[indiana-discuss] [install-discuss] OpenSolaris 2008.11 fails to boot on USB disk

[Aubrey Li]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 5:35 AM, Dave Miner <dminer at opensolaris.org> wrote:
> Sean Liu wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> Since my SATA controller is not supported by OpenSolaris, I downloaded the usb image from genunix and copied to a USB stick, then used the stick to install it to a Western Digital USB disk partition. (I installed opensolaris 2008.5 to the partition on a dell laptop before and it worked fine BTW)
>>
>> 1. After the installation, the disk would not boot at all (nothing shows on the screen)
>> 2. I booted up the stick and installed grub to the disk (with -m option), after reboot the screen shows "GRUB" then stops, there is no menu at all.
>> 3. After reading this message https://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=311082 , I did following:
>> a. zero'ed out the whole partition (s2) with "dd"
>> b. reinstalled opensolaris 2008.11
>> 4. After reboot, nothing shows on screen again
>> 5. Booted into stick, downloaded the grub binary attachment, installed the grub ( with -m ), reboot, same sympton as step 2. (Only GRUB on screen, nothing else)
>>
> ...
>>
>> Any ideas why it can't boot? Any help is appreciated.
>>
>
> Take a look at bug 4755:
>
> http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=4755
>
> which has some additional possible workarounds.
>

I run into a similar problem. I installed 0811 into a USB disk, and
run the workaround mentioned in
http://blogs.sun.com/blogfinger/entry/installing_opensolaris_2008_11_on

After reboot, I even can't see the grub screen, there is only a cursor
keep ticking.
I tried to boot from livecd and installgrub of the both stage1 and
stage2 files in the CD again.
I also tried to updategrub after import the rpool. But all my effort
took no effect.
I still can't see the grub screen.

Any suggestions are really appreciated!

Thanks,
-Aubrey