[N3WBI3]

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[stainlessbanner]

Any chance you could use Grub to boot from cd? just a thought

[Xenophobic Alien]

Get windows!


HA HA

Sorry just had too....

[kingu]

Boot into the bios, select boot device, choose USB. The device won't show up on a configuration screen in the bios, but that's fine, it should still attempt to boot off the external drive before attempting to boot off of an internal drive.

Better yet, if your bios offers a secondary boot device and third boot device, choose USB for all three.

The alternative is to borrow a USB drive (could be a card reader or a usb thumb drive.) See the various SUSE forums for instructions on how to make a USB thumb boot disc - it is rather detailed, but can be accomplished in shorter time than it takes to explain.

Lastly, NEVER update the kernal or anything unless it is for a specific security problem or functional upgrade. Absolutely keep to the stable branches of the kernal and software.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Can't help much with Linux...but I can help with finding an inexpensive CD-RW replacement.

Try this one. It'll cost you 13 bucks.

[zeugma]

Question 1: I'm running Suse 10.0 Eval, first updated KDE to 3.5.1 and then updated the kernel to 2.6.16-default. Since the kernel upgrade, I cannot get any USB devices to start. I've tried editing /etc/fstab as recommended, but the devices won't mount--and if they do, nothing shows up in Konqueror. I did however, and only once, did

Looks like part of your question didn't come through. I'm not sure if Suse 10 started with a 2.4 kernel. If it did, I think I know what part of the problem. There were major subsystem changes in the /dev/ subsystem. Direct upgrades from 2.4 to 2.6 kernels can be problematic unless you take  some precautions.

Question 2: How can I add this device to PhoenixBIOS so I can boot from it--the device doesn't show up at all. I'm going to need to be able to boot from the external drive to do any upgrades or patches.

It really depends upon whether or not the BIOS supports the option to boot from USB.  Many older motherboards don't support this. We have several laptops here and only a couple even have this option. If you check the boot order, where you can change if you want the hard disk, cdrom, or floppy to boot first, is there an option for booting USB? If not, you're probably out of luck on that option. 

You might take a look at this page:
 http://thomer.com/linux/migrate-to-2.6.html and look at the section about USB. The page is specific to RedHat, but the section about USB should apply.

If you give a little more info about your upgrade, it would probably facilitate us helping out.

[KoRn]

Wow that's a 'good' one. I flashed my BIOS once and couldn't get Linux to boot on it afterward. I was pulling my hair out. I feel your pain. The only thing I know to try you did, and was posted, so I'll be watching for an answer so I'LL know how to handle it if it happens to me lol. Good luck.

[ThePythonicCow]

As someone else noted, your BIOS may or may not allow booting off a USB drive. You'll just have to reboot into the BIOS and see what sort of drives it lists as options for booting from.

Grub (or lilo or any other boot loader) won't help if your BIOS can't read a boot block from the device in the first place.

Since it seems (a bit confusing to me, but seems) that you have managed sometime or someway to see the external drive mounted, I take it that your kernel is configured with the necessary USB driver and your hardware is working, and that not seeing the drive contents on your desktop is just some sort of minor KDE usage confusion -- well minor unless its happening to oneself. So I won't persue the usual diagnostics to see what might cause a kernel to ignore a device:

$ dmesg -s 99999	kernel messages
$ gzip -d -c /proc/config.gz	kernel configuration

As someone also noted, you should be able to afford a CD drive unless you're on a really tight budget. Someone had an eBay link above for one. Here's a link to 24 different models, brand new and name brand, the ten lowest cost of which are between $13 and $15 (plus shipping, tax) from newegg.com: CD/DVD ROM Drives . You really want to have something you can boot a CD from for repair and recovery in case something goes wrong with booting the system, as well as for upgrades. Heck, I've got a couple of spare CD drives in my old parts pile. You could probably get me to send you one if you promise to donate ten dollars to FR.

[N3WBI3]

Let me know when you get where you need to go with this..

[L_Von_Mises]

I'm running Suse 10 as a file server at home using an external DVD writer and it took a little fiddling to get it to show up everywhere but it works fine. Later this evening after work I will look at what I used for my settings and pass it along to you.

Regarding beaing able to boot, what motherboard or PC are you using. Most of mine have an option for "Boot Other Device" which defaults to SCSI, USB, or SATA. My main desktop uses SCSI but if I have any type of USB drive (including thumb) it won't boot because no OS so it goes to USB before SCSI - not sure about SATA. Anyway - it is trying to boot from the USB device so setting to "other Device" if available as an option, should work.