Debian Boot from external USB Hard Disk

["Shyam S" <shmkmrs@gmail.com>]

Hi,


I am having  a problem in installing Debain GNU/Linux on my external
hdd for my laptop. My laptop have boot from external USB option. I
install the Debain base system on the external hdd and grub was
successfully installed but when I try to boot from the external hdd
device  the booting halted showing the following error message.

Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Kernel panic - not syncing: no init found. try passing init= option to kernel

I had install Debain on /dev/sda9, external usb harddisk. My internal
harddisk does not contain any info about Debain or Grub. I installed
grub on my external hard disk. so when I boot from external usb. it
prompts.

This is my configuration of grub which is installed in external hard disk

kernel          (hd0,8)/boot/bzImage root=/dev/sda9 nomce quit
splash=initrd rootdelay=15

it is (hd0,8) since grub is identifying my external hard disk as so.
But I am giving root=/dev/sda9 since it is an external hard disk.When
I try to identify the device from knoppix that partition is recognised
as /dev/sda9 ( also it was same while the time of installation)

but for the above configuration I was getting the following error message.

VFS: Cannot open root device "sda9" or 08"09
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
kernel Panic:VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:09

but if I give the grub argument as

kernel          (hd0,8)/boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda9 nomce quit
splash=initrd rootdelay=15

(which is wrong) But I give as a try.

hda9: bad access: block=2,count=2
end_request: I/O error,dev 03:09(hda),sector 64
isofs_read_super: bread failed,dev=03:09,iso_blknum=16,block=32
Kernel panic:VFS:Unable to mount root fs on 03:09

Also I noted one thing, while boot  is proceeding, the kernel is not
dectecting the sda interface, even though i recompiled the kernel with
most usb modules as kernel inbuilt and booting from the same kernel.

hope I am clear.

I try to boot the /dev/sda9 device with puppy linux making another
option in grub by coping  kernel and initrd  to the same
partition(into a /puppy directory), I could boot in to puppy from the
ext usb hdd.

But I would like to get Debian GNU/Linux Installed on my external Laptop.


Thanks and Regards
Shyam