On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:33:28 +0200, Timo Johansson wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to install Gentoo on my USB HDD.
>
> I did the installation process as if the USB HDD was an normal Harddisk.
>
> My USB-HDD is /dev/sda.
> I mounted /dev/sda5 as / and installed LILO to /dev/sda.
>
> When booting the first time from my USB-HDD, the startup process
> interrupts with an error message "Unable to mount root-FS".
> The settings in /etc/lilo.conf are definitely correct.
>
> The problem seems to be, that at the point in the startup-procedure when
> the Kernel (?) tries to find the root partition, the USB-HDD-partition
> /dev/sda5 is not accessible yet?!
>
> Did I miss to include anything into the kernel? (UHCI is already is
> included) Did I miss anything else?
>
> BTW: Sorry, english is not my native language... ;-)

From what I've seen in setting up my USB-HDD the drive is not available
until after the coldplug service is started. I'm not sure if this is due
to the way I have my kernel configured or if it normal behavior on all
systems. I ran into other issues having my drive connected at boot time
(my mp3 player requires multiple LUNs but if my Seagate USB-HDD is
powered on at boot time it shows up with multiple LUNs and performance is
severely degraded) so I just use auto-fs and keep system partitions on my
IDE drive and data only on my USB-HDD.

I know it's not much help, but thought it might give you some place to
start looking.