[NBLUG/talk] Using a USB mass storage device as a root filesystem

Lincoln Peters sampln at sbcglobal.net
Thu Sep 23 07:54:12 PDT 2004


I've installed Knoppix 3.4 on an external USB 2.0 hard disk.  I've also
created a custom kernel that has support for SCSI disks, USB, and USB
mass storage devices built-in (not as modules).  So theoretically, if
the USB hard drive is the only USB mass storage device attached to the
computer, I could load the kernel from a boot floppy, then use /dev/sda1
(which would be the external hard disk) as my root filesystem.

However, it seems that, when the usb-storage part of the kernel is run,
it does *not* immediately scan for attached storages devices.  This
means that, by the time my computer is ready to mount the root
filesystem, the hard disk is still not configured, and so the boot
process fails.


Can I change the behavior of the usb-storage code so that it scans for
USB mass storage devices immediately upon running?

(And, yes, I have a reason for wanting to do this.  I'm trying to build
a full-blown, non-read-only Linux installation that I can easily move
from one computer to another.)

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
		-- K&R





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