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I finally succeeded in installing FC5 on USB drive. I took a closer look at James' http://www.vigla.eclipse.co.uk/usb_install.pdf. It was definitely very helpful, and I would also recommend it as a FC USB installation guide with some changes for FC5 installation, eg mkinitrd format. I could run mkinitrd without needing --force-lvm-probe; however some messages were generated, such as /sys/block: no such file or directory and /tmp/initrd.nxl062/lib/scsi_mod.ko (sd_mod.ko).

Thanks. I performed the installation, "telling FC to partition the USB drive w/o LVM, with the traditional linux partitions." Initially, I thought it was just ticking the box that specified 'Hide RAID device/ LVM Vol Group members'; however the same 'magic number' still appeared at FC initialisation then I realised that LVM was still created. Hence, I chose Anaconda's custom layout option for disk partitioning. I could not find an option where Anaconda would install the traditional Linux partitions without LVM; hence I had to make my own partitions. By traditional Linux partitioning do you mean the following configuration? Start End System /dev/sdb1 1 13 Linux /dev/sdb2 14 2823 Linux /dev/sdb3 3077 4864 W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sdb4 2823 3076 Linux Swap/ Solaris The preceding configuration in on my USB drive, and is the output from fdisk -l. Interestingly enough fdisk mentioned "partition table entries are not in disk order; I found that Linux Rescue failed to mount FC into /mnt/sysimage, so I manually mounted FC (/dev/sdb2) onto /mnt/source and mounted /dev/sdb1 to /mnt/source/boot. mkinitrd also failed to make a usbintrd.img file; so I will try James' suggestion. Do I specify /boot/usbinitrd.img after --force-lvm-probe? What is significance of /initrid-etc? Did this --force-lvm-probe work for you Danleff? The 'lvm' looks like Logical Volume Management, but I thought we're not using LVM .

Thanks very much danleff, and for your perserverence. You are correct, FC5 fails to load everything into /mnt/sysimage. I mounted my FC boot partition (/dev/sdb1) into /mnt/sysimage/boot. I could subsequently run mkinitrd to create the usb-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img in ../boot and edit the grub.conf in ../boot/grub. You reckon that initiation of LVM is the cause of the problem on a USB drive? Should I try the partition for RAID when installing Fedora on USB drive? I agree one does learn much.

In reply to James' questions, Grub (installed in the MBR of the USB drive) does boot Windows (2nd boot option after Fedora Core 5). "Sometimes anaconda will assign hdx order relative to that which existed when the installation was made- that is the norman boot order with the external drive being last." I agree with above comment. At time of FC installation, my BIOS boot order was: 1) CD/DVD/CD-RW 2) USB Storage Drive 3) Internal HDD And, ananconda generated the following device.map: (hd1) /dev/sda <-- internal drive (hd0) /dev/sdb <-- USB drive If you refer to my earlier postings, I mentioned that at time of booting up my USB drive (after installation completion), my devices were assigned differently: /dev/sda <-- USB drive /dev/sdb <-- internal drive Hence, I edited the device.map to reflect the above device assignments. Windows boot OK. If I boot from the USB drive, with the above BIOS boot order, I get the graphical Fedora Grub boot screen and I can boot Windows from Grub boot screen. What is USC? I believe so - my main drive is SATA. Both main drive and USB drive are Fujitsu 2.5" drives. BIOS boot order was not changed during and after installation. You are correct - I'm booting directly off the USB drive with Grub in USB drive's MBR. BTW (in another trial) I installed Grub in the boot partition (/boot) of FC5 (in the USB drive) and configured Windows bootloader to point to this partition (to load FC5); but I still received the bad magic error number. Despite having USB Storage Drive before Internal HDD in the BIOS boot order at time of installing FC5, I still get following device assignments: /dev/sda <-- internal drive /dev/sdb <-- USB drive My fstab file contains the following: /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0 (danleff) The first two lines are the same as yours. Should I proceed with troubleshooting the FC5 installation on USB drive, or install FC5 in my internal drive? I'm out of ideas. Thanks very much for your assistance.

Thanks Jim for your input. I use a bus powered USB drive, and when I'm booting FC 5 from USB drive, /dev/sda (hd0) is always assigned to USB drive. I noticed that you don't have /dev/sdb only /dev/hda and /dev/hdb in your system. danleff, I don't understand where you place the boot (hd0,0) line because anaconda (FC installer) commented this line out (see my grub.conf. I observed that any changes to grub.conf are also stored in menu.lst. I have only made changes to grub.conf. Did you try the FC installation with only 'sda' devices? My grub.conf is as follows: # grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg. # root (hd0,0) # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 # initrd /initrd-version.img #boot=/dev/sdb default=0 timeout=5 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet initrd /usb-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img title Windows XP Pro map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) rootnoverify (hd1,1) chainloader +1 Jim, I believe that the re-mapping of the Windows boot info is shown under my Windows XP Pro title. Anaconda installed Logical Volumes by default. I have same grub setup as you (installed in MBR). I don't believe that the Logical Volumes caused the error that I reported. I know that FC 5 is initialising from my USB drive (/dev/sda) because I receive the following initialisation messages: Setting Clock [OK] Starting udev [OK] Starting up Logical Vol Management [OK] Checking filesystems: fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb1 [failed] I can see that it is very obvious that FC 5 should be checking /boot partition at /dev/sda1, instead of /dev/sdb1 (refer to my previous posting for device assignments when booting from USB drive) I still had same error message after editing device.map (in Linux rescue mode) with: (hd1) /dev/sdb (hd0) /dev/sda where USB drive is sda and my laptop hard drive as sdb, then rebooting. I have searched the web but found no specifics on FC installation with 2 drives assigned /dev/sda and /dev/sdb (and one drive is USB). I would like to edit anaconda-ks.cfg, where there is a line bootloader .... --driveorder=sdb,sda. I don't know how to make this file editable in maintenance mode (after boot failure), and change the line to --driveorder=sda,sdb - in the hope that FC may check the /boot partition in correct partition of USB drive.

I was nearly successful in running FC 5 on my USB hard drive. I followed the instructions from this posting and other sources; however I encountered the following error message during FC boot process, shortly after passing the GRUB menu and what appeared to be the FC initialising: fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb1 [failed] After reading the error message, I entered maintenance mode, then used fdisk to get disk partition information. fdisk showed the following device assignments: /dev/sdb (laptop hard drive) /dev/sdb1 fat /dev/sdb2 ntfs /dev/sda (installed FC 5 on this USB drive) /dev/sda1 ext3 /boot /dev/sda2 ext3 LVM /dev/sda3 vfat During FC 5 installation, anaconda (installer) read my hard drives as: /dev/sda (laptop hard drive) /dev/sda1 fat /dev/sda2 ntfs /dev/sdb (installed FC 5 on this USB drive) /dev/sdb1 ext3 /boot /dev/sdb2 ext3 LVM /dev/sdb3 vfat Could the error result from the change of device assignments for USB drive before and after FC installation? It appears that FC's intialisation is not checking boot partition in USB drive, ie /dev/sda1 (ext3, /boot).