Re: chain loading USB harddrive if no native USB support possible?

[Michael Reichenbach]

Franklin PIAT wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 05:51 +0200, Michael Reichenbach wrote:
> > I have a comp here without native USB support. The bios can not boot 
> > from USB directly. Booting from CD, HD and floppy works.
> >
> > In grub shell with null ( I also does not see the device, only the 
> > internal harddisk.
> >
> > On google I did already found instructions to successfully chain load CD 
> >   with grub.
> >
> > Isn`t this possible also for USB? I mean, first boot grub from cd or 
> > floppy, then load a linux kernel, he makes the USB device usable and 
> > then chain load USB?
>
> I guess that nothing prevents you from installing grub on a floppy or CD
> with its config file. The tricky part will be to tell grub to search for
> a given file, in order to identify the [USB] root device.

Yes.

> Under grub2, you can use the "search" command (read [1] for more
> information).

Well, yet I have only learned grub legacy because I mostly use the 
"latest stable" and also most documentation was for it. However, if 
needed I will also look inside grub 2.

My question is now the following. You mean grub2 can detect and boot 
more devices then grub legacy?

(supergrub with grub legacy did not find the device)

> I haven't tested, but if you label the USB device with a unique name,
> then a script like this should work:
>  search -f MyUsbLabel
>  linux  /boot/vmlinuz root=LABEL=MyUsbLabel ro
>  initrd /boot/initrd.img

This means it`s only possible to boot linux that way? Chan loading 
another bootloader directly isn`t possible?