[plug] booting from USB CD-ROM

[Kev]

Tomasz Grzegurzko wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Kev <kdownes at tpg.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> I have a USB2 CD-ROM drive and I can't boot from it.  It's a
>> Welland ME-340U2 5.25" Aluminium Enclosure USB 2.0
>>
>> Let me explain.
>>
>> I set the CMOS to boot from the "USB CD-ROM".
>> Connect the CD drive and reboot
>> The drive is found and the boot process commences.
>> Depending on the OS, the process gets "so far" and halts.
>> This is true for Xandros, Ubuntu Live, eCS, Windows, Knoppix.
>>
>> So, obviously the CMOS is doing its bit and finding the USB device to
>> boot from.  Being a completely non-tech ludite, I'm guessing that when
>> the CMOS hands control over to the OS, the device is getting lost.  ie,
>> the OS no longer knows where it's coming from.  With the Linux OSes I
>> can confirm that the kernel is loading well before it all goes toes up.
>>   I've tried this on 3 completely different machines :-
>>
>> Asus m/b with 1.6g P4 iNtel
>> MSI m/b with AMD AthlonXP 2800+
>> DFI m/b with AMD64 3200+
>>
>> I figure that's a big enough sample to discount hardware being the
>> problem.  Each of said machines otherwise works perfectly.
>>
>> I thought that USB drives were, amongst other things, useful for
>> installing an OS where there is no useable internal CD drive - that's
>> partly what I bought it for.
>>
>> Can someone out there in PLUGland please help me get this thing going.
>> Next after that I want to install Linux to a USB hard drive so that I
>> can boot from it.


> I'd say you've got the general idea. The BIOS is detecting the drive,
> booting from it, so its done its bit. What I think would be helpful to
> see is an output of
> # dmesg
> after linux boots (hopefully you can get to a console before it halts,
> otherwise you may need to pass boot parameters to see what is
> happening). This will show us whether the drive was even detected by
> the kernel loading...

Unfortunately not getting that far.  Perhaps you could suggest 
somethings which mught be in the same paddock.

Kev

-- 
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Kev Downes
kdownes at tpg.com.au  ph 0404 7 0808 2
We use and recommend Xandros 3.0.2
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