Ok I seem to have fixed this all by my self. I made an educated guess that "root=LABEL=/" was surely wrong and replaced it with "root=/dev/sda1" in the grub boot loader. The thing booted straight off. I will report back on how this works (if at all) after setup is complete. Thanks AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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Can anyone suggest posible alternative linux installations, something similar in functionality to Fedora Core 6 but more useful on external drives. I am finding that updates are taking a rediculous amount of time (235 security updates took 40 minutes to resolve dependencies - of which there was 1) and now downloading the updates is taking even longer,the progress bar is bearly hairline after 2 hours of downloading. Suggestions appreciated, thanks AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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sorry to keep following up my own replies but that last boot was a fluke, after the updates finished i rebooted and it no longer boots, i have tried several reinstalls and no luck. Apparently something to do with not loading the usb-storage drivers early on enough for the partitions to be ready when looked for. I get the same error as initially mentioned above. AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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You will find the system runs slower from usb no matter what distro.... You want to edit your grub.conf file which is probably in /boot/grub/ on your usb drive to reflect your root=/dev/sda1, then you wont have to change it every time you boot

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yeh I did that, I'v been through it and through several reinstalls, no matter what I do i get the kernel panic, I just can't get it to find the partition it wants to find, I tried PCLinuxOS instead (which has a USB install option) and that worked perfect, but i don't like it as an OS and would like to get Fedora working. Any suggestions? AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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Have you tried using lilo instead of grub?

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I havn't, how easy/difficult would that be from a FC6 installation disc? I'v never used lilo in my life so I hae no experience with it what so ever. AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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Personally I find lilo easier than grub, maybe that's just because I've been using it for longer. There are a couple of extra features that yu can do with grub which you can't in lilo (eg you can drop to a grub shell and issue commands like installing to an MBR before actually booting) but as it goes there is no real difference to the end user. The only other thing to remember about lilo is that every time you make a change to /etc/lilo.conf you have to write it to the MBR with the lilo command whereas with grub you can just edit grub.conf for the changes to take place. I haven't played with fedora but you might find the lilo rpm on one of the discs.

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The thing I need to consider is, is the problem due to the boot loader, you can see the point at which the panic occurs, has the boot loader not already stepped aside by this time? I saw on a site a mention of loading usb-storage and other drivers before anything else, the thing that confuses me is, if the install is able to find the linux kernel and the initrd image the drive is clearly mounted and accessible, so why can it not find the swap partition? That label "LABEL=swap-sda2" is it possible that that is wrong? and should be corrected to the actual path of the swap partition? "/dev/sda2" I fail to understand why all this is so messed up when installing to the internal HDD works perfectly. and Fedora 7? Well that's so useful that even their Live CD for test one isnt bootable. I wish I knew of something with the same functionality as Fedora I could switch to or a way to get the darn thing to work. If PCLinuxOS can do it, I'm sure these folks can. AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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Ok, I decided to play with the big boys and fixed the problem by manually creating an initrd. Extracted the original, edited the init file and recompressed and bootd it, basically I added a pause of 10 seconds after loading the USB drivers before trying to mount the file systems. It now boots fine, although not a perfect solution, it does work. I'll post my init file if anyone thinks they might be able to help me optimise it, let me know. AMD X2 4600+ AM2 ACFrzr64 M2N32-Sli Dlx 2x 1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 NvGeforce7600GT Enrmx. Lib. 500W 2x 250GB SATA2 7200 RAID 0 1x 200GB SATA2 7200 Logitech G7 Carbon SE

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