[Gllug] Installing Ubuntu on USB 2 HD - Kernel Panic - Help!

[Stephen Harker]

David Abbishaw wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Just installed Ubuntu onto an external USB 2 hard disk, the install goes
> fine, finds the disk, partitions it etc then on the first reboot the machine
> boots from the usb disk, starts grub and starts loading as normal until the
> following happens
> 
> pivot_root: No such file or directory 
> /sbin/init: 418: cannot open dev/console: No such file
> Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!
> 
> Any ideas, I'm guessing I need to edit grub and add some extras to the
> kernel to support booting USB 2.  Tried acpi=off but that had no effect.
> 
> Any ideas?

Check that there is an /initrd directory on the root partition.
Also, you may need to make an initrd image that has usb-storage, 
ehci-hcd and associated modules in it. Maybe the Ubuntu installer didn't 
create the initrd with the right modules for running / off USB2.
I think grub uses the BIOS to read the kernel and initrd.img from the 
USB disk but once the kernel tries to read the disk, it fails if it 
doesn't have the USB drivers installed and cant see the disk.

HTH

SteveH

PS. This might all be bollocks as I haven't had enough coffee yet...
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