Boot error

[The Chief]

I have recently placed one of those teeny 16 gb USB drives on my laptop (permanently) and set it to automount.  I then set up a cron job to automatically back up my Thunderbird profile on a weekly basis.  All that is working just fine.

But...  I had already set the BIOS to boot from USB, then CD/DVD and then HDD, so every time I turn the laptop on, I get an error message about no image on the drive (meaning the USB drive, I presume) - I just press enter and then every thing is fine.

Would there be anyway to eliminate that boot error message?  Without changing the boot order?  Perhaps by editing one of the config files?

Thanks...   Oh, uhhh...  standard KDE, fully updated.

[Just17]

If the USB is permanently attached then you could write Grub to its MBR and boot from it ......

[Yankee]

Also,

I always have my Bios set to boot from the HD.    Anything else
I touch esc or F10 or F12 depending on the machine.   Then
you make a selection which device to boot from, if any.
Anything else, USB or CD, automounts thru PCManfm in
LXDE.   etc/fstab could be modified to mount something to
a specific someplace if that is desirable, but not really needed
if it automounts to the same place all the time, always
/media/devicelabel  directory.   Should be an easy setup
then without error messages.

regards,

FF

[The Chief]

Yeah - I was afraid I would have to change the boot order.   Maybe I'll just learn to live with the extra keystroke at boot up.

Don't think I'll mark this solved or whatever just yet, though - maybe someone else will come along with a brainstorm.

[Just17]

Yeah - I was afraid I would have to change the boot order.   Maybe I'll just learn to live with the extra keystroke at boot up.

Don't think I'll mark this solved or whatever just yet, though - maybe someone else will come along with a brainstorm.

Did making it bootable not work?

[sling-shot]

Follow the suggestion by Just17 but edit the menu.lst on the USB drive to reduce the boot option selection delay to 0. Thus you wont even be seeing the splash for the second GRUB on the USB.

[Just17]

Follow the suggestion by Just17 but edit the menu.lst on the USB drive to reduce the boot option selection delay to 0. Thus you wont even be seeing the splash for the second GRUB on the USB.

I did not think it necessary to have any Grub files on the USB drive .....  just use the same ones as the internal HDD is using.

[sling-shot]

Sorry. I thought it was compulsory to have grub files on the media.
So, that means only the MBR of flash drive needs to be written? And it will pick up the HDD grub files?

[The Chief]

Yeah - I was afraid I would have to change the boot order.   Maybe I'll just learn to live with the extra keystroke at boot up.

Don't think I'll mark this solved or whatever just yet, though - maybe someone else will come along with a brainstorm.

Did making it bootable not work?

Don't know how I'd do that, since all it has on it is a Thunderbird profile backup.  I don't need to make it boot, I need it to be ignored in the boot process, and just mounted for data use.

[The Chief]

Follow the suggestion by Just17 but edit the menu.lst on the USB drive to reduce the boot option selection delay to 0. Thus you wont even be seeing the splash for the second GRUB on the USB.

I think it may be easier (simpler?  more elegant?)  to just move the USB to after the HDD in the boot order.  Since the machine has a CD/DVD drive, I'll probably never need to boot from the USB, but I still could by changing the boot order on start up.

[Just17]

Yeah - I was afraid I would have to change the boot order.   Maybe I'll just learn to live with the extra keystroke at boot up.

Don't think I'll mark this solved or whatever just yet, though - maybe someone else will come along with a brainstorm.

Did making it bootable not work?

Don't know how I'd do that, since all it has on it is a Thunderbird profile backup.  I don't need to make it boot, I need it to be ignored in the boot process, and just mounted for data use.

As the setting for ignoring it is in BIOS and you do not want to change that, then making it bootable is a valid choice.

Was this stick ever made bootable?

The reason I ask is that usually the BIOS will ignore non-bootable devices.

If it was, in the past made bootable, then it is easy enough to wipe the MBR clean and it might be ignored when booting.