Wont boot from external hard disk

[broadstairs]

I have decided to try Kubuntu once again and I have installed it OK on my external USB hard disk, grub will boot but when I select the first option it just sits there doing nothing with a blank screen and no disk activity.

I did a clean install having removed all partitions on the new disk and set grub to install on it as I can select this as the boot disk in my BIOS. The old Linux system used to boot form this external drive like this no problem (not any Ubuntu flavour!).

Anyone any ideas?

Stuart

Just tried once more and noticed that Grub is 1.98 text not Grub2 graphical when I boot, surely something must have gone wrong at install time?

[dibl]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Booting an OS from an external hard drive is tricky -- just search Ubuntu Forums on that topic and you'll find hundreds.

Items for review:

- the BIOS must be set to boot from removable devices
- some BIOS's (like mine) look for a "boot" flag on the partition that you want boot
- if you had other USB storage connected when you installed, they might be set up in /etc/fstab (and now missing)
- you need to leave the "by-uuid" setup in /etc/fstab alone, don't try changing it to /dev/sdx
- black screens after attempting a boot are often all about the video/GPU
- - therefore, you might try pressing "e" on the boot menu, then cursor down and remove "splash", and then press Ctrl-x and see what the boot message says, before it goes black

Hope this helps.

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Items for review:

- the BIOS must be set to boot from removable devices
- some BIOS's (like mine) look for a "boot" flag on the partition that you want boot
- if you had other USB storage connected when you installed, they might be set up in /etc/fstab (and now missing)
- you need to leave the "by-uuid" setup in /etc/fstab alone, don't try changing it to /dev/sdx
- black screens after attempting a boot are often all about the video/GPU
- - therefore, you might try pressing "e" on the boot menu, then cursor down and remove "splash", and then press Ctrl-x and see what the boot message says, before it goes black

As I said it boots Grub (version 1.98) but only a text screen. My BIOS is fine it used to boot an old Mandriva install from this same disk but that was all wiped before I installed Kubuntu. All the same USB devices are connected when I boot Kubuntu as when I boot this to update the forum. When I hit e there is no splash option to remove. It simply does nothing on ctrl-x no disk activity or anything.

I can see all the files on the USB disk when booted up from the internal hard disk and everything looks fine and the fstab has all the correct UUID values.

I just dont see why it wont boot a graphical Grub.

Stuart

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Attached is the RESULTS.txt from my system. Booted like this sdi is the external h/disk.

Stuart

[dibl]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

That says your installed Grub version is 0.97. It is using /boot/grub/menu.lst, not a Grub2 /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

EDT: Aha, OK, I see you ALSO have Grub 2 installed on a different drive. Wow, that is way complicated!

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

That says your installed Grub version is 0.97. It is using /boot/grub/menu.lst, not a Grub2 /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

No, this was run when booted from Mandriva on an internal hard drive and yes that version of Grub is correct BUT if you look at sdi disk which is the boot disk when I boot from the external hard drive you will see as it says there Grub 2 is installed. I set this disk to be the boot drive from a boot menu in BIOS on the desktop PC when I want to try to boot Kubuntu.

Stuart

[dibl]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Yep, I see it now. Those "unknown bootloader" messages are not encouraging -- could that be what is hanging?

I forget the library that is used to build /etc/blkid.tab. But it obviously does not like the missing sequence numbers between /dev/sde and /dev/sdi. Since you are mounting "by-uuid", that should not matter.

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

To be honest I have no idea what those unidentified boot loaders are but I dont see why it wont ignore them Also why dont I get a graphical boot menu from Grub2?

Stuart

[dibl]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Default Grub 2 does not provide a graphical menu. I messed up my netbook Debian installation a couple weeks ago, attempting to follow guides like this, so bad that I was forced to reinstall the OS to get it to boot correctly again. Here's another one. I change the color of the background to blue, and the text to white, and leave it go at that.

[vinnywright]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

just a note hear I have before had problems like this when adding/removing/adding OS's and their boot loaders.

sometimes the boot loader or boot sector will NOT be rewritten properly because of differences in size or whatnot and it was necessary to repartition the drive or zero the boot sector with dd and then reinstall.

just 2 cent's to think about.

VINNY

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

I did start by removing all partitions on the disk and re-partitioning, I have also re-installed without the updates in case an update borked it. Still no joy. I suspect it cannot handle setting up Grub2 properly since the actual boot disk order could change between install and boot. Still other distros manage it.

Well thanks for all the advice but I think I'll give up again. Last time I tried an *ubuntu it failed to run properly, now I cannot even get it to install and boot properly. For a start I dont understand why it uses Grub2 which is still in beta. This is really basic and if it used the old Grub I could probably fix it but since I dont know Grub2 it is difficult to know where to start. The Grub2 setup will attempt to load my main Linux but it even gets that wrong as well.

I only decided to give the new version a go because someone told me it had been very easy to install and use and had been reliable, but if I cant even start it then testing will be a problem.

I'll keep an eye open for a few days to see if anyone manages to suggest a fix but seeing the number of problems when searching it looks like this is a very flaky area, but one which needs sorting as I suspect many will give it a try by using external hard disks.

Stuart

[dibl]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Regarding Grub 2, this may seem like a "drink from a firehose", but it really is very comprehensive: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106368.0

As far as setting Grub 2 to boot your root partition, I can pretty much guarantee that you can do that in about 2 steps, from a booted Kubuntu 10.10 Live CD:

Step 1. Mount your hard drive partition that has the root filesystem on it

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sdi1

sudo mount -t -ext3 /dev/sdi1 /mnt/sdi1

Step 2. Install Grub2 on it, with direction to the filesystem:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/sdi1 /dev/sdi

That should be all it takes.

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Well there is good news and bad news. The good news is that finally it booted.

The first time it booted I got called away after selecting the initial setting in Grub2, when I came back about 10 minutes later the startup screen with the hard drive icon was present and in focus and the wrench icon was there but not fully in focus. So I rebooted again and this time it all came up fully to the desktop (I auto-login) but boy was it slow, probably almost as slow as booting from a CD, it simply crawls along nothing like my old Mandriva distro which used to be installed there, this is so slow it is almost unusable.

So I'm not impressed it runs like a dog and this is a Core2Duo machine with 2gb memory and a Radeon X800 gfx card so it should run better, OK on an external USB hard drive (160Gb) not quite as fast as on an internal hard drive but really not this obviously slower.

Not sure where to go next, but definitely not impressed....

Stuart

[Snowhog]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Your problem is almost certainly caused by your graphics card/driver.

[broadstairs]

Re: Wont boot from external hard disk

Your problem is almost certainly caused by your graphics card/driver.

Well I'd accept that it could be part of the problem but I dont believe it should run as slow as it does just because of that. I mean this is really slow, unbelievably slow. If I can be bothered to wait for it to boot again (and I mean minutes before I even see the splash screen) I'll try setting the card drivers correctly but I really dont believe it is the whole problem.

Stuart