Install Solus on external drive (SSD)

xonus

Hello community!
There are questions about the installation of the operating system
We have an ssd (external), and an internal ssd.
The internal one has Solus OS (uefi), but I would like to install a second Solus OS, for tests, on the external ssd.
Now the questions 🙂
For ease of reference, the external ssd is 240gb, the internal one is 1TB

When I try to boot to UEFI and install the system on the external ssd(240GB), the installer won't let me install the bootloader on the external ssd(240GB) so I can work with it outside my pc.
I can install in legacy mode, and I was able to install solus to the external drive(240), and it gives me the bootloader to the external drive, however I don't understand what I lost in this case?
What was affected by my decision?
Do I understand correctly that if I install in uefi then I can't boot from my external ssd(240GB) without the internal(1TB)?
I would be happy to read about it, but I haven't found an answer to my question yet

riffer

Can you install the external drive internally, install the os then switch it back? I know I could boot from an external on another distro, forget which one, but the os had originally been installed while the drive was in my computer and I was using an enclosure.

xonus

riffer yup, of course, but i wanna know how without removing ssd install on other)

tomscharbach

xonus Of course I can install the system without the ssd internal, but I wonder why it happens this way and not otherwise

I don't know. It just does. I assume that it has something to do with the way Solus's Linux Boot Manager handles two installations of an identical OS, but that is just guessing.

By the way, riffer's method is a lot simpler, assuming that your internal Solus drive is an SSD rather than an M.2. I've done that, too, and it works just fine. It doesn't make any difference whether the external (portable) drive is internal or external when you install, so long as it is the only available target drive.

The key is to have the external (portable) drive the only drive available as a target when installing. As I understand it, that is the norm for installing Linux on an external hard drive, although it might not be absolutely necessary.

If you want a really simple method of building a test environment, install Solus as a Gnome Boxes or Virtual Box VM on your primary Solus build. Do that, and you can have a test environment for each of the Solus DE's, no fuss, no muss.

tomscharbach

I run an internal/external setup and it works, but I had to remove the internal SSD before installing on the external SSD.

What you are doing, in a nutshell, is creating a portable Solus installation on the external drive. I boot into th external drive on various computers (including my Solus computers) as a portable Solus installation as needed. All I have to do it plug it in and boot the drive via the BIOS boot menu (F12 on my Dell computers).

If you can remove the internal SSD, these are the steps:

(1) Remove the internal SSD (the one on which Solus is currently installed with UEFI) from the computer.
(2) Plug in the external SSD.
(3) Boot from your installation Live USB.
(4) Because the external SSD is the only drive available at this point, the Live USB should recognize the external SSD as a target drive.
(5) Install Solus on the external SSD using a USB as your installer.
(6) Put the internal SSD back into the computer. When the external drive is plugged into a USB port, the computer BIOS will recognize the external drive as a bootable drive, just as it does a bootable USB drive.

At this point, you will have two Solus instances installed, one on the internal drive and one on the external (portable) drive, each drive having a distinct UEFI boot partition and UEFI boot loader.

You will need to use the BIOS boot menu (F12 on Dell computers, maybe something different on yours) to access the drives on startup when the external (portable) drive is plugged in. Linux Boot Manager, which controls the internal drive, should be the first boot loader in the BIOS boot menu, and the boot loader controlling the external drive should be the second boot loader in the BIOS menu. The boot loader for the internal (primary) drive is identified as "Linux Boot Manager" and the boot loader for the external drive (portable) is identified by drive identification -- e.g. PNY1311-171722098 in my case.

xonus

tomscharbach Of course I can install the system without the ssd internal, but I wonder why it happens this way and not otherwise 🙂

murbert

xonus The flag on your EFI system partition on your internal SSD is set to boot/esp by default. This is the partition used by the OS to boot up. The installation on the external SSD (or a second internal drive should you choose to install there) will want to use this partition for it's boot partition. You do not want multiple OSes using 1 boot partition. In GParted, right click the EFI system partition, choose manage flags and set it to msftdata. The new install will now make it's own EFI system partition. You should get the option as to which drive it goes on, choose the external

xonus

tomscharbach I found a way in which you can install the system in uefi without problems and removing the internal drive!
To do this you have to mark with the ESP flag the disk on which the system will be installed, then go to the installation menu and install the system as usual, the bootloader will now automatically be on the new disk.
I checked, the disks are identical, I mean the same grub and the system starts.
I don't know how bad this method is but it works)

xonus

I found a way in which you can install the system in uefi without problems and removing the internal drive!
To do this you have to mark with the ESP flag the disk on which the system will be installed, then go to the installation menu and install the system as usual, the bootloader will now automatically be on the new disk.
I checked, the disks are identical, I mean the same grub and the system starts.
I don't know how bad this method is but it works)

tomscharbach

xonus I'm glad you found a solution that works for you.

brent

xonus I found a way in which you can install the system in uefi without problems and removing the internal drive! To do this you have to mark with the ESP flag the disk on which the system will be installed, then go to the installation menu and install the system as usual, the bootloader will now automatically be on the new disk.
I checked, the disks are identical, I mean the same grub and the system starts. I don't know how bad this method is but it works)

I think you lucked out. The old change-the-flag-in-gedit thing never works for me but "the disks are identical" might have had something to do with it.
I ran Solus external on a LaCie HDD for a while but that's where I installed it...had Win7 on the internall HDD...but Solus always booted first and I can't take responsibility for it...maybe I lucked out too by accident.

xonus

brent when i say about "the disks are identical" I meant that the installation was successful and the partitions are the same as on a normal ssd, that is, no dead partitions or any errors)

xonus

brent hi!
so, i update my instruction 🙂

Leave the internal ssd and connect the external one
Booting from a bootable flash drive
open gparted and make the following parameters from the external ssd
Partition table - GPT
Format - fat32 (full disk)
Flags - esp, boot
Install OS
Select external drive
Install as usual and create a bootloader on it

zmaint

I've not tried with Solus yet, but I was able to get a couple other distros (Kubuntu and Salient) working by completely unplugging all internal drives, plugging in only the external drive enclosure, then booting the install and running it as normal. Since it's the only drive detected, had no issues with it correctly installing.

tomscharbach

zmaint I've not tried with Solus yet, but I was able to get a couple other distros (Kubuntu and Salient) working by completely unplugging all internal drives, plugging in only the external drive enclosure, then booting the install and running it as normal. Since it's the only drive detected, had no issues with it correctly installing.

The method works with Solus, and the resulting external drive is plug and play at the BIOS/UEFI boot menu level so it will boot on any computer.

brent

xonus when i say about "the disks are identical" I meant that the installation was successful and the partitions are the same as on a normal ssd, that is, no dead partitions or any errors)

that's what I thought you meant. all good.

"Leave the internal ssd and connect the external one
Booting from a bootable flash drive
open gparted and make the following parameters from the external ssd
Partition table - GPT
Format - fat32 (full disk)
Flags - esp, boot
Install OS
Select external drive
Install as usual and create a bootloader on it"

Known herein as a "modified @tomscharbach " 😉

elfprince

"Leave the internal ssd..." What do you mean?

tomscharbach

elfprince "Leave the internal ssd..." What do you mean?

I think that it is a reference to a common method of creating a portable drive that involves removing/unplugging internal OS bootable drives before installing onto the portable drive, ensuring that the portable drive is the only available target drive (see comments by me, riffer and zmaint).

Xonus elected not to use that method, but instead left the internal OS drive active in the computer (rather than removing/unplugging), setting/resetting efi flags on the internal and portable drives as needed to set up the portable drive.

Two different routes to the desired result. If it worked, it worked.

xonus

tomscharbach yeah, removing is a better word 🙂