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Installing Fedora 10 on External Western digital USB drive for X86_64 AMD processor.

I am putting forward the steps to install F10 on AMD Athlon -X2 Presario CQ60 laptop and my experiences while installing it, so that anyone who reads it can benefit maybe in a small way.


1. Download Fedora iso for architechture suitable to your PC (see fedora installation notes) and create a DVD. Verify the dvd as given in http://fedoraproject.org/en/verify. You have to download a tool for checksum generation (sha1) for the dvd and compare it with the checksum listed on the fedora website for verification. http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-burning-isos/en_US/sn-validating-files.html

2. The WD drive should be unformatted. So i had to do that from windows vista->computer(right click)->Manage->Disk Management->WD drive (right click)->Delete partition. Otherwise i got an error that amount of space selected was not available when trying to partition the WD drive during installation.

3. Insert the WD drive and boot into the DVD. Select the default option of install. Do a custom install. Partition the WD drive by selecting the external hard drive for /, /boot and swap partitions . The internal HD was visible as sda and the WD drive as sdb and the created partitions will be sdab for /boot, sdb2 for / and sdb3 for swap. (The label WD drive is very clearly visible, so no chances of confusion with internal HD).


4. In the next step, Choose the bootloader as grub and choose the location to install grub by clicking the edit button. F10 for X86_64 only gives the option of installing grub on the /boot drive (As opposed to MBR of external HD). So select it. Rest of the options for installation are easy to understand and can be referred from http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f10/.


5. After the installation is complete, reboot into rescue mode from the fedora dvd. Select no for network interface and click ok for the next option. After the shell prompt has appeared, type chroot /mnt/sysimage.


6. Now i had to modify initrd image to support booting from external USB HD. For this create a backup of ur initrd image in /boot drive by typing

mv initrd_version.img initrd_version.img.backup.

Then type the command from /boot directory

mkinitrd --with=usb --preload ehci-hcd --preload scsi-mod --preload sd-mod /boot/initrd_usb.gz 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64
The module names can be written with a underscore or hash in bewteen.

Change the name of initrd image in grub.conf from /boot/initrd...to /boot/initrd_usb.gz. Take a back up of /boot/grub/grub.conf before editing .


Now i was not able to create a initrd image inspite of any number of tries and experiments. So i restored my old initrd image and moved on to the next step.
7. Type the commands

i) grub

ii) root (hd0,0) //from grub prompt

iii) setup(hd0)

iv) type exit (enter) exit to reboot.7. Reboot without DVD, and change boot options to boot from USB drive first and you should be able to boot into fedora.
I guess one has to do lots of head banging to reach this stage. So keep trying and take tips from fedora forums.

8. Now i was able to boot into text mode. Search on fedora forums suggested that the inbuilt drivers in x window system conflict with the installed nvidia drivers (for video graphics). So x window system is not installed. The directlry /etc/X11 was absent on my system. Typing the commands x-configure gave a error: number of created screens does not match the number of detected devices.

9. I installed system-config-display package by download rpm from net with the help of a pen drive. one of the package rhpxl>= 0.34-1 was needed and i installed that also.and tried configuring the x window system for Nvidia drivers but again got the same error.


10. Now i downloaded nvidia drivers for linux x86_64 from nvidia website and installed them. For that first check all dependencies as listed on the website and use sh nvidia.pkg.run list all packages:- Here also i got a error: unable to perform runtime configuration. Check for library libGL.so.1 (/usr/lib/libGL.so.185.18.14);assuming succesfull installation.11. Now in this perplexity trying out things, i typed startx and i booted into the login screen of the GUI. Funny enough.


12. Now to make this change permanent, i rebooted again into text mode and edited /etc/inittab to change the run level from 3 to 5 by changing id:3:initdefault to
id:5:initdefault.


13. Now on rebooting, i was able to boot into the GUI login screen. But the login would not accept root user. since fedora does not accept logging as root. So i booted from fedora dvd in rescue mode and as searched from fedora forums, edited the file /etc/pam.d/gdm to comment the line "auth required pam_succeed_if.s0_user!=root quiet".


14. Now after removing the fedora dvd i was able to boot into fedora from external WD USB.

Lastly, Thanks to my colleague gaurav's article on installing F9 on External WD USB which inspired me to write this article and was helpfull reference while installing fedora.

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