Installing Arch on a non-empty external HDD.

Hi. I'd like to install Arch on my external HDD, where i already keep my music. It still has ~120GB of free space while my main laptop HDD is almost filled up.
The format of the external HDD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so i can make a new partition while keeping the files. (I'm doing it on OS X).
how do i make the partition right so that i'll be able to install Arch? Which version should i download? I'm thinking Core USB Image but I'm not sure.
Any help is appreciated because I'm a total beginner.

IIRC, when I re-partitioned my external USB (NTFS) to build Arch, I just shrank the existing partition, booted up with an ArchLive CD, and let the installer create the necessary filesystems in the available space.

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Installed OS X Snow Leopard on external HDD, now won't allow me to delete files from Mac internal drive

Hi,
I am stuck! My 1 TB iMac 27" decided to stop booting up and would only stay at the grey screen with the apple, gear turning and progress bar. When it got to a certain point on the progress bar it would shut down. Thanks to so many helpful people and their experiences I was able to try many different things including (Command + S, typing /sbin/mount -uw / enter , chmod 775 / enter, logout enter, then rebooting holding down Command + V) and (Reinstalling OS X and using Disk Utility to repair - came up with Disk can't be fixed).
Nothing worked until I read a couple of very wise answers who said "Your hard drive is not dead, but too full...keep at least 10% free at all times". I was down to about 1% (ooops!) Thankfully hubby had bought me an external HDD for Christmas, onto which I installed OS X and being connected to my iMac, it recognized my internal Macintosh HD and all my files are there. Phewww! But I don't want to use my external HDD as my startup disk, I wan't to keep my Macintosh HD for startup but it is too full to repair and select as startup.
My problem is that I cannot delete files from Macintosh HD, and I've tried to unlock files/folders but they don't seem to be locked. But when I drag them to the trash can it says "The item ... can't be moved to the Trash because it can't be deleted." Again, many helpful answers online, but nothing is working. I have 2 Finder windows open, one with external HDD (new startup disk), and old HDD (Macintosh HD) but all items in Macintosh HD can't be altered or deleted (right click doesn't highlight to change the name). So if I can't delete my files, I can't reinstall OS X and repair disk and select it as my startup disk. I'd be so thrilled if someone can help me. I have tried unlocking folders, and I downloaded 'Trashit'. Neither worked, so I figure because it has the little pencil crossed out on the menu bar that it is protected somehow...I just don't know how/what to do. Thanks

Ok, so I'll try set it out a bit clearer than my first post,
This is what I've done, and the results:
1. My son unplugged working iMac Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2, 1TB with only 11GB available space
2. Turned it on and got the white screen, apple, turning gear and load-up bar
3. Turned Mac off and waited 1/2 a minute.
4. Turned Mac back on...(same as 3.), tried again many times
5. Began searching internet for answers (see original post)
6. Found answers and did the following:
               1.     Put OS X installation disk into drive
               2.     Attached External Hard Drive
               3.     Installed OS X onto External Hard Drive (With a different name & password to original HDD)
               4.     Found Macintosh HD still worked so tried to delete files only to get message saying                                           files couldn't be deleted (see original post)
I've tried changing the permissions in 'Get Info' and this is what happens:
1.Right click Macintosh HD - says "You can only read"
                                                  Name: System - Read & Write
                                                             Admin -   Read & Write
                                                             Everyone - Read only
2.Click on padlock to unlock - doesn't turn black to be able to change anything
3.Check the box "Ignore ownership on this volume" (someone else advised to do this)
4.Name changes to 'mydrive (Me)'
5.Lock padlock and Name still says mydrive (Me) but still 'You can only read'
I don't know what is wrong or what to do, but perhaps you are right LowLuster, that because I named them different names it is protected in some way.
My thought now is to copy all my files to the external HDD and then erase and install again on my internal HD, but I really need my calendar, emails etc from my old HD and not sure they can be found on the old HD to copy over.
Still stuck!

Empty External HDD Enclosure that is the size of the Time Capsule

anyone know a model for a empty Time capsule size enclosure to put a HDD in to act as a second drive sitting atop of the Time Capsule.
looking for one that is the same dimension, yes I know u can add any external HDD, looking for an enclosure that is the same size.
thanks

My first thought was to look at enclosures sold to Mac mini buyers.

Problems installing Arch 0.7 base on SATA HDD.

Hi! I am new to Arch and still a bit of a newbie when it comes to Linux in general. I have a friend who runs Arch who has been trying to help me... to no avail. I am trying to install Arch base 0.7 with an ftp installation on my system. Some of my system is as follows:
P4 3 GHz, 1024 memory. My HDD setup is:
Primary IDE Master: [NOT DETECTED] (No drive here!)
Primary IDE Slave: [Maxtor ide drive] Files
Secondary Master: [Samsung dvd-rom] (ATAPI)
Secondary Slave: [CDRW] (ATAPI)
Third ide Master: [SATA-HDD] OS's Windows and Arch
My Linux partitioning is as follows:
sda5 /
sda2 /boot
sda7 /home
sda6 swap
My Grub file looks like this:
Linux
root (hd1,1)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 devfs=nomount ro
windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
(I have left out the coad for the title line in this forum)
My windows loads perfectly but I have troubles booting into Linux, when I add quiet to my Kernel line I get this at bootup:
Booting command-list
root (hd1,1)
filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz26 root (etc....)
[linuz-bzimage, setup=0x1c00, size=0x3d08535]
uncompressing kernel... OK, booting the kernel.
ACPI: Unable to load the System Description Tables
and then my system stops loading, reset button to restart!
My friend is a bit of a Linux whizz but he was unable to help me out... I have changed my fstab to look like sdaX... (he told me to)...
Any suggestions?
thx

Similar problem here.
Pre-partitionned my single HDD which is a Sata 80Gb, with sda6 5Gb for Arch, sda9 /home & sda11 swap.
Installed Wombat which recognized the HDD on /dev/discs/disc0, adjusted the conf files as if i was going to use hotplug.
Installed Grub on to the "/" (sda6) partition as I plan to add others distros.
Also installed Grub on a new ext2 formatted Floppy with :
umount /floppy
/usr/local/sbin/grub --batch <<EOT
root (fd0)
setup (fd0)
quit
EOT.
When I boot with that floppy, grub recognize HDD as hd0 and "/" as 6th partition : I can TAB to "vmlinuz26 without a glinch
Then it boot ... untill I get this message :
"sata "kernel panic - not syncing: vfs: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)""
Should I edit /etc/rc/conf with some more modules/daemons that those by default ?
Presently I'm copying my Arch mirror (current & extra) on to another partition to get last packages. Because my box comes with an ULi network controller that was added to the kernel modules early in October, so I want to chroot into my present install, update to latest kernel, udev, dbus & hal, & see what I can do thereafter.

The External HDD that causes the SystemUIserver to cripple Mac Mini

Hello all,
I have recently reinstalled my mac mini, starting with a secure delete of the Macintosh HD and complete DVD re-install with Mac OS X 10.6.4. I saved all of my data onto my external HDD which is a Western Digital 320GB. (Before i deleted and re-installed my mac i wiped this external HDD and formatted it to MS-DOS format using mac's disk utility software, so that i can move data between my HP Laptop (which i will be getting rid of soon and move to a mac book) and the mac mini with ease!)
Following the re-install i started to move all of my files and folders back to the mac when my mac became very very very sluggish. Taking 30-45 seconds to load safari (much longer for bigger programmes) and when i wanted to copy files across from my Ext HDD onto the mini it would copy at about 2-3MB/sec.
I subsequently went into the activity monitor and under the system memory tab saw that the SystemUIServer was using 3.14GB of real memory and was running the CPU at 80-90%. This was my problem. I then when onto the web to see why i was having such issues with speed and USB file transfer and forums talked about USB 1.0/1.1 selected or not having enough RAM which was not the problem here.
I then chose to force quit the SystemUIserver and my system started flying again, up to full speed, but it was only for 30 seconds until i saw the memory pie chart start to turn yellow once more as SystemUIserver started to eat up my real memory, (RAM).
I then turned off my Ext HDD, force quit systemUIserver and i once again had a stable system. So what is the problem??????
There is a communication error between my HDD and my mac which means that when i plug it in systemUIserver goes crazy, and slows the machine. What i do not know is how to get both my HDD and Mac talking without using up all of the RAM. Allowing me to transfer all of my documents back onto my mac. Why is this an issue???????.......Any help on this matter would be really kind as i did not have this issue on the previous install, but now i cannot stop this from happening.
Thank you

Hello again,
I have subsequently discovered that it is any external media that i plug in causes this fault. (my other external HDD, my 2.0 GB usb stick!)
Looks like that this issue is slightly bigger than i initially thought!
Thank you in advance

External HDD locked, can't repair permissions or create folder at root

After having to do an archive and install as mac mini stuck in start-up, start-up not finished, start start-up again loop I am experiencing bizarre problem. Spend 3 days on this and now just 2 hours with Apple Support. Since the archive and install the 3 partitions of my external HDD all have a padlock on them. Tried many things including checking permissions from install disk or from usual start-up disk and even logged in as root user. At the root level it is not possible to create a new folder or trash items or to move anything to this level. At lower directory levels you can. Clicking on Get info for each partition shows the same thing. It says just above the name box that I can read only, yet by my name says I can read and write. However, selecting anything other than read and write does not stick, it ignores the request. At the sub directory level it says my privileges are custom. Logged in as a root user, I tried to move something to the root level of the HDD. It asked me to authenticate but even after doing that said I had insufficient privileges!
Please someone help. Apple support has had to escalate now. Their comment was "I've never heard of such a sever issue with permissions."
In the mean time I have limited control over my external HDD.
thanks
D

Hopefully you can help me out here as well V.K.
I had to reformat my Mac and now can only read my external drive. I have tried everything. Here is the response I get to running:
sudo chflags nouchg /My Book II
chflags: /Volumes/My Book II: Read-only file system.
I can read files, but when I try to delete them I get a error -67 code.I also cannot write to my external.
Thanks

[SOLVED] external USB HDD fails to install arch w/boot device ERROR

I've been working on installing arch linux via an external USB harddrive (specifically seagate free agent go 320GB) for 1 week now, and everytime I failed - until TODAY! thankfully I found this post, where user Dieter@be references this link, which displays BUG ID#17231 at the top titled "Can't boot LiveCDs 2009.08 (/dev/archiso doesn't show up)". the bug report states ::
I can't boot the LiveCDs 2009.08, neither netinstall nor core.
When it tries to access /dev/archiso it shows these messages:
:: Waiting for boot device ...
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/archiso ...
ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, logout when you are finished
ramfs$
reading further thru this bug report, I found a very insightful post by Heiko Baums (cyberpatrol) where he says the following, and I quote ::
Problem found. The link /dev/archiso wasn't created.
After
ramfs$ cd /dev
ramfs$ ln -s sr0 archiso
ramfs$ exit
it continued booting correctly.
And sg was also loaded after this. ;-)
as you see, the bug report was for the CD version, not the USB version - yet, my issue with the USB bootdisk was the same, (no matter which boot disk I tried = netinstall, core, .img, .iso, etc) meaning I got the EXACT same error = "ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds ..." ! well, I figured that I'd try one of the new fancy ISOs found @ http://build.archlinux.org/isos/ - specifically I use/used archlinux-2010.03.04-netinstall-x86_64.iso.
upon running Unetbootin from windows 7, and choose to install the ISO archlinux-2010.03.04-netinstall-x86_64.iso to my first partition on my USB harddrive (that first partition being FAT32, and had already been set as bootable previously), that completed successfully. I rebooted, and choose to boot from USB drive, the ISOlinux bootloader came up as normal, I choose DEFAULT and off it went.... sure enough, it errored out at the same place as listed in the bug report ::
:: Waiting for boot device ...
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/archiso ...
ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, logout when you are finished
ramfs$
this time though, I issued the following 2 commands ::
ln -s /dev/sdb1 /dev/archiso
exit
from there, EVERYTHING worked as it should!
to recap: the solution for me was create a symbolic link pointing /dev/archiso => to my partition which held the archlinux netinstall (which is where I told Unetbootin to install it to)! done and done. I felt this needed to be posted here, as I could not find this solution after MANY google searches, archlinux wiki searches, forum searches, etc. honestly, I think it would be prudent to have this tidbit of information added to the Install from USB stick archwiki page as a side note to those that may run into this issue.
this is not the FIRST time I have run into this problem with a USB install of archlinux, but this is the FIRST time I found a fix! thanks to all the great posts I reference here, without this information I dont think I would have been able to install archlinux on my new alienware m11x laptop.
-peace-
PS: no amount of rootdelay=XX nor pmedia=usb nor usbdelay=XX would work in my above attempts either.
Last edited by fnord0 (2010-03-12 04:54:26)

FAT16 here. Parted Magic sees my USB drive as sdd. I tried your way and surprise, surprise, it didn't work.
ln -sf /dev/sdd /dev/archiso
mount -t vfat /dev/archiso /bootmnt
mount : Invalid argument
I thought maybe you meant mount -f vfat /dev/archiso /bootmnt instead. I tried it too, it resulted in a kernel panic.
What else can I try besides installing from a IDE/SATA CD drive ? Because this issue is NOT solved. At least not for me. Wonder if "archlinux-2010.04.05-netinstall-i686.iso" from the here will solve it (really hope so).
SOLVED IT HERE (with yet another image): http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=93645
Last edited by DSpider (2010-04-17 14:21:27)

Can't boot Arch from external HDD

Hi, well first off this is not my first Arch Linux installation, I'm using Arch for a little over a year now (coming from slack). But this is my first attempt to have Arch on an external HDD.
Alrighty, the situation is as follows: A rather new computer (supports booting from USB devices and the bios is set to boot from removable devices first) with a built in HDD and an external HDD that's connected to that computer via USB.
What I did: I connected the external HDD to the computer and booted off a 2008.6 Overlord core-CD.
Arch-Live recognized the internal HDD as sda and the external HDD as sdb.
I partitioned the external HDD using cfdisk and ran mkfs.ext3 on it (I didn't use any switches with that).
I started the installer, set my mount points (I should mention I'm not gonna use a swap partition here), installed the packages, well just went through the installation routine and installed grub in the MBR of sdb (the external HDD).
Then I rebooted. And this is what doesn't work: When I boot that computer with the external HDD connected the computer completely hangs right before grub would come up. It freezes completely, ctrl+alt+del doesn't work, I need to use the powerswitch to reboot the computer.
So I put the Arch-CD back in the CD drive trying to boot into my Arch System on the external HDD. So I started typing:
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb1 ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
When I try to boot off that grub tells me that there is no such device as hd1,0. The funny thing is, that the auto copmletion in grub works for the kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 but it doesn't for the device /dev/sdb1, in fact even root=/de<tab> returns a "unrecognized string" message.
So this is what I did and I can't boot off my external HDD, neither can I boot into my system on the external hdd from the cdrom.
What am I missing here?

The harddrive you boot from is in my experience always hd0. Could this mean your external disc is hd2?
Have you tried chainloading from the installer cd to your external disc?

Install Arch on External Hard Drive Bootable on Most Computers

At work I've been using a Mac OS X partition to boot up people's Macs and perform file recovery/partition manipulation. I'm trying to figure out how to install Arch Linux to an external hard drive so that it can be booted by the max number of computers, both PC and Mac. Should I go with grub, grub-efi 32 bit, grub 64, lilo, efistub, etc. for the bootloader? Can anyone give me some guidance on this?
Thanks
Last edited by duke11235 (2013-06-05 03:10:34)

With grub, you can actually specify where the config is located. So you can put the grub config for UEFI in the same path as grub.efi, then the bios grub could still be in /boot/grub like usual. Personally, I would use something else though, as I am not the biggest fan of grub.
I think that you need to read through the grub wiki page, as most of the grub knowledge that i have (which isn't much TBH) came from that page. So the fact that I know this crap and I don't use it, means to me that you haven't actually read through that page very closely. It is a wealth of information actually.
I like using the EFISTUB for UEFI, so I am more of a gummiboot or rEFInd kind of user. Then I use syslinux as my backup bios setup.
I know nothing about requiring rEFInd for UEFI booting from an external HDD. I have never actually tried it. But when I set up UEFI on my old macbook in the ESP, the entry just showed up in the mac bootloader. So unless the Macs don't respect some of the basic UEFI standards (which is a very real possibility) there should be the ability to have multiple ESPs.

I have a new MBAir 2013 13", and I had a MBPro 2010 13". I've installed iPhoto 9.4.3 but now iPhoto says my library (stored on an external HDD) cannot be read until I update the software because it's made with an updated iPhoto... but it IS updated!

As the tile says, I've recently bought a MBAir 2013 13". When I installed and updated iPhoto, I wanted to use my library, stored on an external hdd, which I used until the day before on my old MBPro 2010 13", without any problems. Now iPhoto says that this library cannot be opened by my iPhoto but it has to be opened with an updated iPhoto... but I had iPhoto 9.4.3 on my MBPro and I have iPhoto 9.4.3 on my MBAir! What can I do? Thanks a lot (sorry for my english, I'm Italian)

It's mac os format
BTW I solved my issue! I repaired my library with the last option... and I did not lost anything thanks anyway!

Installed Arch on external usb drive: Drive errors after reboot

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If you try to start iTunes with the external drive disconnected, iTunes will default back to the internal drive.
DO you know if you have your iTunes folder containing the library files on the internal drive or the external drive.
If the iTunes folder that you are using is on the internal drive then you need to set the location of the iTunes Music folder with Edit>>Preferences>>Advanced.
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Just bought a mac air with OS X v.10.7 Lion, for work I need to read and write NTFS drives, I install MacFuse and NTFS-3G, but it can not mount (recognize?) External HDD, in my MBP with Snow lepard it work just perfectly... help please.

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Just bought a mac air with OS X v.10.7 Lion, for work I need to read and write NTFS drives, I install MacFuse and NTFS-3G, but it can not mount (recognize?) External HDD, in my MBP with Lion it work just perfectly... help please.

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Sorry in my MBP Snow lepard it work.. don't have Lion In MBP

Installing Arch on a non-empty external HDD.

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