I am wanting to install Linux Ubuntu 6.10 on my Seagate 100gb usb hdd, and...it's not letting me do it.

I boot from the LiveCD, and use Gnome Partitioning Editor to create my partitions, 8 gig for the ext3 filesystem, and 2 gig for the Linux Swap. Now when it goes to install, it will get to about 15% or so, then error out saying the ext3 filesystem can't be wrote. I KNOW I have it partitioned correctly, and so I was wondering if anyone here has done it, or would know how to make this work. I do not want to dual boot my primary hdd, I want it on the external, so I can boot Linux off any computer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Booting Linux off of any computer is best done with what you already have: a LiveCD. I don't know if I would recommend using a portable hard drive for that purpose.

That said, maybe try partitioning the drive outside of the install wizard. Pop open parted (apt-get qtparted if you want a gui) and partition before you go through the install process.

Otherwise, maybe that portion of your CDR is corrupt. Other than that, I got nothin.

mkswap /dev/sdb2 :) Or whatever the disk device of the swap partition is.

As an update, Ubuntu 6.10 is installed, and I have to say..I fucking love Linux. Thanks for the help.