I've had problems with disk presentation order changing (fairly randomly) when USB disks are attached during boot. Apparently there's a race between the SCSI controller and the USB controller(s). If you attach the USB disk later the SCSI stuff has all been discovered so of course it gets allocated later in the list, but if it's attached while booting the USB disk might come first or in the middle somewhere.
This might lead to grub looking for its files in the wrong place, which might explain the hang. If you want to test this theory, boot from a CD while the USB is installed and see where it winds up in /dev, then boot without it. Be very careful about assuming drive identities! That's how I lost my system disk last time -- /dev/sdb seemed to be partitioned funny and I figured it out just a little too late. On 2/28/08, andrea <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I had no problem booting since last time I partitoned my USB external > disk. > > ========================================== > Disk /dev/sdc: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > Disk identifier: 0x00000000 > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/sdc1 1 2433 19543041 83 Linux > /dev/sdc2 2434 4866 19543072+ 83 Linux > /dev/sdc3 4867 7299 19543072+ 83 Linux > /dev/sdc4 7300 9729 19518975 83 Linux > =========================================== > > When I boot and the disk is plugged, right after BIOS screen I get a > "GRUB_" and the boot process hangs. > > I guessed it was a BIOS problem so I tried to edit boot order and also > to disable USB boot (that I don't need). > > BTW when the disk is unplugged grub loads perfectly. > > Thanks in advance. > > -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
