USB booting :: Frugal USB boot fails: 'Missing Operating System'

I'm trying to install DSL frugal to a 512mb Sandisk Cruzer Micro thumbdrive, in order to run DSL on a small barebones machine that has no IDE drives - not even a CDROM.

I booted DSL 2.1 from the CD on my laptop, changed the flash drive's geometry with sfdisk, and manually paritioned with cfdisk, making a bootable 64mb linux partition at the beginning of the volume. Used the frugal-usb install option in 'Tools'. Installed to sda1.

The install went fine except that near the end, during the grub install, it told me, '/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.' The installer then said that the installation was complete.

When I try to boot to this thumbdrive, I see the BIOS splash screen, followed immediately by a screen blank but for the words 'Missing Operating System.'

(The same machine boots DSL just fine from a different thumbdrive on which I did the regular USB-HDD install just for kicks.)

I am fairly sure this problem is caused by a problem with my grub configuration files, namely device.map and menu.lst

The pertinent entry in menu.lst reads as follows:

Code Sample

title DSL
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/sda1 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

the device.map, as generated during the frugal-grub install, looks like this:

Code Sample

(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb
(hd2) /dev/hdc
(hd3) /dev/hdd
(hd4) /dev/hde
(hd5) /dev/hdf

I have tried various modifications to these two files, but the result when I try to boot with them is always the same, 'Missing Operating System'. I've tried inserting

root (hd0,0)

after the title line in menu.lst, and I've tried modifying device.map in various different ways, with the idea that perhaps, since I'm trying to boot from a USB drive, device.map should really refer to /dev/sda and/or (sd0). No luck so far.

At this point, I still believe that the problem lies somewhere in my grub configuration files. Can anybody offer any suggestions?

have you tried

(hd0) /dev/sda

in device.map while installing the grub bootloader?

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been tied up making license plates & killing rats, but hope to try what you suggest later on today or tomorrow.

To do this, I would need to modify the device.map that is in the boot directory of the USB thumbdrive that has the frugal install on it, correct? (the one I can't boot from because both my laptop & my barebones machine say "Missing OS") Then I boot DSL from the CD, open a terminal window, and install grub to /dev/sda1... correct?

I am having a similar issue. I want to install DSL to a 128MB CF disk, but also receive the error when I run "grub-install /dev/sda":

"/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive."

I am trying to install DSL using my laptop. The CF card is attached via a USB card reader. The barebones machine I eventually want to run DSL on has no floppy, CD-ROM, or hard drive, just a CF->IDE adapter.

Can anyone suggest how I might be able to get this to work?

Thanks!

Quote

"/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive."

that means, 'grub-install' is unable to determine the grub disc number (hdX) from the bios tables of your pc - which is quite normal. you have to manually edit the device.map file in the pendrive 'boot' directory prior to 'grub-install'.

@vodsonic: sounds good.

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