USB booting :: How to reconfigure the minirt image



I want to boot DSL 3.4 from one of my external (usb) HDDs. However, the BIOS in my Dell Dimension 4550 doesn't allow booting from an external drive.
Nevertheless, it is fairly easy to overcome this by letting the vmlinuz (linux24) and initrd (minirt24) images load from somewhere accessible (e.g. a bootCD or an internal drive), loading the initial RAM disk (which must have modules to allow access to the external drive) and then changing the root (within /boot/grub/menu.lst) to wherever DSL is mounted (on the external drive) so that booting can proceed.
I've already done this with quite a number of other Linux distros but DSL is causing me a problem.
I hope somebody with more experience can help me resolve this.
From what I can see, DSL 3.4 initial RAM disk already has the ability to access an external usb drive so no other modules need to be included.
The problem, for me at least, seems to be that insufficient delay is allowed to give the external drive time to "get up to speed" before it's asked to allow booting to the "real" root.
I believe I need to open
Code Sample
/etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf

and then change this line
Code Sample
DELAY=0

to allow a delay of 20 seconds.
After this the minirt24 image must be reconfigured.
My problem is that I cannot find how to do the reconfiguring.

Can somebody please
1) tell me if my reasoning is correct
2) show me how to build/create a reconfigured initrd image (minitr24)

Thanks
Paul
Sorry, but that's completely wrong.. DSL doesn't use Debian's mkinitrd, the DSL image (actually Knoppix's) was handcrafted.

But to edit it just gunzip and loop mount it, and add a sleep statement in linuxrc just after loading usb modules..


BTW did you try the "waitusb" bootcode? it is exactly for waiting for slow usb devices...
Quote
did you try the "waitusb" bootcode? it is exactly for waiting for slow usb devices...

Thanks for your reply. No, I have not come across the "waitusb" command before but I gave it a try.
The entry for DSL that I used is as follows:

Code Sample

title     DSL 3.4
root     (hd0,5)
kernel   /boot/linux24    root=/dev/sdb1
initrd    /boot/minirt24.gz   waitusb=20
boot

Unfortunately, this did not allow me to boot into DSL as no "delay" seems to have resulted.
Interestingly, I find that once DSL drops me to the (very limited) shel (when it can't locate the "real" root), I can continue the booting just by typing "exit" whereupon, it finds the external derive and proceeds to boot. Indeed, I'm sending this from DSL now.

I would be grateful if you, or anybody else, can take a look at my /boot/grub/menu.lst entry for DSL and comment on where I placed the "waitusb" option.

Thanks
Paul
it does not take arguments, and linux options are placed in the "kernel" line.. Here's a fixed ver:
Quote
title  ---DSL 3.4---
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/sdb1 waitusb
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz
I understand how PaulFXH didn't find this. Waitusb is not on the wiki page about startup commands. One can find it easily  if they do a forum search for waitusb as keyword but one would have to already know it existed. Winnowing through the chaff of all posts about usb to find that as an available boot option would be a larger task. I learned something from this to add to my notebook too, thanks curaga.
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