[GTALUG] Booting Jessie from USB

[Giles Orr]

I have an Acer C720 Chromebook with Bodhi Linux installed.  I wanted
to test Debian Jessie on the machine, so I physically removed the SSD
and plugged in a 32GB USB stick (SanDisk Cruzer Ultra Fit, USB3).  I
installed Jessie on it (on an ext4 partition), and added a 5GB or so
vfat partition on the end.  When I attempt to boot from the USB stick,
GRUB comes up and works fine, but things go sideways after that.  Here
are some of the errors that I've copied ("..." indicates dropped
lines, mostly duplications):

     -----

usb 1-4: string descriptor 0 malformed (err = -61), defaulting to 0x0409
...
usb 2-1: device not accepting address 3, error -62 [repeated several
times with different numbers]
...
xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: Command completion event does not match command
...
Gave up waiting for root device.  Common problems:
 - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
   - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
   - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
 - Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT!  /dev/disk/by-uuid/44621e45-2a15-4637-d0b8-282b63c8194b does not exist.
Dropping to a shell!
modprobe: module ehci-orion not found in modules.dep
...
(initramfs)

     -----

I've got another laptop that runs permanently off a USB stick.  Yes, I
know it's a bad idea: the point is, it can be done - and in this
instance it's meant as a temporary measure, a test of Jessie on this
machine.  I've checked the UUID of the partition in another machine,
and it's set correctly.  I tinkered with the GRUB kernel command line
arguments: Debian had inserted a number of "hints" (sorry, haven't
copied this part out) referring to which partition to boot from.  I
think they said "hd1,msdos1" and I changed them all (three?) to
"hd0,msdos1" which caused the boot process to last longer and look
more promising, but it again eventually failed out not being able to
find itself.  The Chromebook has two USB ports, one USB2 and one USB3:
the failure is the same (or very similar) booting from both.

My first reaction has been that something about the USB stick itself
is too new - but Linux mounts it fine and installed to it okay.  The
"ehci-orion" doesn't make much sense: "Orion" seems to be an ARM
chipset, and the Chromebook has an Intel Celeron 2955U in it.

Any help appreciated.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com