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

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 22 September 2010 11:13:01 Jake Moe wrote:
>  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.

I haven't used labels for that, so I don't know what is needed for that.
Maybe a kernel-config setting?

> >> 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.

Ouch :(

I'm usually a bit astumped when I get "out-of-space" issues and "df" still 
shows plenty of free disk space.

Looking forward to your update :)

--
Joost

PS. Am thinking of playing around with that myself again sometime :)