kernel update fails claiming /boot not mounted

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I am trying to set up an encrypted system with /boot on external usb-key.
Due to some bug (at least it appears to me) if I follow the how-to available, it fails when it comes to mkinitrd.
Through try and error I did find out that it actually works if you update the system completely.

But in the configuration with
/dev/sdb1 /boot
/dev/sda1 /swap
/dev/sda2 /home
/dev/sda3 /root

Where sda is the stationary disk on the laptop and /dev/sdb is the usb key (sdb1 mounted in configuration “noauto”).

(that is prior to any attempt of encryption as a clean install) everything works…unless you update. Yast updates the system and then complains that the kernel update failed.

If you try to install only the other updates (without the two kernel updates) the how-to works up to the restart of the system (step "reboot and check that everything is working - and I checked…).

You start and are able to correctly unlock the disks, to start into root kde, but when you try to use suspend it complains about the wrong kernel version). The easiest to succeed would therefore be, to achieve a complete update of system and the kernel prior to every other move. This would also be a way to avoid future mess when a new kernel update presents.

Does anybody know:
a) why the kernel update does not work through yast, with /dev/sdb1 mounted (I controlled) claiming that it is not mounted?

b) does anybody know how to update the kernel from init 1 from the command line and would this solve the problem of the update not working on /dev/sdb1?

Thanks in advance.

2

You need to load the usb kernel module for the new kernel to see /boot on the usb stick when the pc boots.

3

Thank you for the info.
Eventually I made it to update (activating mount at boot) for /dev/sdb1.
Now I would really like to understand if the following statement of the how-to for 10.3 (do not mount at system start up) holds still for the summary procedure in 11.1:

*For those using a USB flash disk, plug it in before booting the computer with the installation CD in the disc drive. openSUSE should recognize the USB flash along with the computer’s other disks, displaying it in the list of disks from the “Expert partitioner” menu. The USB flash disk should be formatted using a Linux file system (ext2 will suffice) and it should be mounted at “/boot. Furthermore, in the “fstab Options” dialog, click the box “Do Not Mount at System Start-up”. This is necessary because the USB devices are created after the boot.localfs script tries to mount the entries listed in fstab. (You can always remount the USB flash disk later if you need it.) *

(extracted of the how-to on disk encryption)http://http://en.opensuse.org/Encrypted_Root_File_System_with_SUSE_HOWTO
Does it still hold?

4

outdated /solved apparent bios problem?