From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050302 Firefox/1.0.1 Fedora/1.0.1-1.3.2 Description of problem: Please add support to anaconda to be able to install to USB storage devices. Right now installing to USB devices is only possible in expert mode but the major missing feature is the creation of the final initrd with support for the needed USB and SCSI modules. Here is how I managed to install FC4 to a CF Card connected to an USB CF card reader (The CF card was the only storage device in the system besides a USB DVD-ROM containing the FC4T1 install DVD): 1. enter "linux expert" at the syslinux prompt (expert is important because the USB storage devices are only available in disk-druid in this install mode) 2. you should now be able to partition the USB storage device as you like 3. install as usual but switch to Console #2 before the final reboot 4. chroot /mnt/sysimage 5. mkinitrd --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod --preload=sd_mod /boot/usbinitrd.img 2.6.11-1.1177_FC4 6. edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to use the new initrd 7. Reboot (8.) This seems to be a bug: When system booted it found my CF card but could not mount / although the e2label was created during installation. So I changed root=LABEL=/ to root=/dev/sda1 in grub.conf and was finally able to successfully boot from my CF card. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. try to install and boot from an USB storage device 2. 3. Additional info:
I just downloaded the DVD image of FC4T1 and tried this. When I got to manual partitioning with Disk Druid, it still only shows me the partitions on my internal hard drive, but nothing on the USB drive at all. I tried changing to Console #2 before running Disk Druid, then loading the USB modules (at least I thought that is what I was doing), but DD still only sees the internal HD.
Are you sure that you selected "linux expert" at the syslinux boot prompt? This a very important as otherwise the usb-storage modules will be ignored by disk-druid.
Here is what I did: The USB disk was already partitioned using Knoppix. I powered off the laptop (IBM Thinkpad T41), plugged in the USB drive, powered up the laptop, and booted from the FC4T1 installation DVD. When it stopped at the boot prompt, I typed "linux expert". The boot continued. It started the GUI. I chose my language and keyboard (English). There were a few more questions, including whether I had a driver disk, I think; I said no. Then it asked if I wanted automatic or manual partitioning. I chose manual. Disk Druid started up. In the top part of the Disk Druid screen it has what appears to be a list of the disks. The only one there was /dev/hda. On the bottom half of the screen was the list of partitions on that disk, which were correct. I could not see any way of switching to the USB disk. ---- I tried doing the same thing over again, but before I got to Disk Druid I used Ctrl-Alt-F2 to go to another console. Then I used insmod to load all the modules I thought I would need: usbcore, usb-storage, scsi-mod, sd-mod, uhci-hcd, and ehci-hcd. Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 and returned to the installation. When I got to Disk Druid, it still only saw the IDE hard drive. Bernd, is this different from the way you did it? ---- If I boot from a Knoppix CD, I can mount, read, and write the USB hard drive with no trouble. So I know the Linux drivers work with my hardware.
Interesting. This is exactly the same way as I did the installation. I tried it on two different systems: 1. VIA MS10000 mainboard with on-board CF-Slot that is seen as an USB storage device. The CF card was detected as /dev/sda when I booted with "linux expert". Booting from the USB-CF-card works after the manual steps described above. 2. MSI KT6-Delta mainboard with external USB attached multi-card reader. The CF card was detected as /dev/sda when I booted with "linux expert". Booting from the USB-CF card did not work on this system due to a BIOS problem. BTW: I had no other IDE devices in the system besides the DVD-ROM with the install media.
For various reasons we are not going to suppose installing to a USB device. I'm marking this one as a duplicate of a bug that has a pretty decent explanation of why. You can also try an advanced search looking for any closed anaconda bugs with "usb" in the summary for further examples. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 147256 ***