boot option home and opt on USb drive not working


Forum: HD Install
Topic: boot option home and opt on USb drive not working
started by: manishsadh

Posted by manishsadh on Jan. 28 2007,14:56
Hi Guys,

need some help with a frugal installation. i have managed to get frugal install on a CF card successfully. this pc has no hard disk. so i put the os in frugal mode on the CF and plan to use a usb drive for home,opt and mydsl.

i copied the home and opt directories from the ramdisk after bootup onto the usb drive which is recognized as partition sda1. it is also mounted on bootup. i also created mydsl folder and put a few .dsl's and feh.unc in it.

heres what happens on bootup. the mydsl=sda1 boot option  works and the .dsl and .unc are loaded but the home=sda1 and opt=sda1 dont work. i get some messages and then i end up at the console in text mode.

please guide.

thanks.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Jan. 28 2007,16:38
Afaik, you need to put them in seperate, contained locations.
Posted by roberts on Jan. 28 2007,17:04
Quote
i copied the home and opt directories from the ramdisk after bootup onto the usb drive which is recognized as partition sda1


That is not how it was designed to work. Start off with a empty partition and the first invocation of the home= and/or opt= boot codes will setup persistent home and/or opt. If you copy after boot likely it is not setup properly.

I totally agree with thehatsrule it is best to use separate partitions.

[EDIT]
manishsadh, Please post your question only once.



Posted by manishsadh on Jan. 29 2007,06:11
Thanks guys,

i will give it a shot. first i will remove the home and opt on the usb drive. then add the bootoption home=sda1 and then see how it goes.

Posted by manishsadh on Jan. 30 2007,14:28
Hi Roberts,

as advised by you i deleted the home and opt directories from the usb drive partition then proceeded to reboot with the usb drive which is bootable and has embedded dsl on it so that i can mount the cf card partition and add the bootoption "home=sda1". when i bootup with the CF card i land up in text mode again.

following is the set of kernel messages i get on the console. it may be of some help to you. i have seperated the messges by a "-".

--- start -----

Automounter started for floppy cdrom -

registering unionfs 1.0.14 -

mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or mnt/sda1 busy -

mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /cdrom -

sed: /home/dsl/.fluxbox/init: no such file or directory -

chgrp: /cdrom : operation not permitted -

ssh started -

checking for mydsl apps...cicuslinux vnc feh -

cannot open /home/dsl/.fluxbox/mydsl.menu: /home/dsl/.fluxbox/mydsl.menu: no such file or directory.

chown: /home/dsl/.fluxbox/mydsl.menu:  no such file or directory. -

cannot open /home/dsl/.jwmrc: home/dsl/.jwmrc: no such file or directory. -

cannot open /home/dsl/.fluxbox/mydsl.menu: /home/dsl/.fluxbox/mydsl.menu: no such file or directory.

chown: /home/dsl/.fluxbox/mydsl.menu:  no such file or directory. -

cannot open /home/dsl/.jwmrc: home/dsl/.jwmrc: no such file or directory. -

INIT: entering run level : 5 -

ext2-fs warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck recommended -

su(pam_unix) [659]: session opened for user dsl by (uid=0)

--- end ------

thats it. i end up at text console.


Thanks

Posted by roberts on Jan. 30 2007,15:57
If you are trying to have persistent home and or opt on the same device partition as the knoppix boot image it will not work.

It has already been stated, twice,  use separate areas.

If you are running embedded, i.e., Qemu or other virtual system on Windows, then I wouldn't know or really care much.

Reduce complexity.

Posted by manishsadh on Jan. 31 2007,04:58
Hi Roberts,

sorry. maybe my posts are very confusing. i will try to put this as simply as i can.

my actual boot image is on the CF card which is frugal. the pc boots off this by default. this partition is hdb. on this i have the bootoption home="sda1". i want to persist only the "home" directory on a usb drive.

the sda1 is my usb drive. but the sda1 also happens to have a bootimage because it is has embedded dsl on it. this is what i use in the first place to boot the pc and add the bootoption on the actual frugal install (hdb1) on the CF card.

if i remove the bootimage on the usb drive it doesnt mount when booting the CF. isn't it necessary for the usb drive to automount when i want to put the "home" directory on it ?



thanks in advance.

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 31 2007,13:56
Quote
isn't it necessary for the usb drive to automount when i want to put the "home" directory on it ?
The partition will be mounted automatically during the boot process if the partition is found and can be read. If it's not being mounted, it's possible that sda1 is not the appropriate device to use, or perhaps the system sees the device differently depending on what else is plugged in at the time of booting.

Posted by humpty on Jan. 31 2007,16:12
first of all, this is not really a HD install since you are using frugal.

to test if your usb stick is mountable or not, try
sudo su
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

if you get an error msg, then it's not recognised.

i suggest you boot off CD, use the install to usb-zip tool onto the CF, which creates 2 partitions (also add the boot options when prompted to either put persistent opt or home on the usb stick or maybe the 2nd partition of the CF.)

having 2 partitions means you also spare yourself the hassle of having to be root to write to the CF.

Posted by manishsadh on Feb. 01 2007,15:08
Hi Guys,

thanks for your great advise. i tasted success after a long time. though it may be fundamental to have a frugal install with home and mydsl on some other medium like usb drive.
i had been struggling with it quite a bit.

i didnt realise that the drive would be mounted if it can read for example the mydsl directory. but i still have to seperate the mydsl onto another partition but for now i can carry on.

it may be of some interest to you that i am using a diskless pc called microclient jr from  < norhtec >. so there is no harddisk , no cdrom drive. though i can put a harddisk in it i chose to have frugal on a CF card.

my next challenge is to get sound to work on this as this is a sis7019 processor.

Thanks a lot. dsl is very exciting

Posted by roberts on Feb. 01 2007,15:19
Ah, that machine has only USB 1.1
You may have experienced a timing issue.

If you compile a sound module or find one, please share.
There was another user asking for help in that area.

Posted by manishsadh on Feb. 02 2007,02:34
Hi Roberts,

i will keep you posted on the developments.

thanks.

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