Missing operating system with Ubuntu 10.10 on USB

Started by bencahill, December 22, 2010, 00:10:04 AM

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bencahill

I'm trying to get an old laptop with no bios usb support (and grub won't boot my drive) to boot ubuntu 10.10 (cli) on a usb (copied from hdd, with ext2 and swap partitions, like a regular install).

However, when I select usb in plop (loading from grub), I see this:

Missing operating system.
Operating System not found
_

(^ blinking cursor)

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Elmar

you have to install grub or grub2 to the usb drive to boot your ubuntu.

regards
elmar

bencahill

Thanks for the prompt reply...I've now got grub on there and configured accordingly, thanks to the helpful folks at the #ubuntu irc channel :).

But it doesn't seem like grub can find the ext2 partition, even though it's on the same disk:

Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
   - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
   - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls dev)
ALERT!  /dev/disk/by-uuid/UUIDHERE does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

BusyBox v1.15.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.15.3-1ubuntu5) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)

Got any idea why this happened? I have the right uuid(s) in /etc/fstab, and so does /boot/grub/grub.cfg, which was auto-generated.

Thanks again!