kubuntu external usb hard-drive install

[Avinash Sridhar]

hi,
I sucessfully managed to install the latest kubuntu on my external usb
drive. My laptop a Dell inspiron 1100 has the ability to boot via
external storage. Installation all went fine and at the boot loader
bit i installed grub on to the MBR of my usb drive and that went fine
too. now when i restart my laptop and boot via usb i get the new grub
screen with the new ubuntu kernel entries. Im using the hoary-install
iso and the kernel is 2.6.10. when it boots up it finds the binary
vmlinuz file as well the initrd file and then says "Starting Ubuntu"
and the next line it fails on "pivot_root : no such file or directory"
" cannot open dev/console" and then there is a kernel panic. Ive tried
to google for it and somewhere i did read on a mailing list that u
have to edit the /sbin/init file to change the dev/console to
/dev/console, but the init file is an ELF format and I dont know/think
of a way of editing that at the appropriate line. Ive managed to get
it boot upto the level of kernel panic, has anyone else managed to get
further or know what Im doing wrong. Im sorry if this is similar to
other posts, if it is i would appreciate someone point me in the right
direction.

Thanks in advance