Re: [gentoo-user] Booting Gentoo from USB stick

[Jake Moe <jakesaddress@gmail.com>]

 On 09/22/10 17:16, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 September 2010 06:36:50 Jake Moe wrote:
>
> <snipped>
>
>> Well, now that I've managed to get it booting, the only problem is that
>> I can't seem to get the disk label working right.  In GRUB's menu.lst,
>> if I use root=LABEL=UsbRoot, it doesn't work (kernel panic, label not
>> found, but sda1 is listed as available), but if I use root=/dev/sda1, it
>> works.  However, later in the boot process, it mounts / using
>> LABEL=UsbRoot in fstab just fine.  Is that a problem with GRUB?  Or the
>> kernel?  Or am I doing something else wrong?
> I think someone mentioned earlier in this thread that "label" support for boot 
> requires an initrd (ramdisk) to work. This could be what you're running into?
Quite possibly.  I seem to be reading the same thing, but I thought I
had heard from the list previously that it was possible.

Actually, I've just found the e-mail I was thinking of before: Alan
McKinnon's reply on 08/31/10 02:32 with the subject "Re: [gentoo-user]
Re: Old IDE drives and the "newer" PATA kernel drivers" in which he said
that he's always used labels and never needed an initramfs to make it
work.  So I might have to fiddle with it some more and see if I can't
get it working.
>> And for future reference, while looking into various things for this, I
>> found these in the Gentoo Wiki:
>> USB Portable Install - http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/USB_Portable_Install
>> Portable USB Gentoo - http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Portable_USB_Gentoo
>>
>> Unfortunately, both use genkernel instead of manually configured
>> kernels, so that part doesn't help, but one mentions the option
>> "scandelay=2" to add to the kernel boot line in GRUB to introduce the
>> delay genkernel needed to see the USB device; would have been good to
>> know that last week when I was trying genkernel.  :-P
> That is something I noticed for a few Howto's, genkernel is used quite often, 
> but I actually haven't seen the need for it myself yet.
>
> But I am glad to hear you managed to get it working.
> Did you try trimming down your kernel a bit more to see what the minimum 
> required is? :)
>
> --
> Joost
>
No, I'm still trying to get a basic system up and running.  After I
booted into it, I tried to install v86d so I could try to get a
framebuffer working and have more lines on my screen while I try to trim
things down.  However, I quickly ran into an "out of space" issue, which
I found out was because of inodes, not size.  So I had to copy the
contents off, re-make the partition with more inodes, and then copy the
data back on.  Since then, I haven't had a chance to boot it and see how
it's going.  Hope to tomorrow.

Jake Moe