[TriLUG] booting off usbstick

[Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG]

On Fri, 10 Jul 2020, Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG wrote:

> I want to boot off a usb stick on a usb connector internal to a computer, so 
> I 
> can use all the drive bays for storage.
>
> o I can boot off a live usb stick attached to the internal connector
>
> o I can boot off a SATA drive in the drive bay. This has the files that I 
> want 
> to boot off in the final configuration.
>
> o if I dd the content of the SATA drive to the same usb stick that boots the 
> live file system, and have no other disks in the system, the booting starts 
> and 
> gets as far as what seems to be loading the SATA drivers, and then crashes 
> (the 
> screen fills with what looks to be a dump of the crash).

o if I connect the SATA drive through a SATA to USB converter, the boot crashes
in the same way.

Joe

>
> I expected the files that boot off the SATA disk to boot just the same way 
> when 
> on a usb stick.
>
> I've looked around the internet to see what the problem might be without 
> success.
>
> I note that all the bootable usb sticks seem to be live filesystems with root 
> pivots and squashfs, all of which is beyond me. There aren't any webpages 
> saying 
> "here's how to take your current setup and use it to boot off a usb stick".
>
> I expect the usb stick might have a different bios name (instead of sda, it 
> could be sdb...). However I expect this won't be a problem till the kernel 
> tries 
> to mount /, in which case I'm expecting an error like "can't mount /dev/sdx 
> on /". 
> But I don't get that. Just for the hell of it, in grub I told it that root 
> was 
> sda, then sdb ... but they all crashed the same way.
>
> I don't know where to go from here. I'd be glad of any suggestions.
>
> Thanks Joe
>
>

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant
map generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!