[ltp] External USB boot, GRUB freezes, done this before, but new Fedora giving problems

[Nate]

Hello,

I want to boot Fedora Core 4 from my external usb hard drive. I have 
instructions from http://simonf.com/usb/ and 
http://benusa.com/linux/boot.htm and between the two of them I thought I 
did everything except 1 thing correctly, but I hoped to see symptoms 
change so that I could know the problem. Here is what I did:

The last distro I had working on the external usb was FC2 (no doubt 
because the instructions were for this distro). I updated to FC3. When 
booting, after BIOS it says "GRUB".

So, I upgrade to FC4. I perform the upgrade. It gives me some weird 
error at the end of the install and so I decide to instead do a clean 
install. I type: linux expert at the CD1 boot screen because I hear that 
is necessary to allow install to usb. Install proceeds fine. Notes I took:

LVM Volume Groups
    VolGroup00
       LogVol00   /                     ext3            29GB
       LogVol01                        swap            1GB
/dev/sda
    /dev/sda1      /boot               ext3          102MB
    /dev/sda2      VolGroup00    LVM PV   30GB
    /dev/sda3      /vfat                  vfat            122GB

I also chose install Boot Loader to first sector of boot partition.

Next, I rebooted and it said "GRUB" and froze there. These are the steps 
I took to follow the instructions:

Booted rescue disk, mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sysimage/boot, chroot 
/mnt/sysimage.
Copied /boot/initrd_xxx.img to /tmp/initrd.gz, Gunzip initrd.gz.
cd /tmp.
cpio -i < /tmp/initrd  (this is alternative to mounting initrd as a 
loopback device, which fails. I do not understand cpio step)
Next I went to the benusa.com intstructions and followed the edits to 
linuxrc. The LVM stuff is new since FC2, and is not mentioned in the 
instructions. I did my best to figure out where to add stuff. Here is 
the new linuxrc:

http://volvosmith.net/linux/init

Then I copied the kernel modules for kernel 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
I did ldd /bin/sleep and ldd /sbin/sfdisk. I tried to copy all libraries 
to /lib of the initrd. I could not find linux-gate.so.1 for both 
libraries. I hoped this would yield some error on boot that I could fix 
later.
I copied sleep and sfdisk to the initrd.
I went to /tmp and did "find . | cpio -c -o | gzip -9 > /boot/usbinitrd.img"
Then I copied usbinitrd.img to /boot/usbinitrd.gz

Finally I edited grub.conf and replaced initrd * with my usbinitrd.img

After that I rebooted and still got "GRUB _" with a blinking cursor. 
What can I do to fix this, or at least determine what the hang up spot is?

Thanks,
Nathan