 2? I remove the USB drive and the PC becomes a simple Windows unit.
Re external HDD, I spent good money on it! So I should make the best use of it. Do not need another disk at the moment but will keep in mind the lessons learnt this time. Getting proper stuff, like cases and interface items in India is not that simple matter. By the time I need another disk, it may be necessary to upgrade the PC itself. At the moment, I am looking for a proper PCI-e card to add USB 3.0 ports to my PC at the moment.
What I did : Came to the conclusion that the /boot partition or directory has to be on the same drive used to boot (the one with Grub 2 in the MBR. The fact that Grub 2 uses UUID to identify drives helps matters a lot. The relevant section should be construed to mean that the Grub 2 is to be written to the first bootable disk in the booting order/sequence when you want to use it to boot! So this time round, during the installation process itself I created a /boot (sdg1) partition on the Flash memory and opted to put the Grub on the drive (sdg). The installation, on the external drive (sdb6) went through OK.
I found that the install process does not prompt the user to remove the installation DVD. In my case, on reboot, I have to boot to the hard disk into Windows, remove the DVD and again reboot, which brings on the USB Flash into play. This irked me since I had to go through the process a number of times! Those going through it once or twice may not mind it.
As usual, the nvidia graphics forced use of safe mode option. However I added the nvidia repo before running the online update. The update took quite a long time but the system is up and working. Will check it out over the next few days.
On 2012-11-13 11:46, PrakashC wrote:
>
> Hi robin_lista,
>
> Good news first. I have been able to do what I wished!
>
> I do not wish to complicate matters for other members of the family
> sharing this PC. So internal HDD is left untouched. If bcdedit to
> present a menu then why not Grub 2? I remove the USB drive and the PC
> becomes a simple Windows unit.
It is up to you. bcedit changes the main internal disk, so can grub.
But I see you solved it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
