[Gllug] boot from a usb hdd

[Julian Somers]

Has anyone had success in getting linux to boot from an external
usb hard disk?

Grub loads the kernel, which panics when trying to mount the root
filesystem. About a second after kernel panic, you can see sda coming
up, so I reckon the problem is that it is not waiting long enough for
root fs. 

So I thought I had the answer when I came across this patch:
http://www.slicer.ca/linux/wait-root-blkdev-2.6.11.patch

But it doesn't work. Kernel waits, and sda comes up a second later, but
it never resumes.

I am hoping someone will have been down this road before. Maybe there is
an easier way...

Context: I am trying to use this usb drive as an installation medium
for a bunch of machines without cdroms. I have been booting from a usb
memory stick and pulling partimage images from a partimaged server, but
it is slow, and not portable. THe usb hdd would give me the space to
have the images on the boot disk.

Thanks, Julian

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