mounting "/" to non bootable device?

[moyd]

== Background: ==

- Old laptop with only PATA
- Bought a PCMCIA ESATA card and a SATA SSD in an external enclosure
- Bios is too old to support booting from the PCMCIA device

I bought an SSD to speed things up a little, but having some issues.

Since I can not boot from the SSD, I thought I'd load the kernel from the old PATA disc and then mount / to the SSD.

== What i've tried: ==

(sda = internal pata)
(sdb = external ssd)

1. Installed ubuntu to sda with seperate paritions for /boot /var /srv and /

moyd@A:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda9 4804736 2012760 2547908 45% /
none 508764 376 508388 1% /dev
none 512980 228 512752 1% /dev/shm
none 512980 88 512892 1% /var/run
none 512980 0 512980 0% /var/lock
none 512980 0 512980 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sda5 456796 15524 416901 4% /boot
/dev/sda6 960504 181904 729808 20% /var
/dev/sda7 1921036 35648 1787804 2% /srv


2. Also made an install to sdb with only one parition + swap space

3. Tried changing /etc/fstab for mounting / to sdb instead (Also tried using UUID)

moyd@A:~$ more /etc/fstab

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda9 during installation
/dev/sdb1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=b64f1aa1-f3ae-4825-9ddf-4e5c7603157b /boot ext2 defaults 0 2
# /srv was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=3eb31571-02f2-4697-b69a-e856958d8829 /srv ext4 defaults 0 2
# /var was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=8c8a2742-740a-4bc6-a16c-3c4aa4decd5d /var ext4 defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda8 during installation
/dev/sda8 none swap sw 0 0

==RESULT==

The boot process still mounts / on sda instead of sdb as expected.

moyd@A:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda9 4804736 2012772 2547896 45% /
none 508764 376 508388 1% /dev
none 512980 228 512752 1% /dev/shm
none 512980 88 512892 1% /var/run
none 512980 0 512980 0% /var/lock
none 512980 0 512980 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sda5 456796 15524 416901 4% /boot
/dev/sda6 960504 181904 729808 20% /var
/dev/sda7 1921036 35648 1787804 2% /srv



Spent the last few days using google, but for no good..

Any ideas?

[vanadium]

I am not quite familiar with all technical ins and outs, but the bootloader is grub. Grub (at least the very first part) must be on a bootable device. All the remainder can be on any drive in the system. Study grub, and there you will find the solution to configure booting an OS from the non bootable flash drive. Someone else may pass by who can give you more specific help on this.

[moyd]

Well, not quite. Since the pcmcia device is not recognized by the BIOS, grub has no way of knowing it exists as far as i know.

Therefore I have to load the kernel before I can mount the partitions on the external drive..

[moyd]

Update:

Getting closer.. Secret was in the initrd. Had to make a new initrd image with modules for pcmcia referenced, once that was up it could find sdb and mount the root file system there.

Still wont start X and insists on dropping me to a 'terranova' shell, but big step forward..