Knoppix Tips and Tricks

cosog writes "Robert Storey writes in a thorough review about Knoppix: 'Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer, a clever way to ensure that the hardware will be Linux compatible before you purchase it.' His article discusses things like: booting, rescuing, installing on HDD, tips'n'tricks, etc... A nice read for everyone interested in Linux (and Knoppix in particular ;)."

Comments

Knoppix

[Cowclops]

Knoppix + DD = ultimate way to mirror a drive from one to the other. Screw norton ghost.

Re:Knoppix

[Dark Lord Seth]

Really? DD is far slower because it makes exact copies down to the bits. Norton Ghost works by cloning files instead. Instead, think of dump + gzip instead of dd. Insert some netcat for networking and presto, one central server holding default installs for all OSes you want. Probably works nice with network booting, then selecting a configuration, start cloning and then reboot into a brand-spanking new & fresh OS installation.

Re:Knoppix

[KrispyKringle]

Norton ghost does so much more than this. Hate to say it, but I've spent plenty of time looking for Ghost replacements, and found none. There are a few (g4u, for example) which do networked dd-style copying, or partimage, which can actually read a partition table but can't deal with NTFS, but none that have the capabilities Ghost has for copying Windows NT/2K/XP installations (I use Ghost in deploying donated computers to schools and community centers; we don't feel Linux is managable for the target users).

See, if you do DD, it works if all the hard drives are the same size. But if you want to make an image that will last a while, on multiple machines, you have to make it match the smallest drive (since dd simply copies the content and doesn't rewrite the partition table). So if you make it, say, 2GB, you throw away a lot of space on bigger drives. And like I said, partimage can't write NTFS properly.

Not to mention Ghostwalker, which changes the machine's hostname and rewrites the SID's (I think that's what they're called; I rarely use Windows anymore) on the files so that they are unique and secure.

Re:Knoppix

[BrookHarty]

Ghost supports EXT2 and EXT3, and if you use sector copy, you can use ReiserFS/UFS/HFS/etc.

Personally, I use Barts Boot cdrom, and ghost over tcp/ip to backup servers/workstations and laptops. I find ghost works great to backup a system that doesnt have an OS or a Partition over the network. Plus I can read .gho files with ghost explorer, incase I need a file off a backup.

If ghost worked under winex or dosemu, then I'd run it under knoppix, but for now, Barts Cdrom does the job.

Re:Knoppix

[Cthefuture]

That has to be one of the dumbest comments ever.

Ghost does a hell of a lot more than what DD can handle.

Is every single drive you use or own the same size? You never upgrade or something?

+4 informative?? Morons, the lot of you.

Re:Knoppix

[fgb055639]

have you ever tried Mondo? www.mondorescue.org Handles all your needs...

Re:Knoppix

[Geek of Tech]

You mean Dungeons and Dragons is a system administration tool also?! Dang! Just when I thought I knew something.... Good thing slashdot is here to correct that....

Oww, you mean the command dd..... right.... I knew that....

Re:Knoppix

[corian]

Not to mention Ghostwalker, which changes the machine's hostname and rewrites the SID's (I think that's what they're called; I rarely use Windows anymore) on the files so that they are unique and secure.

Happily, there is also free software to do the same thing.

Knoppix + DD (or, as I did it, the Red Hat Install CD recovery mode + DD) has its uses -- if, as you said, the disk is the same. Not ideal for corporate use (unless you're really careful about giving everyone exactly the same PC model). I found it perfect when receiving a repacement laptop (exactly the same model) to which I needed to directly transfer the contents a dual-boot setup. It's nice that, for a one-time use, you can find capable tools for free. Obviously, that doesn't mean the professional utilites perform the same task.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Ghost does several other things, and is a bit more space-efficient. Ghost parses filesystem structures and can restore to drives of different sizes.
That said, there does exist a good free ghost-like tool or two for linux, which actually parse common linux filesystems:partimage even has experimental NTFS support!

Re:Knoppix

[corian]

Happily, there is also free software to do the same thing.

...which I might have correctly linked to, had I previewed my post.

New SID

Re:Knoppix

[StarCat76]

DD is far slower because it makes exact copies down to the bits. Norton Ghost works by cloning files instead.

I must be missing something huge here. How can you copy files without copying the bits that make them up?

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I use dd, from tomsrtbt or BootE linux on a floppy, then I use ext2resize to fill it out to the new partition. Mostly, this works, but as expected, involves some moving around of HDDs, and then later the /etc/fstab might need to be adjusted. Saves a lot of time, especially with Debian. I'm never going to install Debian from scratch again. I have dialup, and apt-get install kde takes a while, but works just fine.

Re:Knoppix

[DJStealth]

I've had problems with norton ghost at the office, eventually I found a program called TrueImage by a company called Acronis.

It automatically detected the network and managed to restore partitions into partitions of different sizes.

The only downside was that it was not able to save/restore partition images from SMB shares with longer than 12 characters, but that could be worked around easily.

Re:Knoppix

[DJStealth]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that it worked well with moving my EXT3 partition to a new computer as well as doing the same thing with a ReiserFS partition on one of my labmates machines.

Re:Knoppix

[0x1337]

See, not all of us are corporate pointy-haired "IT professionals" or people with enough bucks to shell out for software that I can easily replace with (free) tools that have been around for 20 years. If I want to "clone" a disk - I 1) put both in the same computer 2) partition the disk 3) "cp -a" the entire friggin root directory to the new disk. 4) run LILO on the new disk 5)I'ma fucking done. 6)... 7) Profit! Guess what buddy - if the original disk is 2GB, and the new disk is 2TB - I still win. BTW - DD _is_ useful, say to make an image backup of your small /boot or root partition. I'll have you notice that /opt, /usr and /home don't belong on the root partition - thus DD'in if=/dev/sda1 of=root.sda1, bzip2'ing it and writing it that to a CDR is a painless operation.

Re:Knoppix

[DJStealth]

DD will copy the data in the unused space on the HD, not just the data within the files. (the advantage to this is that you can make exact copies, reguardless of what filesystem, partition type, etc.. the downside is that you cannot restore the image to a different sized partition later)

Ghost will read file by file and write to the new disk. (advantages is that you can resize partitions, it'll be faster because it copies less data; disadvantage: it must support the file system; it may miss hidden/meta data you want copied)

Re:Knoppix

[Clover_Kicker]

dd copies the entire partition bit by bit. If you've got empty space on that partition, dd copies that empty space bit by bit.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that fucking stupid? dd does a bit-level copy. If you have two different sized partitions, you're kind of fucked, right? File copying DOES copy at the bit-level, but on a per-file basis, not on a per-partition (or device) basis.

Re:Knoppix

[Saint Stephen]

There's a solution called "Windows PE" (Windows Preexecution Environment), part of the "OEM Preinstallation Toolkit" specifically designed for the Dells and Compaqs of the world to preinstall the OS on the factory floor. I don't think it's publicly available. It is especially designed to boot from Readonly media, and it's supported.

Re:Knoppix

[timeOday]

So if you make it, say, 2GB, you throw away a lot of space on bigger drives. And like I said, partimage can't write NTFS properly.

I had good luck with ntfsresize making room for linux on a new laptop preinstalled with NTFS.

Another trick for dd is to zero out the empty space on the disk before copying - that way gzip can easily shrink the unused space to almost nothing. (To empty out the free space simply append zeroes to a file until the disk is full and you get a write error).

Still I can't say I use DD for everything - just for Windows. Good old tar works great for my linux systems.

As a sidenote, I think it's atrocious that Windows doesn't even come with a workable backup mechanism. Their backup tool doesn't even back up the OS! (Hence the unfortunate need for something like Ghost). It's unpardonably greedy to sacrifice such basic functionality in the vain hope of some tiny reduction in piracy.

Re:Knoppix

[aking137]

Just FYI: I used Partimage on a 130-computer school network, where all machines were NTFS and ran either Windows NT or 2000, and it was always successful. so I recommend giving it a go. Kernel was my own compiled 2.4.18. 2.6.0 is stable write support too. Mail me if I can help.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally from a forensics standpoint I would rather get the "exact" copy instead of one that is "close". There are plenty of ways to hide data on drives already and if I don't have an exact drive image the probability that I might overlook something increase drastically. Am I giving too much credit to computer criminals? I personally doubt it.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

with enough bucks to shell out for software

Uhhh... Say, you ever heard about illegal copies? Whoever pays for a program he's only going to use every 2 years (when it will be outdated because of new filesystems etc. anyway) is a complete idiot.

Re:Knoppix

[john_smith_45678]

Your hard drive has just crashed. Roll saving throw...

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

And just how many of us geeks are backing up our patitions for forensic purposes?

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

DD is far slower because it makes exact copies down to the bits.

If you specify a larger block size dd goes much faster:

$dd bs=1024 if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc

I heard you should try to have the two hard drives on separate IDE channels for best performance.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just you geeks read Slashdot. Us forensics wonks do also!

dd for *nix but all we need for hardened slashdot criminals is encase, it does Windows and that is all you ACs out there use!

Re:Knoppix

[Guppy06]

"You mean Dungeons and Dragons is a system administration tool also?!"

I can see the list of user rights now...

• has Mountain Dew
• has Cheetos
• can cast a spell
• • can cast "Magic Missile"
  • has materials for "Morton Kiden's Magical Watchdog"
  • has so totally cast "Morton Kiden's Magical Watchdog"

is in the room

• has ogre-slaying knife (+9)

is at the pub

• is getting drunk
• • gets to do girls at pub

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

but everyone in business has heard of the BSA and has at least one disgruntled ex-employee! Even if YOU don't have a moral rudder, it doesn't mean that we all are as corrupt as you.

And you windows wonks dare say that the Linux Community doesn't care for copyright!

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually a home-made XP/2003 Knoppix-style CD booter called BartPE. It's great because it can access NTFS volumes to both read and write, plus the Windows interface is more familiar and easier to use for many Windows sysadmins.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's good that you have a moral rudder and I don't. That way, I can do what I want while you suffer.

Re:Knoppix

[great throwdini]

Hmmm... what to think of a post scored as +3 Funny that simply summarizes a bit by the Dead Alewives without giving credit where credit is due?

Funny. Sad. Whatever. Listen to the original routine should you be so inclined.

Re:Knoppix

[Grandmaster Mort]

Jesus saves!...and takes half damage!

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

There really should be a moderation for plagiarism. It's funny how some people are so fucking desperate and unimaginative.

Re:Knoppix

[Grandmaster Mort]

It's Mordenkainen, damn it! Don't associate my name with that old crusty crackpot wizard!

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I also had success with Partimage on NTFS partitions but only after a defrag of the NTFS partition before making the image. Before the defrag, a partimage clone failed miserably which ended up in Windows XP booting, and finding errors in every file and all kinds of files were missing when it eventually did boot. Somehow defragging the partition before making the image fixed that completely.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

brand-spanking new
Please don't use the word "spanking" in a post - it distracts Taco for several hours.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

"See, if you do DD, it works if all the hard drives are the same size. But if you want to make an image that will last a while, on multiple machines, you have to make it match the smallest drive (since dd simply copies the content and doesn't rewrite the partition table). So if you make it, say, 2GB, you throw away a lot of space on bigger drives. And like I said, partimage can't write NTFS properly. "

Has anyone here ever hear od PARTIMAGE

Ghost is a wimpy frale technology that is as easy broken as a NTFS partion with windows XP on it after 6 months of regular use..

with knoppix I can have a client boot there pC play a movie in the background while I reimage there computer back to they way it was when we sold them the computer from the start. (by leaving a image of it on the second partion of course)

or let them do what ever.. (long as there system is fairly new it should bee fine

frig partimage handles ntfs nicely the frist few versions I tryed failed miserably with it. I know norton ghost does it now. why pay when partimage is free and for you people who fear the shell yes there is a Gui version)

Partimage also has a server mode so you can do a whole network of systems.. and its definatly not a wimp..

I personaly think you spend a moment to learn what everything does in partimage you would be pretty suprised.

Re:Knoppix

[kelnos]

gets to do girls at pub

please, this is slashdot. ^_~

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to give MondoRescue a try. I believe the 1.7 tree supports NTFS.

From the "About" page:

Mondo is comprehensive. Mondo supports LVM, RAID, ext2, ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, VFAT, and can support additional filesystems easily: just e-mail the mailing list with your request. It supports adjustments in disk geometry, including migration from non-RAID to RAID. Mondo runs on all major Linux distributions and is getting better all the time. You may even use it to backup non-Linux partitions, such as NTFS.

http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/

Re:Knoppix

[Chess_the_cat]

Strange that once you had figured out what dd actually meant you still decided to post despite the embarrassment it would cause you.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I use partimage with Knoppix at least once a week on NTFS drives for cloning/restoring and it works fine. Basically, if you can create an image from an NTFS partition, you'll be able to restore it. I just ignore the warning that "NTFS support is experimental". I've never had any problems in that regard.

My only beef with partimage is, as mentioned with, the lack resizing the image to fit different size drives. And a few times I've had to go in and set the bootable (?) flag of the NTFS partition. I use qtparted for that -- also using knoppix. qtparted is a PartitionMagic clone, which also works quite well. Overall, I've found knoppix+partimage to be better than ghost because of the large of hardware that knoppix variety supports. Sometimes I use knoppix+partimage to save/restore using a external USB drive, other times I mount a Windows server using Samba. It works great!

Oh... btw...

Re:Knoppix

[KrispyKringle]

Wow, sweet. I didn't know 2.6 brought stable write support, but I didn't even try NTFS write from 2.4. I figured if I couldn't trust it...

But if it works, sweet! Thanks again.

Re:Knoppix

[redback]

Ghostwalker is not nessacaray, there is a microsoft tool called SysPrep that does this for you.

You run it on a machine to reset the name and SID's, then on next boot it asks you for a machine name and recreates the SID's.

So sysprep, ghost, startup and put in name and your done.

Re:Knoppix

[KrispyKringle]

Yes, I have heard of Partimage. I mentioned it in my original post.

Since it uses the Linux kernel NTFS support, it's NTFS support is presumably as unstable as that in the Linux kernel (which claims to be quite immature). I didn't test it in deployment, but I didn't figure it was worth it. Some previous poster told me it worked for him, though.

And he told it to me without being an ass about it. Learn some respect. Read the post before commenting, please.

Re:Knoppix

[0x1337]

roflmao... lol ok... fair enough... but - the effort of warezing a program, so useless that I can replicate its functionality with already existing free tools (or by writing my own), isn't worth it.

Re:Knoppix

[thegreat682]

Porno collection found, roll 12 or better to collect

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I ordered a copy of windows XP Pro OEM from Newegg, and it came with this preinstallation toolkit CD. I ran it for chuckles and it seemed to boot a version of XP, do some sort of autodetection and then drop you off at a command prompt in a window.

There seems to be more info at www.microsoft.com/oem, but it requires registration and I was starting to get creeped out as is.

Re:Knoppix

[Saint Stephen]

That's WinPE. It runs the GDI subsystem in VGA (non-accelerated mode only). There aren't many DLLs, so most graphical apps won't run: but Notepad will, with funny looking widgets.

It's not truly a command-line O/S: GDI32 still runs, with mouse and all: but it's a step towards that.

It's an outcrop of Microsoft's "server applicance" initaitives; you can pick and choose subpieces of windows. It's a wierd bird.

Re:Knoppix

[NoData]

Oh man. Thanks for that link. Hilarious. Holy crap, that bit could've been cribbed right from any one my Saturday nights freshman year of high school. (Alas!)

And goddamnit, I did cast Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound. Stupid DM.

Re:Knoppix

[elvisior]

sdd in my experience is much faster than dd .. and comparable to older versions of ghost in terms of speed..

http://freshmeat.net/projects/sdd/?topic_id=19%2 C1 38%2C150%2C253%2C861

Re:Knoppix

[Total_Wimp]

"Windows PE... ...I don't think it's publicly available."

I don't know exactly how MS licenses this particular product, but the WinPE disks are included with the Volume Licensing media kits if you happen to be on a VL license plan(we are at work).

I haven't specifically seen whether MSDN kits include it, but most VL media stuff is also available to MSDN subscribers so that would also be a good place to check.

TW

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Bart's PE Builder - Build your own Bart Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable CD/DVD

Re:Knoppix

[Slack3r78]

As another poster already noted, the official Windows PE is rather spartan and fairly difficult to get much done with. If you need something like this, check out Bart's PE Builder. Awesome, awesome piece of software - it basically lets you build an XP equivalent of Knoppix adding in programs like Ghost, Nero, McAffee AV as plugins. I make a point to keep a copy around the shop - you'd be amazed how many customers problems are solved with a quick boot into a Bart's PE disc and AV + Adaware scan.

Re:Knoppix

[ron_ivi]

"cp /dev/hda /dev/hdc" will do as well.

(Yes, copying the raw device, not a mounted filesystem).

Re:Knoppix

[nvrrobx]

Norton Ghost also handles varying partition sizes, something that dd does not. Is your new drive not exactly the same size as your old one? Oops, you're screwed.

I popped an 80 gig drive in my mom's PC over Christmas, ran Ghost, duplicated her 45 gig drive over to it in 12 minutes, and she was back online. Beat that time with dd, and assure the new partition table uses the entire disk.

Re:Knoppix

[OrangeSpyderMan]

"cp /dev/hda /dev/hdc" will do as well.

Have you ever actually used that command? Did it work? Start with man cp and see where you went wrong. I think you might want to look at commands that read the contents of a file and then try and redirect the output to another file.

Re:Knoppix

[Wolfrider]

> the downside is that you cannot restore the image to a different sized partition later

--I found out that you can't restore Partimage backups to a smaller-sized partition either. :( They really should correct that, then Ghost would be prety much completely obsolete.

Re:Knoppix

[TheScienceKid]

What's really gonna bake your noodle is can you write to anything other than a pre-existing file or change the size of a file? I'm afraid your noodle's cooked.... because it doesn't. To quote linux-2.6.0-test11/fs/Kconfig .... config NTFS_RW bool "NTFS write support" depends on NTFS_FS help This enables the partial, but safe, write support in the NTFS driver. The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without changing the file length. No file or directory creation, deletion or renaming is possible. Note only non-resident files can be written to so you may find that some very small files ( It is perfectly safe to say N here.

Re:Knoppix

[Guppy06]

"Hmmm... what to think of a post scored as +3 Funny that simply summarizes a bit by the Dead Alewives without giving credit where credit is due?"

1. It wouldn't have gotten moderated up if nobody recognized what it was from
2. You must be a busy guy, making sure that each and ever reference to The Simpsons, Star Wars, et al are all properly documented
3. The Dead Alewives wouldn't have to worry about making sure their name was attached to this if they were able to do something else that was as funny as this particular bit

Re:Knoppix

[Ed Avis]

Huh? How do you 'clone files' except by 'making exact copies down to the bits'? If the filesystem has lots of free space then it will be quicker to copy just the files, but then you're not getting an exact copy of the filesystem (including any weird licence managers that lurk in strange places).

dump + gzip? Is there a 'dump' command for Windows?

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Available via pricewatch on the OPK CD for about ten bucks.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not necessarily true, as partimage doesn't need to deal with changing files, just archiving them, the filesystem is "on ice". Linux's main instability is in changing file sizes on a live mounted filesystem, everything else is just gweechee.

Re:Knoppix

[irgu]

• Since it uses the Linux kernel NTFS support

Partimage doesn't use the NTFS kernel driver. It's a user space NTFS implementation based on the publicly available NTFS information.

• it's NTFS support is presumably as unstable as that in the Linux kernel (which claims to be quite immature). I didn't test it in deployment, but I didn't figure it was worth it. Some previous poster told me it worked for him, though.

There are at least 4 different NTFS implementations with different functionality, quality and license for Linux. Which one are you talking about?

• And he told it to me without being an ass about it. Learn some respect. Read the post before commenting, please.

It's better to check the facts ... ooops apparently there is even a NTFS "ghost" for Linux there, listed as STABLE and called ntfsclone.

Re:Knoppix

[gertsenl]

It's actually Mordenkainen's. It's a 5th level Conjuration/Summoning, according to the 1st edition AD&D player's handbook, and I really ought to be shot for looking it up and posting.

Re:Knoppix

[druxton]

I use Ghost in deploying donated computers to schools and community centers
How do you get around the per-workstation licensing requirements? That would amount to a hefty chunk of change if you are doing significant numbers.

Re:Knoppix

[zcat_NZ]

I think the point was that dd copies -everything-

If you have a 3G windows install on a 120G drive, ghost is going to copy 3G of files and boot sector. dd is going to copy 3G of files and 117G of freshly formatted unused filesystem.

And it breaks if you're not copying to an identical drive. Copying from a 120G Segate to a 120G Western Digital is almost certain to fail, because they won't have exactly the same CHS or sector count.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

..As should whoever moderated this as "informative"... :)

Re:Knoppix

[ron_ivi]

Yes, and Yes.
Have you tried it? :-)

What would you expect to happen? (assuming you have large file support)

Other people on beowulf.org also report successes.

"Note that 'dd' is pretty much the same as
cp /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb1 The reason old timers recommend 'dd' is a long-forgotten semantic bug in old UNIX systems that could be worked around by reading only whole blocks from raw devices. This has now turned into superstition."

Re:Knoppix

[TwinkieStix]

Did you do a custom knoppix compile to 2.6 and get partimage working? If so, can you torrent the iso? I would LOVE to have NTFS write knoppix and partimage, but I'm to lame to compile my own, especially if somebody did it already. Or, can I e-mail you an ftp server (1.5 Mbit of corse) to send it so I can torrent it for everybody?

Re:Knoppix

[OrangeSpyderMan]

OK, OK, OK. I'm standing corrected. Guess I'm more of a superstitious person than I'd willingly let on. Hit my previous post with "-1, Superstition", cos I just tried it on one of the test machines here (Debian, 2.4.23) kernel, and as this person points out it all just looks perfect. Well, I'll be off to whip myself with linux kernel docs 13 times while walking under a ladder :-D My apolgies.

Re:Knoppix

[KrispyKringle]

Speaking of facts:

2.3 I need a write support for NTFS. It exists in kernel-2.4 , but it's not enabled in partimage boot disk. How can I use it ?

NTFS write support, as UFS write support are dangerous and supported only by experimental drivers. It can damage partitions, and corrupt data. That's why it's not enabled in partimage-bootdisk. Users who weren't aware of this problem could lose their data if the support was enabled.

If you need the write support, you will have to use another boot disk. Please , have a look at the question in this FAQ which explains how to build your own boot disk. --Partimage FAQ

Furthermore, both the Old and New drivers listed on Linux-NTFS are read-only (or can only overwrite existing files), which is hardly complete NTFS support. And I can't tell from the documentation if ntfsclone has the ability to resize a partition while imaging. It doesn't sound like it does, since it only copies, and does not alter the partition table.

Thanks for the input, though. And I totally agree with your comment about checking facts.

Re:Knoppix

[rifter]

"gets to do girls at pub "

please, this is slashdot. ^_~

Yes, and the reference was to a fantasy role-playing game in which geeks pretend to be able to do many things they wish they could do but never will. Your point was what, again?

Re:Knoppix

[shaitand]

yes, that is why you partition the destination drive, move contents via tar to partition on the new drive. Tada, you have not only cloned the drive, you have only copied all the data AND defragged simultaneously (something ghost does not do, you'd think it does but if you check the drive after, you'll find you were wrong).

If your concerned about NTFS write problems, don't be, they are mostly a myth and have been for some time. NTFS write is long past the stage of being "experimental" just out of pure stubborness, besides that it's not like you've lost anything but 10mins if the write fails and you can play with it where that's not a killer until you've done it enough to know it's not an issue.

If your concerned about needing lilo or grub because it's a linux drive, don't be. Either one can be loaded into the MBR of the new drive allowing it to be bootable. If it's windows, definately don't be concerned, losing the disk signiture isn't going to hurt anything and 9x versions have a blank mbr (the install blanks the MBR to ensure it's contents won't interfere, that's why it kills lilo/grub, not because it actually uses the MBR for something). XP and 2K bootloaders don't load from the mbr.

If you are going to an identical disk (and you often are when imaging) you can simply dd the mbr and partition table and then tar the rest.

Re:Knoppix

[shaitand]

WARNING THIS IS A TROLL, SORT OF ;)

If I used debian I wouldn't want to ever install again either ;)

Re:Knoppix

[g4sy]

Really..... dd is great BECAUSE is copies the bits bit by bit. That is it's greatest power, the fact that it totally arranges you files alligned and "defragged". If you want to do OS imaging, using netrom or the like, do it with dd.

Re:Knoppix

[l1nuxpunk]

If you read NuklearPower, then you'll like the flash version they did of it. http://www.cybermoonstudios.com/8bitDandD.html

Re:Knoppix

[soulsteal]

Jesus saves! Every one else within a 10' radius takes fireball damage.

Re:Knoppix

[ron_ivi]

Interestingly, you're kinda right for flash drives (those USB keychain drives)

For flash drives you're much better off (faster and the drive will last longer) using 'dd' with a block size (bs=32k) that matches the device than 'cp'. The reason is that internally some of those have very large (32k) block sizes, so 'cp' (with a small block size of a few k) is actually doing read-modify-write's instead of just writes.

One thing I'm curious about, though, is what was that bug that caused people to use dd instead of cp for hard drives? I don't know how it failed before. Dim memories made me suspect it was on the writing side, but that beowulf.org article suggested it was on the reading side.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer"

Nobody seems to have responded to this yet, so here goes:

I'd never heard of Knoppix until March '03, when the Skane-Sjaelland Linux user group [http://www.sslug.dk/] held a Knoppix demo evening - I went home with a Knoppix 3.2 CD-ROM, cost: ~$0.75. It booted without the slightest hiccup on the PIII/700MHz hardware I was running, regardless of whether or not the hard disks were connected.

The following week, I needed to buy a new computer a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. OK. So, I bought an 80GB Seagate drive, partitioned it and backed up my ~25GB of data (from about 16 partitions on 4 disks), using Knoppix's
cp -a option (-a = archive = -dpR, it's extremely useful, see `man cp' for cp v. 4.5.2 or later). After making a LILO diskette, my old Debian "Potato" release booted quite normally from the new drive. I've forgotten whether or not I actually tried booting the Win95 partition, but it was still accessible from Linux.

Because of my deadlines, I needed new hardware immediately, so I went the suppliers of off-the-shelf, no-name, cheapo boxen, invariably with preinstalled windoze (the better dealers in Copenhagen take about 10 days to assemble and deliver their boxen).

So, I took the Knoppix CD and spent the next day looking for a PIV/2.4GHz system at 10-15 retailers. I explained to each shop that I needed to verify that their hardware was supported by Linux, but most of them (salesmen highly suspicious of "that cancer, Linux") either flatly refused to sell me a diskless machine, to disconnect the existing h/d or even to boot their WinXP machines from the Knoppix CD. Frankly, and to be a bit suspicious myself, I wonder if some of them could have already been aware that their hardware was in some way incompatible with Linux.

A couple of shops (both with salesmen aware of Linux), however, did go along with my request. The first shop's machine refused to boot from the CD - both without an h/d and with an unformatted h/d, but it ran OK when they reconnected the WinXP drive. The salesman was very helpful and went so far as to try three (3) CD-ROM drives and two (2) blank h/d's, before he finally said something about new CD-ROM drives always checking for a windoze installation on the h/d before booting from a CD. WTF!??? (Sorry, I've forgotten which motherboard and BIOS were in question.)

The second shop's machine (ASUS P4PE motherboard) booted Knoppix faultlessly without an h/d, with a blank h/d and with their default WinXP drive. So, with an 80GB drive at home, I bought a diskless system on the spot.

Moral? For me, Knoppix eliminated the first dozen or so retailers (possibly by their own tacit admission of incompatibility) and one helpful but also incompatible retailer. If a box won't boot Knoppix, it probably won't run _any_ normal Linux without buying extra hardware or obtaining/writing special drivers.

I've been running Knoppix 3.2 (from a hard disk) ever since, but with fvwm2, not kde.

(The fact that, after only about 11 or 12 days in service, my brand-new 80GB Seagate drive started devouring my precious 26GB of data (see http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/29/194321 6&mode=nested&tid=137) is another story. Never, since my first 5MB Winchester (1979, Motorola 6809 hardware), have I ever had a catastrophic drive failure until last March. Whassat? Backup? This WAS my fsckin' backup and I had DEADLINES!)

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you'll watch 'summoner geeks' which is cool, and realise 8bit d&d is crap

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I know dd exists for Linux imaging, but is there some kind of sourceforge type project that does the equivalent of Ghost? Either some wrappers for dd + gzip with other useful Ghost goodness? I used to work for a small company that would really benefit from an OSS solution like this, and it would be great for IT departments to have something like this on a live CD distro to image over the network...

Wow...

[eurleif]

Seems to be Slashdotted already.

I used knoppix at bestbuy

[mfchater]

I used a knoppix cd at best buy when looking for a new laptop. The salesman told me that I would not be able to run a linux distro on the toshiba Satelite p25-s607. I was happy to find out upon inserting the cd that I could indeed run linux. This was approx 3 months ago and the salesman said they wouldn't have drivers out for the video card for 6 months, of course he was wrong.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Ieshan]

Would be an interesting way to promote linux - make a dozen copies of Knoppix and slip them in Bestbuy computers, restart them.

Voila!

(smirk) Not sure the salespeople would appreciate it, though.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not distribute them like AOL CDs on rewritable media? At least if the person isn't interested they can do something useful with their plastic.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Dr Reducto]

" Why not distribute them like AOL CDs on rewritable media? At least if the person isn't interested they can do something useful with their plastic."

Probably due to the incredible cost of that plan. It would cost millions that could be better spent fueling development. Maybe if AOL disks were a bootable distro with AOL, OpenOffice, and maybe some games, then you'd be in business.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why they call them Best Lie.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[mfchater]

Actually it was a version of knoppix, knoppix std. Also, the best buy salesman wasn't happy that I was wanting to use an outside cd to boot the computer. I just told him I wasn't spending 2800.00 on a computer that couldn't do the things I needed it to do.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[NanoGator]

"I used a knoppix cd at best buy when looking for a new laptop. The salesman told me that I would not be able to run a linux distro on the toshiba Satelite p25-s607."

Back when Pentiums first came out, I went to a Circuit City and wrote a quick little Quickbasic app that drew random lines on the screen as fast as it could. This was a test I did at home as well, just wanted to get a feel for how much faster this would be than my 486. A salesman came over and told me to get away from the computer. He thought I was up to no good.

Have times changed? Maybe... But I would urge caution when going to a computer store and booting up Knoppix, maybe go grab a salesguy and say "I'd like to do this, cool?" I imagine stores that show computers like this have had to deal with their fair share of people trying to break the system.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[usdrowe]

I've been looking for linux video card drivers for that laptop (Toshiba P25) that support the maximum resolution. Where did you find them?

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[JonnyQabbala]

I imagine stores that show computers like this have had to deal with their fair share of people trying to break the system.

I used to manage a Tandy store in Australia (Radio Shack for yanks). It seemed to me that some peoples favorite past time was to see how screwed they could make a pc.

Personally, I would have loved to have had a few Knoppix CD's on hand. I would have glued them into the CD-ROM and set the PC to boot CD only. Would have saved me hours of reloading Windows from the stupid compaq restore CD's

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[ejaw5]

When I was shopping for a notebook at Circuit City, I asked the sales lady* if I could boot up a Knoppix Linux CD so see how well it ran. She obviously didn't know what I was talking about, and even after I told her that it would run completely off the CD and not affect the HD at all, she prefered that I didn't.

I ended up buying the notebook anyway a few days later after doing a bit of research on the built-in hardware. When I bought it, the sales lady apprently asked someone about Knoppix and said it would have been okay for me to run it. Although I didn't have the CD on me that day. All the hardware included on this notebook works fine with Linux.

*If the notebook wasn't locked up in an anti-theft device that blocked access to the CD drive, I would have ran Knoppix without asking, then explain what I was doing if someone noticed.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[js7a]

I would be suprized if any of the salespeople noticed.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[subk]

OF COURSE he was wrong. He worked at best-buy.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'd be pleasantly surprised to find a best buy employee that even knew what Linux was.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[fo0bar]

I bought one of those new emachines athlon64 systems at best buy when they first came out. Having never touched an amd64 system, I wanted to go through the BIOS and see what that was like on the demo unit (as they spend 20 minutes in the back stock room searching for the actual stock... mind you, this was mere hours after the computer was announced). The best buy guy's response was basically "go for it... but you break it, you buy it."

My point is, the helpfulness and cluefulness of a best buy employee is totally random :) I just happened to catch and employee that knew that this "amd64" stuff was different from the usual drivel they sell...

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[eean]

Or you could just do it anyway. What are they going to do, kick you out of the store? *gasp*

Anyways, buying computers retail is a bad idea usually. I'm a student worker at the IT dept. of my University and it seems we're always working on student HPs and Compaqs. I'm not sure if thats because its what most people have, or if the people that need help (usually from catching a virus and/or getting loads of spyware) or if its because the machines are crap. Perhaps all of the above.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe you're just jealous that they can afford a nice brand name HP or Compaq while you're struggling at home to piece together a piece of shit beige box PC from parts you bought from some vendor of Chinese crap.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[tchuladdiass]

I did the same thing. Told the sales guy to get his manager, and explained that I was going to buy a laptop that day, and the store that would get my business is the one that would let me verify the laptop with my boot cd. I also hinted that I liked their extended warranty options. Dollar signs lit up in the sales manager's eyes, he let me boot with Knoppix, and I left with a laptop, a grand less cash, and without the extended service plan :-)

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[drgnvale]

Well, are the AOL disks finalized? I mean, can I write more data to them? That would be very useful, so I don't waste blanks on stuff to copy to and from school. And as a bonus, AOL gets to bother me everytime I stick it in a windows box. That doesn't seem like it would cost them any more.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[clifyt]

If you don't suggest HP or Compaq for students, who would you support? HP and Compaq give some of the most end user support for the retail buyer, and can give the help in much better locations than the mom and pop shop down the street that would just prefer you bring the computer in -- especially when you are half a continent away. Which brings ya back to the point of buying something that has national support and probably at least one campus rep within 15 minutes from your location. And if that doesn't help, theres you or the mom and pop shops in town (and these mom and pop shops don't care who you bought your original computer from because they will charge you the same as anyone else that didn't buy from there).

Non-retail is a gamble...you never know what kind of crap is going to be in there. Its like eMachines, but worse (or at least how the e use to be).

Personally, I use Apples for most of my serious work...I use my PC for playing games. But the department I manage only uses Compaqs (and some Dells) and they are *GREAT* machines. Ya just can't buy the cheap $300 Entire Package that they aim at the home user because half the price of the business end machines are including the support issues that may arise...if you buy a certain class machine, you get this. If not, ya don't. The higher priced the machine, the more likely you will have more standarized parts. Its not HP or Compaq are bad, its that they sell tiered services in the form of computers and ya get what you pay for. Hell, I almost bought a package deal Compaq was selling to faculty members a few months back that included a flat screen simply for that screen (it ended up the package was only $60 more than the screen itself at retail and I could have given the rest away to a family member including one of my CRTs).

Anywho, I just got through un-virusing a home built computer for an aquaintence tonight...nothing to do with the brand :-P

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[gui_tarzan2000]

You don't actually believe the BestBuy (Circuit City, Office Depot, Staples, ABC Warehouse, etc.) salesman, do you?

I used a knoppix cd at best buy when looking for a new laptop. The salesman told me that I would not be able to run a linux distro on the toshiba Satelite p25-s607. I was happy to find out upon inserting the cd that I could indeed run linux. This was approx 3 months ago and the salesman said they wouldn't have drivers out for the video card for 6 months, of course he was wrong.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Just show cash on hand to buy a laptop and say that Knoppix is the deciding test. Flashing the dough (to a sales person) works.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

They are pressed CD's.. nothing to write to

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Coryoth]

I imagine stores that show computers like this have had to deal with their fair share of people trying to break the system.

A local chain of cheap electronics stores in NZ were selling machines preinstalled with Linux. They left display models running on the shop floor. I must say, bringing up a terminal and running history showed some interesting goings on. The eventually left the machines unplugged so no one could mess with them.

Jedidiah.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[dremspider]

I disagree on that statement for one reason.... I work in retail and most of us are not on commission. I know for a fact that no one is at Best Buy, Staples.. and I Circuit City used to be, though I think they arent anymore. My point is waving cash in front of us isnt going to get us to risk being fired, nor do we really care. If someone asked me if they could run Knoppix on one of our laptops, I would say sure, but that is becuase I know what Knoppix is, and I know it wont mess anything up. The fact of the matter is most people in retail are stupid, their is no nicer way to put it. I have heard some of the funniest things in retail, like the celeron is the choice for gamers, and many other ridiculous comments. If retail stores don't plan on paying people in retail they will continue getting idiots, it is as simple as that. That is the reason I am out of there as soon as college is over, can't wait.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you hugged your penguin today?
Yeah, I did.
Oh, you meant a penGUIN!

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Alan]

A clueless salesguy, what are the odds :)

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha damn. I used to do the same thing back to 486s when I was still using an XT with just an 8 mhz 8086 processor. It worked pretty good though.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Violent when angry]

As a former BestBuy associate, I'm insulted. Not all of us are crooks or idiots, IIRC we have Suse and mandrake box sets available to the public as well. And there was a knoppix CD behind the tech counter as well

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[eean]

Dell. Gateway (our campus uses Gateway). These names are hardly a gamble, at least not more then Compaq and Co. My computer is a Cyber Power PC.

And actually, for non-gaming non-Linux users (who make up the great majority of our campus) I don't see why they don't buy Apple. Well, the lack of KaZaa might be an issue for our users. More apple users would certainly mean we wouldn't have to worry so much about worms and spyware. Basically, given from what I've seen, I think most non-techies do not have the ability to maintain a Windows machine. Not installing spyware, not running as administrator, installing a virus scanner (the one we provide for free), and updating Windows is really too much to ask from some of these people. And even the more technically-savvy folks will occasionally install Windows XP, plug it into the Internet and within a day will start spreading a worm since they didn't update immediately. It is really ridiculous.

Like I said, it could be the users that give HP and Compaq bad names. And as you say, you get what you pay for. Maybe thats what's given retail a bad name... people who buy cheap buy retail, as opposed to online. I guess retail has just always rubbed me the wrong way ever since we got some IBM-compatible POS from Sears in the late 80s that didn't work. We returned it and got an Amiga instead (technically retail, but it was a specialty store), certainly the best decision at the time. And I don't want some Circuit City employee giving me suggestions regardless.

And I'm sure HP and Compaq don't have crap within 15 minutes of our university... its in Kirksville, MO. In case your not familiar with Kirksville (which is highly likely), its a Wal-Mart town about 1.5 hours from anywhere.

And really, you can't make generalizations about mom and pop stores. There's a place in Columbia, MO, Personalized Computers, they give a lot of support to products they sell you. And they're hardly a crap-shoot either. One feature of mom and pop shops is that you can easily get to know them, since the customer service and the owners are often the same folks.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[cerberusss]

Not sure the salespeople would appreciate it, though.

Some probably might. Lots of CS students working at such shops.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[dZap]

There is another reason to bring a Knoppix cd when shopping for a laptop. Sometimes the laptop you want to try out haven't been turned on and it has to be personalized at first start which they will not let you do.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

HP and Compaq are crap.

Get a Dell or Gateway (or if you're looking for a good laptop at a bit higher price point IBM).

Dell makes good cheap machines. Gateway makes good mid range pc's. IBM makes good x86 laptops.

There is no reason to use another vendor.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Wolfrider]

> history showed some interesting goings on

--Like what? (just curious)

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[vidnet]

Of course they'll tell you they won't run linux. I'd do the same. Imagine what would happen if they said it worked fine.

"Hey, you said this Linux works on this laptop but I type cd.. and it says command not found!"
"How do I run a file I compiled? It says permissions denied! ... now it says syntax error ... cp file.c file.exe"

Not to mention the actual problems such as acpi-suspending, irda, tv-out and other things that are notorious for being bitchy at times. What if you require binary, non-free drivers for any of the components? Where do you draw the limit for when linux runs and when it doesn't?

If you add "Well, unofficially, a friend of mine said it all worked." or "Feel free to try this knoppix CD I keep in my wallet more often than my rubber" that's another thing.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[4string]

You forget....
The salespeople at Best Buy are always wrong!

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[ycochard]

AOL gets to bother me everytime I stick it in a windows box

Hold the [Shift] key when inserting the CD to disable the autorun.

Yann.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[mekkab]

I've got an HP from CompUsa, I've maxxed the heck out if it (max ram, extra HD, PCI cards, CDROM, CD-RW, USB devices out the ying-yang) and I haven't had any issues with it. A couple of XP burps (due to all the USB crap, its slow booting), but no problems.

Your students are dumb. If they can't run AdAware and turn on a firewall then they deserve all they get. All my drivers work like a charm and all my components work together.

Oh yeah- I've run Knoppix on it too- and its tight as a drum (that means good).

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[paj1234]

I tried that in PC World. I put in the Knoppix CD and restarted the computer. I was quite sure the sales people would pay no attention to me. But to my surprise within moments I was surrounded by curious sales people wondering what I was doing.

Then a security guy came along. He asked me what I was up to and if I had asked if I could do that. I sort of fumbled around for an answer, so I thought I'd better go. I left feeling a bit sheepish and behind me a member of staff said "Rebuild that".

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Cruciform]

Remember when the TRS-80s at Radio Shack had those great little speech cards that would say whatever you typed?

When I was a kid it was a hoot to go in, type a bunch of swear words, clear the screen, then go browse the H-walls until the next little kid came along and typed "Hello".

"#$%^ You, You son of a $%^$ mother $^$^$%.
Hello."

And then they would be thrown out of the store. :)

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[eean]

You mean *gasp* not all users are as good at computers as you? Its folks like you that give all us techies a bad name. Because, you know what? Some people don't give a crap about computers. That may be hard for you to understand. They use it for word processing and Internet and are reasonably competent at those activities. Really that should be fine, but since IE and Microsoft are so insecure and easily corruptible, it isn't.

I think there is some brutal irony that to run Windows you have to be technically competent or else everything starts breaking down. Yet, its supposed to be the OS thats easy to use.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[mekkab]

Gee, to drive a car, you need to be technically competent. If you don't change your oil, change your windsheild wipers, and go in for maintenance occaisionally, your car will become crappy to use, and eventually die.

Is it your cars fault that you can't maintain it?

That was the argument I was trying to make to the parent of my response- he said " yeah, those HPs, they suck." But if its virii and malware that are plugging them up, is that the hardwares fault?

And windows is brain dead. Put it behind a firewall (uhm, there's one built in to XP, or get a linksys box. Ta da!), run Adaware occaisionally if you chose to run KazAa. DONE. If that counts as technically competent, then YES. You do need to be technically competent. Same with operating a toaster. Or a spoon.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Ieshan]

Completely bogus point. If you say windows doesn't work anymore after you've accidently deleted lots of system files, Bestbuy doesn't say: "Oh, well, here, let us give you your money back for that!"

The limit is pretty simple: Does the computer boot with display drivers, keyboard drivers, mouse drivers, sound card drivers, and ethernet? (or whatever else is in the thing). Does all of this stuff work? If so, "linux" works.

Officially, the only reason Bestbuy doesn't "support" linux is because no one pays them to do it.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Anonymous Coward]

LMAO! Responding to a troll, but damn, this is too funny!

nice brand name HP or Compaq. You pick the two worst brands and hold them up like they're the gold standard? HA!

parts you bought from some vendor of Chinese crap

I assure you that *any single part* you can buy from Best Buy is most likely a BETTER part than the OEM parts installed in an HP or Compaq where they are trying to save PENNIES on each part, as much as humanly possible.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[jasonflacid]

Best Buy employee intellegence is almost completely random because of several different factors. Most likely, sales managers are the ones hiring. This means that they want somebody who knows computers enough so that they can sell them to people who have no clue, which is anybody who's taken a high school 'How to use Excel' course, or somebody who's used AOL before. They really only care about selling. Managers sometimes don't know that prospective employees know a lot, the manager only notices that the prospective employee knows more than they do and that they have other qualities that are good in sales people. I used to work at Best Buy for almost two years, I probably knew more than the whole computer sales team and the "tech bench" combined. So that's why it's so damn difficult.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Viking Coder]

As a former BestBuy associate, I'm insulted.

As a former BestBuy associate, you should be insulted... ...oh, you had more to say?

I once had a "BestBuy associate" tell me "You should buy the bigger hard drive because it's faster."

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[jason0000042]

I once had a "BestBuy associate" tell me "You should buy the bigger hard drive because it's faster."

Uh. He could have been right, in a way. Lots of small cheap drives run at 5400 RPM, while bigger, more expensive hard drives run at 7200. Might not get data into your CPU any quicker but they do spin faster.

A quick view of the latest Dell snail-mail spam shows that this situation still exists (as it has for several years now).

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Viking Coder]

Nope. He was wrong. They were identical except one was a 40G and one was a 60G, or something like that. He was telling me that it's faster BECAUSE it's bigger.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[jason0000042]

Well then, you're right. He's a moron.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[eean]

I was responding to your comment that students who are afflicted with spyware and virus are stupid.

You forgot about installing a virus checker and running Windows Update. And not running as Administrator helps too.

The difference between a car and Windows is an important one. In Linux and Mac (well, probably Mac, I don't have personal experience with it) are both not afflicted with a constant barrage of spyware and worms. There is maintance to perform, but it isn't such a big deal. If there was a line of cars that broke down within a day of purchase without the user performing some maintance it would be called a lemon. Thats how the situation is with Windows XP and the various worms.

The other difference is that there is no assumption at all with a car that drivers should know how to fix their car. They know how to drive it. If computer maintance was restricted to bringing your computer to experts once a year, that wouldn't be unreasonable. But thats not the situation, for XP users especially. Its more like keeping a sick pet then owning a car.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[ChristTrekker]

Did you leave the CD, or just leave the impression you'd reformatted the computer? :)

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[berzerke]

Or you could just do it anyway. What are they going to do, kick you out of the store? *gasp* ...

They might. I got asked to leave a Best Buy once. I was looking for their loss leader and overheard a salesman (in the computer department) giving some other customers a load of crap. I couldn't stand it any more and jumped in and embarrassed the salesman. During this a manager apparently overheard me and asked me to leave. No big deal.

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[vidnet]

Completely bogus interpretation. What if the wlan card requires drivers that are not in the kernel (like mine)? What if it there are drivers for FreeBSD that could be ported? What if the specs are open so you're free to make your own driver? What if you can run VMWare with windows drivers? At what point does it work or not work? What if everything works flawlessly except tv-out which is black/white? Does it work then?

Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy

[Ieshan]

"What if the wlan card requires drivers that are not in the kernel (like mine)? What if it there are drivers for FreeBSD that could be ported? What if the specs are open so you're free to make your own driver? What if you can run VMWare with windows drivers? At what point does it work or not work? What if everything works flawlessly except tv-out which is black/white? Does it work then?"

No.

If someone gave you a windows disk, told you it worked, and then said, "Well, no... it works if you're a programmer or computer enthusiast, but otherwise, you're fucked" - you'd be annoyed if you were neither of those two things.

A thorough review of his server

[Anonymous Coward]

melting with poor tcp
nothing like a good /.'ing to understand your servers requirements

BitTorrent link...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Here's where to get it quickly, via the official BitTorrent: http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/.

The torrents are pretty fast; faster than the mirrors in my personal experience.

Re:BitTorrent link...

[keyshawn632]

so this must be the reason why that there's an unusual high amount of leechers on the BT page....

[right now there's 152 leechers, usually there's only 90 or so, tops]

Re:BitTorrent link...

[po8]

Whether BT is faster for grabbing KNOPPIX depends on where you are. My office box is on the INET2 backbone, and I've found that grabbing from an INET2 mirror via HTTP or FTP is about 100x faster there than grabbing via BT. YMMV.

Re:BitTorrent link...

[Wolfrider]

--Wow it's been a while since I checked it; Transferred for 2003-11-19-English is almost to 2 TB!!!

--Contrast that with the supposed "default" German ISO, which hasn't even made it to 200GB (AOTW.)

Re:BitTorrent link...

[Anonymous Coward]

wank wank wank

Re:BitTorrent link...

[Anonymous Coward]

glad to see you academics are putting that inet2 to good use -- taking a break from downloading porn?

It seems like...

[jdhutchins]

he's running whatever server this article is on off of one of those machines sitting on the store shelf, based on it responsiveness.

Re:It seems like...

[prodangle]

... is on off of one of ... You get 10 points for spectacular use of language.

Re:It seems like...

[scrytch]

> he's running whatever server this article is on off of one of those machines sitting on the store shelf, based on it responsiveness.

I hope you're happy... You just made my natural language parser cry.

Cool

[irokitt]

Never thought of taking a knoppix distro to shop with-neat idea. I like Knoppix cause you don't have to partition anything, and with modern CD drives, it runs fast enough for me.

Re:Cool

[Afrosheen]

I've done it before with both Phlak .20 and PCLinuxOS pr4. It's pretty interesting to see what can/will boot and what absolutely refuses to. I was 'caught' doing it at Compusa and all the salespeople started gathering around. Nobody had ever seen linux being used before and was surprised at how windows-ish it was.

The kicker came when they found out it was free. I ended up giving both cds away to people that wanted to play with it at home.

Re:Cool

[RdsArts]

I did. The fun thing is that most stores won't let you even try it on their hardware. (After all, it could installed something, or destroy the demo unit, or eat the CEO's lunch, or cause baby Jesus to cry. Anything is possible) Brought a CD wallet with Knoppix and my Net and FreeBSD install disks with me just incase the employees weren't watching^W^W^W^W they let me try them and see a dmesg on 'em. ;)

Which would have helped me avoid this laptop. PCMCIA slots cause system crashes unless I treat them with kid gloves, the USB seems to have problems, and it's way to fast.... Well, I guess it's not all bad. ;)

Personally, if I get another desktop, it'd probably be a PegasosPPC based system. They list not only multiple GNU/Linux distros as supported, but QNX and OpenBSD, with a FreeBSD port in the works, so it helps keep down some of the guess work. If only they made laptops...

Re:Cool

[sparrow_hawk]

I did a speech on Linux for a class and used Knoppix to demonstrate -- had them put the CDs in the drive and boot themselves so they could see how easy it was, with much assurance that it wouldn't fsck the hard drive or anything like that. We didn't have DHCP, or I would have done a much more thorough demonstration, but I showed them OpenOffice.org, and the prof had a heck of a time dragging them away from Frozen Bubble. I ended up giving all the CDs away, plus burning extras for interested parties. Linux evangelism rocks. :)

How geeky is that ?

[jdifool]

Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer.

Give me a break, we are only at the beginning of 2004.

jdif

Re:How geeky is that ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with that? It's far better than getting headaches when your hardware isn't fully supported... Seems like a perfectly logical thing to do...

Re:How geeky is that ?

[jdifool]

Hi,

don't make the zealot with me. I just denounced a blatant geeky advertising for Knoppix (hardware is supported under Linux, except some rare cases (nVidia mostly, and intel wireless) that you can check before buying your brand-new useless computer ; thus you don't have to bring your Knoppix Cd to the store), it was not to listen to some Mac brainless fans.

Again, I don't see why people are praising a "free-software" company, when it sells a minor upgrade of some FreeBSD-based OS for 139 USD. Mac users are probably the blindest geeks on earth, far before Linux users, who are far before Window$ users (yes, MS users know they use crappy software) ; they refuse to admit flaws in MacOSX, they refuse to admit the insane commercial policy of Apple, they refuse to see that Apple is propagating the Microsoft way of thinking, which is mainly ; we fuck you, dear users.
Mac is producing good software because they need to do it to survive. If they didn't Apple would have been swallowed by Gates' evil company. The situation by now is that Apple has created a niche, full of zealots (even more than the average /. reader with Linux) ; but the question is, if Apple had the situation of Microsoft, how would it be different ? IMO, it would not.

So, please, stop pissing around with your miraculous OS ; I don't care, I want a *FREE* IT world ; can you understand that ?

Regards,
jdif

Re:How geeky is that ?

[Enahs]

Hi. Either you're talking to yourself, or a comment was hidden. Whatever. This reply isn't for you, because you're obviously making a pathetic attempt to troll. This is for those folks who might be reading what you have to say, and may be agreeing. I want to dissuade those people from believing this drivel.

It was cool to trash Mac users and call them brainless in 1997. This is 2004. You're only 7 years behind the times.

There are damned good reasons for using MacOS still, unless you have a fully-functional clone of Photoshop 7, QuarkXPress 6, Illustrator, etc. ready for us. There's also still a need for Windows.

And FYI, and for everyone's information, the OS X userland is more or less FreeBSD's. That's as FreeBSD-like as it gets, folks; it's not FreeBSD-based at all, and isn't all that UNIXy to boot, despite its BSD roots. I for one think it's crap that the last two upgrades have been full price, but when you need features of the new system you don't have much choice. Ah, the joys of commercial operating systems. :-P

I want a world without brainless *n?x zealots. Can you understand that?

Re:How geeky is that ?

[jdifool]

Hi,

I am going to try not to be as disrepectful as you are with people that don't agree with you.

Either you're talking to yourself, or a comment was hidden.
Please. Update your threshold if it doesn't fit.

I want to dissuade those people from believing this drivel.
Please show a bit more respect.

There are damned good reasons for using MacOS still, unless you have a fully-functional clone of Photoshop 7, QuarkXPress 6, Illustrator, etc. ready for us.
First thing to say, whether you use Photoshop and Illustrator, whether you use Quark at full throttle. If you use Quark to make simple integration, there are replacements. As a matter of fact, Quark is becoming a lame product.
Furthermore, 99% of Photoshop users can be fully satisfied by the GIMP, with enough tinkering. I agree, there is no replacement to Illustrator ; it's the same for Macromedia suite. But, if I remember well, the subject was OSes and no other commercial softwares ; using any product you cited doesn't imply MacOS. There is winserf.

There's also still a need for Windows.
cf infra. Please cite any of my post where I said that there was no need for Windows. I don't like this OS, but I use it for some purposes, because there is no other replacement.

...despite its BSD roots.
What is to a building what are roots to a tree ? IMO, a base : so BSD-based is not incorrect in my mind.

I want a world without brainless *n?x zealots. Can you understand that?
Basically, yes I can understand, this is what I am trying to say. To quote myself (very pretentious, yeah) : Mac users are probably the blindest geeks on earth, far before Linux users, who are far before Window$ users which seems to prove that Linux users are zealots too. I try not to be part of that.

Regards,
jdif

Re:How geeky is that ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, please, stop pissing around with your miraculous OS ; I don't care, I want a *FREE* IT world ; can you understand that ?

I suppose you also want a plantation full of slaves too? Just because you're cheap doesn't mean the rest of us aren't willing to pay for quality software. Open source software is the 21st century equivalent of slavery. Programmers toil away working for their masters at Red Hat and SuSE for nothing but a "thank you boy" once in awhile while the master gets rich off their work because he knows how to package it to the other businesses. People like you who just want to take and take and take from the system without giving people their fair compensation make me sick.

Re:How geeky is that ?

[Enahs]

Update your threshold if it doesn't fit.

I have my threshold set where I want it. I can't help it that you're responding to the assholes.

Please show a bit more respect.

You're asking a Mac user to show you respect after that rant? Please...

Rescue

[vpscolo]

Knoppix comes in very handy when around and about as it will get your out of virtually any hole (short of rm -rf). Unstabled for debian doesn't mean things crash, it just means that they have not been totally tested to be totally stable

Re:Rescue

[binarytoaster]

It's gotten me out of rm -rf, too - reiserfsck --rebuild-tree --search-empty (or something like that) will recover accidentally deleted files on ReiserFS. :)

it deserves the hype

[bdaehlie]

Knoppix really is amazing. I didn't understand all the hype before, but after a glorious performance recovering files from a horked Windows box, I make sure I always have a Knoppix CD around. Whenever Windows threatens to waste my time, its Knoppix to the rescue. Also - not only is Knoppix really good at what it does, it looks great too! Its a great way to show off Linux.

Re:it deserves the hype

[cgranade]

At college we have some poorly run lab computers (most labs were run beautifully, except this one) that had one login account for everyone on the system. Some punk changed the password, so I just popped in Knoppix and surfed the Net that way w/o losing sleep over the insolent fool. Chalk up another win for Knoppix.

Re:it deserves the hype

[Anonymous Coward]

MY HERO!!!111

Re:it deserves the hype

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were good, you'd have at least changed the password back using Knoppix. Lamer.

Re:it deserves the hype

[js9kv]

Knoppix Rocks!!

One five separate occasions, friends who's computers run windoze have had troubles - network card crapouts, cable modem acting up, etc. Everytime I suspect the hardware, I boot up Knoppix - excepting for Toshiba laptop keyboard woes, Knoppix works everywhere - even with Motorola USB cable modems!!!

Re:it deserves the hype

[ameoba]

2 strikes against the IT ppl at your school :

1) somebody could change the password.
2) you could boot the machine off CD.

I'd hate to think what other kinds of problems they have...

Re:it deserves the hype

[Nasarius]

3) You could access the network without a password.

Re:it deserves the hype

[berzerke]

...but after a glorious performance recovering files from a horked Windows box, I make sure I always have a Knoppix CD around. Whenever Windows threatens to waste my time, its Knoppix to the rescue...

I've had similar experiences. I also use Knoppix to help nail down problems. For instance, on one system the sound wouldn't work in Windows. Had the correct drivers, Windows said everything was working, but try to play a wav file and nothing. It is software or hardware? Knoppix to the rescue. Boot up Knoppix, sound works great. That means it's software. Knoppix is very useful for eliminating hardware issues.

As a post note, the problem was the manufacturer's install program didn't get everything right. Had to go through device manager and manually "update" the drivers from the same place they were installed from in the first place.

linux hardware test

[timmarhy]

maybe this could be a good niche distro, a linux compatablity cd which does nothing except test a pc for compatablity with linux.

Re: Full text

[Anonymous Coward]

In these modern times it seems that there is a product to suit every whim and fancy. Whether you need a miniature Statue of Liberty with a clock in her (its?) stomach or a stuffed alligator with a light bulb in its mouth, you can rest assured that somebody somewhere is marketing it.

When it comes to software, much the same situation prevails. There are applications that do everything from psychoanalysis (in Emacs hit M-x and type "doctor"), to helping you contact alien civilizations (SETI@Home).

Operating systems are not immune to this tendency towards specialization. Notepads, cell phones and perhaps your DVD player all have specialized operating systems. At the height of the dotcom bubble, there were pundits predicting that soon your online refrigerator would have an operating system, the purpose of which was allegedly to order milk when you needed it. Just why you couldn't buy your own damn milk was never explained to us.

And finally we come to Linux distributions. There are different distros for different purposes. Desktop Linux (in many flavors), server Linux, embedded Linux, Linux routers, Linux BIOS, Linux on the Halfshell. And every so often, somebody comes up with a whole new use for Linux that just makes everybody sort of just stop in their tracks and say, "Cool!" Which brings me (you are still with me, aren't you?) to the topic of this article - Knoppix.

Live From Germany

Knoppix is a "live CD" distro - just boot it and use it. You do need a CD drive of course, but you don't need a hard disk. The implications of this are significant. It means you have a portable Linux that you can take with you wherever you go. This can be used in a number of innovative ways - as a demo disk, as a rescue disk, as a way to use Linux at your local Windows-only Internet cafe. Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer, a clever way to ensure that the hardware will be Linux compatible before you purchase it.

To be fair, Knoppix was not the first live CD ever created. Apple, for example, distributed MacOS (even before OSX) on a live CD. Linux has had DemoLinux, SUSE Live-Eval and Cool Linux, as well as some others. But none of these have come close to the functionality of Knoppix, which could justifiably claim the title as "first useful live CD." Even though Knoppix has inspired a number of clones (Gnoppix, Morphix, Freeduc, Quantian, to name a few), it still remains the most popular live CD distro by far.

Most people are just awe-struck the first time they see a Knoppix CD boot. Probably the thing that blows them away is the hardware auto-detection. There is really nothing to configure - just boot the CD, and two to three minutes later you have a beautiful desktop system. This is remarkable, given the lack of standards (and lack of driver documentation) that exists in the PC world.

Knoppix took the Linux world by storm in late 2002, but actually it's history is a little bit longer than that. Klaus Knopper of Germany started his experiment with "Knopper's *nix" about three years ago. As he tells the story, it wasn't his original intention to create a new Linux distro, but rather to learn how "el torito" (the booting mechanism on CDs) works, and how to get access to a whole CD from a minimal ramdisk system. However, his project soon attracted the attention of the LinuxTag association, which happily provided a mailing list and forum so that others could give their input. Though Klaus was (and still is) the solo developer of Knoppix, user feedback and bug-testing have helped make this distro the great success it is.

Deep Impact

Knoppix is one of the most up-to-date distros around. This is thanks to the fact that it is based on Sid, the "unstable" branch of Debian. Some people might be put off by the word "unstable," or the word "Sid" (the name of the mentally unstable kid in the movie "Toy Story"). Fortunately, in everyday use Knoppix is considerably more stable than many other distros (and infinitely more stabl

KnoppiXBox?

[R33MSpec]

Now all we need is a Knoppix distro that loads automatically onto a demonstration Xbox at your nearest major retailer!

Oh the fun you could have especially if your playing on a big screen surrounded by huge Xbox signage!

Re:KnoppiXBox?

[Aliencow]

Interesting exploit you got there. (I'm talking to the parent's other children..)

Re:KnoppiXBox?

[disntrstd]

What about the locked case they put the XBox in?

Need bootable USB

[fastdecade]

(Slashdotted already?)

Well, knoppix CD is great, but with 256MB (and more?) USB keys out there, I wish more BIOS's would allow booting from USB, it'd be so nice to walk into a net cafe, pull linux out of my pocket or USB watch, and then read mail with mutt in X-Windows while surfing with my own damn bookmarks. And not having to close the last guy's chat session and assorted porn popups? Priceless.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Seth Finklestein]

I boot my Macintosh laptop (a G3 Powerbook, with two batteries) off a USB key when I need raw access to the hard drive. It's similar to booting off the CD-ROM drive, but I still get to enjoy two batteries' worth of life!

It's simply brilliant. Pity that the Wintel "users" don't enjoy such a convenience yet.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Macintosh Advocate

Re:Need bootable USB

[moosesocks]

Easy solution to this:

Boot off of knoppix CD, but place your home folder on your USB key. Knoppix readily supports this, and in most instances will automatically detect the key and the home folder without any special paramaters.

An even bigger plus is that you probably won't need much more than a 32mb key for day-to-day use.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a 256 MB key, use it at college, store my files to it, rather than the networks HDD, then take it home. Nobody copies my stuff.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that new motherboards allow booting from USB devices. At least I think mine does. But how would you put knoppix on a USB key? For example, for a hard drive we put a boot block. Do you have to put GRUB or something on the first "sector" of the USB key?

Thanks, I might actually buy a USB key and try it if I can find out how.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Afrosheen]

Depends on the hardware...seriously. Many newer pcs and laptops support booting from alternate devices like external hard drives, usb devices, etc.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Ageless Stranger]

Most newer PC motherboards can boot from usb...

Re:Need bootable USB

[Clover_Kicker]

I don't own a net cafe. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't let any random customer walk in and boot my machines from their own media.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Seth Finklestein]

If you owned a net cafe, I would assume you would have Visio, Pro Tools, and Photoshop licenses for every seat. What? That's too expensive? My solution would be to allow customers to bring in media containing software which they have properly acquired. Once their session is done, you simply use a trusted program like dd or an untrusted program like Ghost to safely restore the original image.

Of course, I wouldn't expect you to figure all that out. Hire me as a consultant, or I will boycott your net cafe.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Will Consult for Food

Re:Need bootable USB

[Clover_Kicker]

>I will boycott your net cafe.

I hope so.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

The lameness filter can SUCK MY DICK.

Hi.

No... I said so.

Re:Need bootable USB

[AKnightCowboy]

Got a 256 MB key, use it at college, store my files to it, rather than the networks HDD, then take it home. Nobody copies my stuff.

I've got a 256 meg keyfob too but never use it (also have a 128 meg one I also carry that I never use). It's just easier to scp the data back to one of my shell machines than worry about copying it to my keyfob and uploading it later.

Re:Need bootable USB

[gomoX]

You should look at Morphix, a knoppix-like which is intended to be "morphed" (customized to fit your needs). What you are saying is exactly what i have done: create a custom bootable image that fits into a mini cd, all the apps want (GTK2 only to save space, but i'm at 140 MB of 200 on the mini cd, so i could still fit KDE ^_^.

I created a GnuPG key for the user settings: knowing the passphrase (or decrypting my files), I can load them to have mail, bookmarks, ICQ and everything else set up on the fly.

Really great distro.

Re:Need bootable USB

[AKnightCowboy]

If you owned a net cafe, I would assume you would have Visio, Pro Tools, and Photoshop licenses for every seat. What? That's too expensive?

People that would go into a cafe and ask to use Visio, Pro Tools, and Photoshop are the same kind of people who probably got beat up in high school for being ultra-geeks. Why don't you sit down, order some coffee, and read the paper or chat with friends? Why does everyone have to be a god damn Borg drone connected to the collective at all times with their 3G cell phones, pagers, laptops with 802.11b, bluetooth connections, etc. Get a life.

Re:Need bootable USB

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Stupid Apple zealot. Check your facts first, many PC motherboards support USB storage booting.

Re:Need bootable USB

[marsonist]

Linux.com had a link to this distro just a few days ago Flonix It's only a little over 60mb and allows you to install other applications should you have more space.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid anti apple zealot. All PC motherboards support usb storage booting....all of them sold this year...not like apple.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Avihson]

you just format it like a bootable disk. Works with the sandisk 256 and pendrive 32. Booted them to a win98 "dos" session to test it out.
Now if the USB bootable Motherboards start hitting the cafe's and libraries we will be set. As it is, I just reboot the machines, set the CMOS to boot from CD, ( if not set already or PW secured) and boot Knoppix-3.3 It is surprising how few PCs have a CMOS password.

I've been using Knoppix 3.2 as a tutoring aid at college, teaching an intro to linux class. Nice thing is the school burned the CDs for the class, and the students got to take Knoppix home to practice. No worries about hosing something up trying to dual boot. By the end of the semister, they were ready to take the plunge, and we have an install fest planned for the first week of class. Most are going redhat, a few are SuSE and a couple are perfectly happy with Knoppix, just want it on the HD.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an easy way to avoid paying rental fees for computer usage.

I work at a net-cafe and we had add BIOS passwords and remove CD and floppy booting from the startup routine to keep people from coming in with thier own bootable media.

The last straw that caused that was when I caught some kids with a Knoppix CD poking around the system, luckily we use ntfs so they werent able to install cain or any other password sniffers.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop is a tool of the ultra-geeky? News to me.

Re:Need bootable USB

[thehunger]

There's Flonix - a Knoppix based distro. Theres a USB key edition and a CD edition.

Incidentally, the Flonix install instructions say to run syslinux for Windows under XP, but all I get is a "ERROR 3246: Boot sector read failed" error. Anyone know how I can syslinux my USB key if all I currently have running is XP?

Re:Need bootable USB

[jpkunst]

while surfing with my own damn bookmarks

I know this is not a free solution at all, but if you have a .Mac account and use Safari you can have your own bookmarks everywhere. If you synced them before with iSync, you can just go to bookmarks.mac.com, login, and have all your own bookmarks right there. No need to reboot or use USB drives.

JP

Re:Need bootable USB

[trACE666]

This is fine living in a wired world, but in a lot of places you just dont have fast internet connectivity available.

Re:Need bootable USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Run syslinux.exe f: (where f is your drive), instead of just "syslinux". Also make sure syslinux.exe's compatibility options are set to Windows NT 4.

Re:Need bootable USB

[saskboy]

Damn Small Linux is neat, and supports USB keys too I've read.

www.damnsmalllinux.org

What I'd like to know is if Antivirus software can easily scan USB drives, or if they pose a virus risk when popped into a machine.

Re:Need bootable USB

[millette]

Actually, you're in luck. The story goes a little like this. Someone enjoyed GNU/Linux enough but felt none of the distros out there really got the right idea, so he decided do make his own non-commercial distro. Debian was born. Now, a guy in Germany decided 3 years ago it would be cool to have this great distro to-go, and so Knoppix, the Live-CD saw the light. Couple of years later, someone wanted it even more portable, so he trimmed it to fit on a tiny "business" card CD and called it Damn Small Linux. Later, another guy with too much time on his hands decided it would nicely fill a void on his USB key, and modified DLS 0.36 just for that purpose. Yay! You could now boot it from USB. But he was too shy to give it a name.

The latest chapter is called Flonix, and trust me, it won't be the last.

DD != Ghost

[nurb432]

Come on now..

Since when does DD do muliticasting, resizing of partitions.. Partition selection... Remote capture of the HD, etc, etc, etc..

Sure DD has some uses, but it is NOT by any stretch of the imgaination as functional as ghost...

And if you want to toss in the enterprise features of ghost, the gap widens even further..

Re:DD != Ghost

[shaitand]

True enough, DD != Ghost, but not what he claimed, he claimed that linux on a cd will supplant ghost and that is something different altogether.

Now your not talking about ghost, your talking about a number of tools.

mount
partd
mkfs
kernel support for more filesystems than ghost will ever dream of.
tar
dd
cp
mkswap
lilo/grub

Between these utilities you can do pretty much everything ghost can and much much more. A knoppix cd (generally I use a customized one to take out the gui fluff) gives FAR more flexibility than any other software tool.

Re:DD != Ghost

[Metasquares]

Between these utilities you can do pretty much everything ghost can and much much more. A knoppix cd (generally I use a customized one to take out the gui fluff) gives FAR more flexibility than any other software tool.

I agree with you, but you can't fairly compare an entire Linux distro to Ghost.

Re:DD != Ghost

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. How can I write the HDD contents out to a cd/dvd if I only have the one drive (with the knoppix disk in it)? I can do that with Ghost.

Re:DD != Ghost

[Nasarius]

You don't need the entire monolithic 700MB Knoppix CD for those few utils. You could get by with a CD that loads a ramdisk of a few megs.

Re:DD != Ghost

[Avihson]

I have it on a mini CDRW. All the utils mentioned plus a minimum Xserver to run qt_parted.
Check out System Rescue CD They even have a PPC version.

I compare the price and license of the rescue CD to that of Ghost. I can give the CD away to anyone without a worry, I can't do that with Ghost.

Re:DD != Ghost

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you, but you can't fairly compare an entire Linux distro to Ghost.

But you CAN! That's the whole point, with Knoppix you get an entire distro on one CD, for free.

Given that both Knoppix and Ghost run from boot disks, why can't you compare them? Just because Knoppix will win by a mile? Well that was kinda his point :-)

Re:DD != Ghost

[sfritzd]

Throw parted into the mix and then you've got an argument. Upgrading from win95 to win2k is a lot easier when you can convert a 2GB fat16 partition to fat32 and then make it grow to fill the rest of the drive. Just make sure you've got Win95C or you won't be booting anymore (a and b can't read fat32).

Re:DD != Ghost

[robhancock]

Unfortunately the big capability that's missing from that is NTFS write support - Linux doesn't have proper support for writing to an NTFS file system, which is a common use for Ghost..

Re:DD != Ghost

[j-pimp]

I agree with you, but you can't fairly compare an entire Linux distro to Ghost.

Your absolutly right, you can't compare a linux distro to a dos distro.

Re:DD != Ghost

[shaitand]

why? Both are on one disk and equally easy to use for someone who already knows how to use the tool.

If the choice for the task is the linux distro vs ghost wouldn't the proper comparison be between those rather than ghost vs an individual util?

Re:DD != Ghost

[Eccles]

Between these utilities you can do pretty much everything ghost can and much much more.

What's the status of Linux's NTFS reading/writing these days? Seems like I recall discussion of issues with the many flavors of NTFS. Is it capable enough to do satisfactory ghosting?

Re:DD != Ghost

[rifter]

Unfortunately the big capability that's missing from that is NTFS write support - Linux doesn't have proper support for writing to an NTFS file system, which is a common use for Ghost..

It doesn't need it if you are using dd. Ghost is not used for writing to ntfs, it is used to copy ntfs. Yes, it does this by creating and writing to an ntfs filesystem. But if all you want is to exaactly image an ntfs filesystem then dd will work. You don't have to write TO the filesystem, you just have to be able to put the filesystem and its contents on disk, and since dd is just throwing bits around it will do this.

Re:DD != Ghost

[shaitand]

Actually you can't if you make a ghost boot cd. However you can with a ghost boot floppy, just like you can with a linux boot floppy.

Re:DD != Ghost

[shaitand]

Linux does have support for writing to NTFS, it's been labeled experimental since it first came out. Hell it deserved it back then, corrupted everything in sight. As of about a year ago that magically disappeared (although the label has not, still experimental) and I've been using it since on a daily basis without a single corruption.

Hopefully this will get modded up or some such so I don't have to repeat it anymore.

Re:DD != Ghost

[shaitand]

It's still labeled experimental, however in my experience it's actually pretty stable nowdays. Haven't had any corruptions using it in the last year or so. Write support that is, read has been rock solid for a LONG time.

The experimental label isn't much of a big deal for copying drives anyway. After all, if your copying a drive, your copying it from somewhere, so if things go wrong you've lost 10mins but you haven't lost any data. That was my mindset when I first started testing it out with a system here and there. After awhile I figured out it was reliable enough to take to the other side of the country to do 200 systems.

Slashdotted?

[Aenb]

Original server is getting slow, see http://24.174.81.26/review.php

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to fix your redirect script. I have clicked on your link multiple times and not gotten to goatse, tubgirl, lemonparty, etc. once.

Re:Slashdotted?

[JoeShmoe950]

Warning, the above link is not what it appears. It attempts to redirect to various website that you do not want to vist (hint hint: goatse). But, before you can ever reach those, so many pop ups pop up that it would freeze a windows computer. I never got a chance at looking at the source, but I'm guessing its just a java loop generating pop up windows. This usually will freeze Win 9x computers, so don't click it.

Knoppix users buying computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which knoppix users are the ones buying retail computers? Aren't most building them themselves? Maybe a laptop, but... sheesh.

Take a Mepis disk too

[nurb432]

Its by far a much better setup then plain knoppix. Well thought out and 'professional'.

Not to knock knoppix as Klaus has given birth to the *practical* live CD movement, but its still has the 'feel' of a toy..

Hmmmmm or have some fun and boot one off cluster knoppix and PXE the rest of the building...

Re:Take a Mepis disk too

[anagama]

I've been playing around with these and while I like both Knoppix and Mepis, one thing that Mepis does better is DVD playback. Perhaps this is because Knoppix will work on 486s but Mepis will only work on pentiums/equivalents (beter optimization for my hardware). Anyway, xine gives a lot picture jumps in Knoppix and a very little in Mepis. It also seems that Mepis installed the nVidia video drivers - at least I get that annoying big nVidia screen before X starts.

On the other hand - Mepis just has to do something about those big blue "S" "I" and "U" buttons. Them's ugly.

Re:Take a Mepis disk too

[mabhatter654]

The key is that Mepis may run into problems on the DVD and Nvidia issues...which Klaus was purposely trying to avoid...note there is much discussion of this on the Knoppix boards, and it comes down to the fact that Klaus is only 1 guy having fun and can't be bogged down with petty legal issues so he plays it safe.

That said, I've got Mepis lately and like it just a bit more than Knoppix...I like that it's designed to work as a live Cd + a repair CD for it's own install. The main reason Knoppix doesn't do that is that the hdd-installed distro is something Klaus doesn't really want to support [again the whole 1 guy thing] So it just sets up standard Debian and you go from there...but it could be a bit better at keeping the config data.

Knoppix and a Gig of Ram

[Pyro226]

The newer (3.3 and up I think) versions of knoppix have a cool feature where the entire knoppix CD is loaded into ram. My friends computer has 1024 megs of ram, so we tried it out. It was so incredibly fast; Open Office barely took any time to load.

I don't know if his top of the line, hyperthreaded P4 had a big impact, because I don't know hard it is to decompress the cloop compression knoppix uses. But if you have a computer with a gig or more of ram you should give it a try.

Re:Knoppix and a Gig of Ram

[pigscanfly.ca]

Its not very hard to decompress cloop images . Hell a 233 machine with 128mb ram can do a decent job (I wrote some netcaffee software to run on a specific platform , enduded using a compressed fs so that all the tools would fit on a 50mb card sized cd) .

Re:Knoppix and a Gig of Ram

[sofakingl]

I have 768MB of RAM, and I noticed OO.o loaded in notime too, so you don't need a whole GB. My computer isn't a P4 either.

Re:Knoppix and a Gig of Ram

[ByteSlicer]

Now just find a way to load 700MB from CDR into ram quickly...

Re:Knoppix and a Gig of Ram

[millette]

*hehe* Actually, you're loading 2.5 GiB of applications from a CDR at 200x - not bad :)

best

[Anonymous Coward]

best tip/trick w/knoppix disk:
mount -o dev /dev/hdaX
chroot /dev/hdaX
lilo -v

used it many times, had to re-install lilo after windows got corrupt, forgot to run lilo, AFTER editing lilo.conf. A real life saver. Afterall, who REALLY makes linux rescue disks anymore?:)

Re:best

[Anonymous Coward]

Afterall, who REALLY makes linux rescue disks anymore?

Well, obviously Klaus Knopper does - Knoppix ;)

Just hope you don't test it on a PC w/ an LG CDROM

[Anonymous Coward]

Just hope you don't test it on a PC w/ an LG CDROM. Remember SUSE? I saw Gentro wreck a CD as well.

What could you steal?

[Doomrat]

I wonder what sort of data you could steal from store PCs with Knoppix and a USB storage device?

Re:What could you steal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what sort of data you could steal from store PCs with Knoppix and a USB storage device?

The way you present your query, it could be interpreted as flamebait. It is, however, a valid question. I have found that the Knoppix distro is a great tool for comandeering someone elses computer. Quite fun.

Re:What could you steal?

[Goldfinger7400]

I wonder what sort of data you could steal from store PCs with Knoppix and a USB storage device?

h3llo this isa test of word...

Re:What could you steal?

[agent dero]

If any valuable data is on a store PC, it should be stolen.

We should enforce a 'stupid-penalty'

Re:What could you steal?

[Doomrat]

The way you interpret reality presents my query as flamebait, I feel.

Re:What could you steal?

[SharpFang]

Okay, I'll make the question more precise.
How to extract administrator password off an XP or 2K box if I have booted it to Knoppix and have the USB drive plugged in and working?

Re:What could you steal?

[Anonymous Coward]

you dont haveto, you can just insert a linux floppy, and change the admin password in about 15 seconds flat.

just google them, tons of different ones.

Re:What could you steal?

[Slack3r78]

It's far easier to simply change the admin password, but hey, what do I know?

Re:What could you steal?

[CoolVibe]

Copy the WinNT SAM file to a usb drive, and l0phtcrack at home at your leisure.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[JoeShmoe950]

I think the solution to your problem(s) would be semi obvios. First off, if your booting from the cd-rom, the only way you could possibly save to your desktop is if Knoppix created a ramdisk as a temp HD(you just said it doesn't use partitions). Thus, powering down your computer would kill that. Next, booting of a cd-rom is never fast. Lets compare the speed: CD-Rom Drive : 52x Max (above might have been using a slow model) Hard Drive : Usually around 7200x although, some 5400x are around today. Plus, the harddisk has a lot more per plader. 52x a small cd-rom track, or 7200x a huge hd track. That would make up for the boot time. Install linux to your HD... It will boot quite a bit faster. Plus, certain CD-R's don't operate at full 52x. Install to HD. No missing files (no viruses or crashes either), and a boot time similar to XP (a little longer but restarting less then 1/year it doesn't really matter). To be truthfull, I wouldn't find it practical to run of a cd-rom boot. I installed Mandrake to harddrive. Disk Drake created partitions for me without frying my NTFS Partition(thats right, non destructive resizing built into the install). Then, it booted and hasn't crashed yet. I've installed linux and never looked back. Trust me, Windows works pretty good, but once you get the right Linux setup, there is no comparison.

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Something For Everyone
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899

In these modern times it seems that there is a product to suit every whim and fancy. Whether you need a miniature Statue of Liberty with a clock in her (its?) stomach or a stuffed alligator with a light bulb in its mouth, you can rest assured that somebody somewhere is marketing it.

When it comes to software, much the same situation prevails. There are applications that do everything from psychoanalysis (in Emacs hit M-x and type "doctor"), to helping you contact alien civilizations (SETI@Home).

Operating systems are not immune to this tendency towards specialization. Notepads, cell phones and perhaps your DVD player all have specialized operating systems. At the height of the dotcom bubble, there were pundits predicting that soon your online refrigerator would have an operating system, the purpose of which was allegedly to order milk when you needed it. Just why you couldn't buy your own damn milk was never explained to us.

And finally we come to Linux distributions. There are different distros for different purposes. Desktop Linux (in many flavors), server Linux, embedded Linux, Linux routers, Linux BIOS, Linux on the Halfshell. And every so often, somebody comes up with a whole new use for Linux that just makes everybody sort of just stop in their tracks and say, "Cool!" Which brings me (you are still with me, aren't you?) to the topic of this article - Knoppix.

Live From Germany
Knoppix is a "live CD" distro - just boot it and use it. You do need a CD drive of course, but you don't need a hard disk. The implications of this are significant. It means you have a portable Linux that you can take with you wherever you go. This can be used in a number of innovative ways - as a demo disk, as a rescue disk, as a way to use Linux at your local Windows-only Internet cafe. Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer, a clever way to ensure that the hardware will be Linux compatible before you purchase it.

To be fair, Knoppix was not the first live CD ever created. Apple, for example, distributed MacOS (even before OSX) on a live CD. Linux has had DemoLinux, SUSE Live-Eval and Cool Linux, as well as some others. But none of these have come close to the functionality of Knoppix, which could justifiably claim the title as "first useful live CD." Even though Knoppix has inspired a number of clones (Gnoppix, Morphix, Freeduc, Quantian, to name a few), it still remains the most popular live CD distro by far.

Most people are just awe-struck the first time they see a Knoppix CD boot. Probably the thing that blows them away is the hardware auto-detection. There is really nothing to configure - just boot the CD, and two to three minutes later you have a beautiful desktop system. This is remarkable, given the lack of standards (and lack of driver documentation) that exists in the PC world.

Knoppix took the Linux world by storm in late 2002, but actually it's history is a little bit longer than that. Klaus Knopper of Germany started his experiment with "Knopper's *nix" about three years ago. As he tells the story, it wasn't his original intention to create a new Linux distro, but rather to learn how "el torito" (the booting mechanism on CDs) works, and how to get access to a whole CD from a minimal ramdisk system. However, his project soon attracted the attention of the LinuxTag association, which happily provided a mailing list and forum so that others could give their input. Though Klaus was (and still is) the solo developer of Knoppix, user feedback and bug-testing have helped make this distro the great success it is.

Deep Impact
Knoppix is one of the most up-to-date distros around. This is thanks to the fact that it is based on Sid, the "unstable" branch of Debian. Some people might be put off by the word "unstable," or the word "Sid" (the name of the mentally unstable kid in

I've done this before

[cyber_rigger]

and accidently (on purpose) left the Knoppix CD in machine. I love to watch people (especially the sales people) walk by and say "Cool, what's this". CD blanks are cheap enough now to do this.

Re:I've done this before

[Grimster]

Imagine doing this in Best Buy then hanging out in the printer section nonchalantly watching over the shelves of printer cables as they try and figure out what's wrong, of course they're gonna start by doing the main (and for many only) troubleshooting they know how, reboot the machine. Of course being on cd it'll just bootup back into your fun and the hilarity continues.

Mmmm might just have to do this the next time I get bored and want to kill a few minutes. Maybe start a database of "how long it took them to either A: fix it or B: pull the display down and take it into their service department, or C: just turn it off and leave it off" with bonus marks for the lowpaydroid blaming it on a virus.

and knoppix + qtparted =

[Anonymous Coward]

= screw partition magic away...

Re:linux hardware test

[Afrosheen]

PCLInuxOS 2k4 pr4 is a pretty good test of this, you can find it at pclinuxonline.com in the left hand column. It's basically mandrake 9.2 with a handful of tweaks so it has incredible hardware support. Phlak at phlak.org is a decent little distro for hardware testing as well. Both generally do well on laptops. Phlak won't boot on my desktop but it worked fine on every laptop I stuck it in...go figure.

Dangerous

[flopsy mopsalon]

This Koppix looks like a good way for a hacker to go around taking over computers. In this age of terrorism, an attacker taking over computers at an airport, traffic light control center, or water treatment plant, could be especially dangerous. I hope the developers have put in appropriate safety measures to prevent this from happening.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they've thought of that and built in a safety mechanism. On bootup, it asks the user whether they are Evil or not. If they say yes, it just powers down.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break!

A person with enough physical access to a computer to insert a CDROM, may aswell switch the machine off, or do other nasty things to it.

Sensitive machines (airport, water treatment) have to be physically secured; that where the danger lies.

Re:Dangerous

[cgranade]

Ya know, this isn't just Knoppix. People would bring in Dreamcasts with custom boot CDs, hook them up to the network, and walk away. The DC would blast a hole in the firewall, and let the hacker in.
Despite of this obvious threat, Dreamcasts were not banned, nor made to implement stronger security measures. Why? Because if any device on a network, w/o a password or any type of authorization other than its physical location can destroy a firewall, then the network itself has larger problems to deal with. To me, this calls into question the assumption of trusted devices. In short, Knoppix cannot forsee it's use, thus placing the burden on those who create and administer networks to do so in a safe and responsible manner.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

"I hope the developers have put in appropriate safety measures to prevent this from happening."

There are. If you are going to do anything evil, you will be forced to set the evil bit.

Re:Dangerous

[iggymanz]

Illogical to worry about Knoppix rather than anything else being misused in that fashion. You could use any of 30 operating systems to "take over" most Wintel PCs and do something naughty. Or just run naughty software under the existing installed OS from CD. Better yet just yank out network cable & plug in your own evil network-equipped PDA or laptop and be naughty.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

BIOS selects whether or not the PC can boot from a CD. So, they have a password. If the password is forgotten, something happens, remove the battery.

They have a lock on the Box, and even lock on the BIOS that prevents anybody from selecting "Boot from CD" in the BIOS.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and they don't use the "evil bit" on their network connections anymore.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains why the DOJ is using Windows. They just could not get Linux to work for them.

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I caught two kids after a 2600 meeting farting around with our upstairs boxes w/ a knoppix CD. It was funny, cause I can monitor the network from the frontdesk... I noticed something funny and asked my friend who just happened to be there working on a new security policy w/ me if he was doing anything to these two boxes.

I hear a bit of scrambling after I said that... I go upstairs and the kids flipped the power switches on the computers and one says, "uh yeah, so you wanna go now?" The other guy agrees and they head downstairs.

I pulled a Knoppix disk out of one of the computers and follow them down saying, "Please don't fuck with the computers anymore, or I might start fucking wtih you." (By coincidence I happen to be a large black man.)

They calmly walked to the front door and then ran like hell down the street.

But one of them was brave enough to come back and ask for his Knoppix CD, so my friend gave it back and just asked them to respect the network since we let them meet here anyway.

We had BIOS passwords but someone had forgotten to take removeable media booting from the list, which we did later along with some other security measures.

Re:Dangerous

[dbIII]

Because if any device on a network, w/o a password or any type of authorization other than its physical location can destroy a firewall, then the network itself has larger problems to deal with.

Very true. If you can't lift your head over the partition and see all the users workstations, then you probably have enough users that you need to proxy everything and only let the proxy speak to the world.

Re:Jesus Saves!

[cgranade]

Knoppix saves, too, you know.
Guess that means there's more than one way, eh?

I take Debian 3.0 PC shopping!

[Debian Troll's Best]

A self-booting distro is a great way of testing PC compatibility, and of course it won't upset the sales assistants who are obviously quite paranoid about customers installing strange software on their precious floor-models. But there are a few shortcomings of testing out PCs in this fashion. Since everything runs off the CD-ROM, how do you test the most important part of using a Debian-based distro...upgrading and installing software with apt-get?

A few months ago I was shopping around for a new PC (Bruce Perens was around at my place a while back to beg for scraps of food, but got excited and lost control of his bladder in close proximity to my ATX tower case). I found a local PC dealer that I liked the look of, but I couldn't be sure that the newish ATI Radeon 9800XT video card in it would be properly supported by apt-get. I asked the shop staff if they would mind if I brought in my own hard drive and do an install of Debian 3.0 onto it. They didn't mind at all (apparently Bruce Perens used to beg for food all the time at their store, so they were quite familiar with Debian).

They were really great about it. They even let me stay in the shop overnight to complete the Debian installation! Luckily I started it in the morning, otherwise I would have been there over the weekend as well! Anyway...by about lunchtime the next day I had Debian running sweet on their box, and began to test out apt-get. WOW is all I can say!!! That Radeon 9800XT made the progress marks in apt-get fly past! It must have been updating packages at about 350fps!!!

I decided to buy the machine after all that, and I got Bruce a sandwich on the way home too. He loves that kind of attention. All I can hope is that he doesn't show his appreciation by whizzing on my new GNU/Opteron ATX box! apt-get peace out kids!

Re:I take Debian 3.0 PC shopping!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is probably a true story, but it seems like some sort of dream, getting to stay in the store all weekend, playing with their computers. I can just imagine what would happen (police-wise) if I asked my local Office Depot sales-person about staying overnight to install debian, with my own HDD, of course. I'll bet they would want my Credit Card, and then escort me and my new computer out the door before closing time. apt-get works in console mode too, no video card necessary, just a connection to the internet.
Here's one, #apt-get install wvdial
Fun to do when wvdial is running. (v 1.40 upgrade to v 1.53.)

Re:I take Debian 3.0 PC shopping!

[sir99]

I'm disappointed. What happened to the subtlety and almost-plausibility of posts like "apt-get expose" and "Debian dselect iTunes implementation"?

Although you did get one idiot.

Re:I take Debian 3.0 PC shopping!

[Debian Troll's Best]

Yeah like 'apt-get expose' was plausible ;-). I'm stilll on holidays and I need to warm up. But even to pull one sucker in with the blatent Perens bashing is still OK.

Re:I take Debian 3.0 PC shopping!

[d_i_r_t_y]

hey... i'm debian troll's friend... DT has been pretty busy lately polishing up the next release of win-apt-get, incorporating the apt-get upgrade Justin-Timberlake functionality.

Re:I take Debian 3.0 PC shopping!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm with sir99 -- you were really on a roll in November! Enjoy your time off but I hope you haven't lost your edge!

Re: Full text

[NanoGator]

"Most people are just awe-struck the first time they see a Knoppix CD boot. Probably the thing that blows them away is the hardware auto-detection. There is really nothing to configure - just boot the CD, and two to three minutes later you have a beautiful desktop system. This is remarkable, given the lack of standards (and lack of driver documentation) that exists in the PC world."

I ache for Linux to be this way in general. I'm a Linux newb. I get nervous mucking around with conf files. (i.e. typos, formatting, and upper/lower case...) Knoppix was the first time I booted a Linux distro and got the right video mode. I was so happy with that. It just found everything. Makes one wonder: Why even go through a lengthy install? Why not copy the disc, boot, and auto-configure? Guess I'm just frustrated after spending a VERY long time installing Redhat.

Re:Just hope you don't test it on a PC w/ an LG CD

[Anonymous Coward]

That was Mandrake, not SuSE.

Re:linux hardware test

[Anonymous Coward]

Good but not perfect.

I have used several linux boot disks (knoppix, knoppix - std, penguinsleuth, etc.) they have all worked on my computer (PIII, 550, 512mb ram, 240mb hdds, win2k, ntfs, radeon 64, cd/dvd burner.) But when I tried to install mandrake 9.2 there was some incompatibility that caused the gui to fail.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[cyber_rigger]

I saw some mention of Knoppix running off of a udf file system using a CD-RW drive. I seems it would easy enough to slip in a small read/write home directory. You could save your configuration and still not have to touch the hard drive.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with most of your post and the grandparent obviously doesn't understand some basic computer organization concepts. But your comparison of hard drive speed to cdrom is wrong. Speeds of hard drives are not 7200x and 5400x, they are 7200 RPM and 5400 RPM. To compare the 7200 RPM speed to 52x cdroms is wrong because obviously cdroms do not spin at 52 RPM. (Imagine the 1x speeds if it did!)

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[Pyro226]

OK, you're just way off here. First off, Hard Drives do not run at 7200 and 5400 x, they run at 7200 and 5400 revolutions per minute (RPM). CD-ROM speeds, are measured in X's, but these X's don't correspond (directly) to a certain RPM, they refer to the speed of the drive where 1x is the regular play speed of an Audio CD. 1x for data is considered to be 150 Kbps (Kilo BITS per second). Based on this, a 52x CD-ROM would get 7.8 Mbps, or just under 1 Megabyte a second.

Hard Drives using the the latest IDE can get 133 Megabyters per second BURST transfers, but even good ones usually only get 50 Megs SUSTAINED transfer.

Despite your screwy numbers, Hard Drives really are much faster for loading operating systems. But the other place you screw up is that you forget what Knoppix is all about - A bootable linux distro would be a lot less convienient if you had to carry it around on a hard drive and open up computers you wanted to use it on.

Not yet

[tepples]

Now all we need is a Knoppix distro that loads automatically onto a demonstration Xbox at your nearest major retailer!

Not yet. The Xbox-Linux people haven't learned how to mod the Xbox entirely through the optical drive. Besides, the demo consoles at the places where I shop are locked behind glass.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[emtilt]

OpenOffice.org was orginally called OpenOffice, but there were legal problems that forced them to add the .org because of a previously existing product with that name.

Knoppix and students

[mokeyboy]

Knoppix is a great distro to pass on to students who need to work in a *IX shell environment to do course work. I recommend it to EE and IT students when they want to get their feet wet but don't want to use VMWARE or go through a potentially destructive HDD repartition. The KDE interface is friendly to the Windows crippled, the harware detection is fantastic and running from the CD, a user can't break it. Many of the derivative distros are also great in niche areas (eg ClusterKNOPPIX). A great piece of work to help make Linux better appreciated and understood.

My best experience with linux

[Stevyn]

My best experience with linux is when I used knoppix a few months ago. My hard drive on my dell laptop crapped out again but I could still use my computer while the replacement was being shipped. I mean it wasn't perfect and I wouldn't want to use it full time, but it was a definate lifesaver that weekend.

I like the idea of a live cd where if I fucked anything up, a simple reboot would fix everything. This is how linux should be taught to new users who are afraid of trying new things but still have some strange desire to use linux.

Re:My best experience with linux

[rossz]

The same thing happened to my wife. The hard drive in her HP laptop (zt1130) died. While waiting to get a replacement (had to wait until payday), she booted with knoppix and used a USB drive (my Laks watch) to store her desktop and bookmarks. I had hoped the experience would convince her to let me install Linux when the replacement drive arrived, but alas, she wanted WinXP. :(

Off-topic: That damn HP laptop convinced me to never buy another HP product again. The drive died when the thing was 13 months old. The manufacturer warranty on it was 3 years, but HP only covered 1 year (it was OEMed). Their offered to fix it for $269 to $649 (depending on the work required). I got rather nasty with them when I got that quote. My exact words to them in my response was, "In other words, you do not honor manufacturer's warranties (which should be 3 years), plus you try to screw your customers by charging them $269 or more to replace a $100 (retail price) hard drive. How nice."

Re:My best experience with linux

[duffbeer703]

Better not buy anything then -- when you purchase components as part of a larger system, the components are never covered individually.

For example, spark plug wires on cars are sold with lifetime warranties. Yet when you purchase a new car, those wires are covered for the length of the new car warranty only!

Instead of yelling at the guy on the phone who was just doing his job, you should have saved your breath and purchased a laptop hard disk on ebay for $100.

Re:My best experience with linux

[rightgit]

Actually, yelling at the guy on the phone, while not nice for him, is a form of customer feedback. The guy who gets yelled at then has the responsibility of reporting the customer complaint to his manager, who then should report it to his manager, until someone with the power to change something decides that action should be taken. Not yelling (or otherwise voicing complaints) only perpetuates poor products and poorer product support. Breath in the form of verbalized comunication is rarely wasted... Just my 2

Re:My best experience with linux

[rossz]

I didn't yell at anyone on the phone. The correspondence was entirely by email. My response was intended to let them know that their "rip off a loyal customer" attitude was not acceptable.

And yes, I bought a new drive and installed it myself. It cost about $120. I know I could have got it cheaper online, but I prefer buying from the local geek store (NCal Computers) because they provide excellent support. If there's a problem in the next three years I can take it to them and they will "make it right". Getting support from an online company can be a major pain in the ass.

Oh, the guys that work at NCal run Linux on their personal systems and actually know what the hell they're talking about. Ever try to discuss a technical issue with the idiot at CompUSA or Best Buy?

Re:Knoppix -- replacement for ghost

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have not found a replacement for norton ghost, you obviously
have not looked far enough.

Have a gander at Acronis Drive Image 7 (Drive Copy? Crap, can't remember).

It's inexpensive and does everything I need, and then some.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[Suppafly]

52x Max (above might have been using a slow model) Hard Drive : Usually around 7200x

These aren't comparable measurements at all.. The x in cdrom speeds is how many times faster it is than the original "1x" cdroms, and harddrive speed isn't measured in X's at all its in revolution's. You can't just add an X to the end of a harddrive speed and expect to compare it to a cdrom drive.

Or...

[Cowclops]

As already stated by other people, Knoppix AND dd are way more flexible than "just ghost." And the whole reason I like it is because it doesn't give a rat's ass what is actually on the drive. It doesn't care what file systems are there, and it will copy it exactly, with no "oops I copied all the files but missed something that I didn't think was important."

The first time I used ghost, I wasn't impressed. The first time I used dd I was surprised by its superiority through simplicity. Your mileage may vary, but that doesn't mean "everyone" is a moron because you don't agree.

Re:Or...

[Cowclops]

If backing up my own opinion because somebody else decided to call people that agree "a bunch of morons" is flame bait, then drench me in gasoline and slap me on a hook!

Re:Or...

[Cthefuture]

Knoppix and tar are more flexible than Ghost maybe, but dd isn't really a very useful backup tool unless you're backing up the MBR or other boot sector.

tar will get all the files and Knoppix supports just about every filesystem there is.

Re:Or...

[shaitand]

Saying Knoppix AND anything that's been mentioned is silly. Parted, dd, and tar are all PART of knoppix.

I agree with what your really trying to say however in regards to tar but NOT dd. DD is quite useful in a school or corporate environment because with a proper sector size set DD is often actually faster than tar (hard to believe I know, but DD reads from one sector next physically inline sector instead of jumping around, the more fragmented the filesystem, the more of an advantage that DD has... on the other hand tar also defrags said filesystem). In these environments the disks and everything else are typically identical.

Where DD shines most however is for HDD imaging for data recovery purposes. Imaging the original drive to a new one with DD will allow you to attempt to reconstruct the data on your copy rather than risking doing further damage to the original. With DD you don't have to mount the original or perform any writes whatsoever to it and you copy every bit whether the filesystem thinks it's important/damaged or not. This can be a lifesaver.

Sweet Mandrake goodness too

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

There's a little Mandrake goodness in there too, Michael.

Re:Sweet Mandrake goodness too

[Seth Finklestein]

I'll thank you not to use the terms "Michael" and "goodness" in the same sentence.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Search Google for "Michael Sims"

Re:Sweet Mandrake goodness too

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

True dat. Thorry, thorry. Seen my journal entries about him?

Others

[nolife]

I've used Knoppix on an old P200/128 ram and it worked fine. I eventually did a hdinstall of Knoppix so I would not need the CD anymore. My kids used it for months with no problems. I put Fedora on the same machine and it ran like a dog. I eventually went back to Knoppix.

I've also played around with Movix, Mandrake Move, and various other smaller live distros. I switched my $199 preinstalled Lindows machine from Walmart.com over to Mandrake based on my good experience with Move.

Re:MIRROR: It SEEMS TO BE SLASDOTTED.

[Wonko the Sane]

You have way too much time on your hands.

On the other hand, it is kind of funny; the sound file is a nice touch.

but

[Dagrush]

yes, but does it run lin...

oh.
(kudos to the guy who started that phrase)

My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really

[MajorDick]

The timing of this article is too funny, today my son, who is 6 (almost 7) grabbed my knoppix CD thinking it was a copy (legal backup:) of I game I had just made a copy of for him for him.

He put it in and after about 30 minutes after not hearing him ask for help with his game (which he ALWAYS does) I went in to see what he was doing, I almost had a heart attack, he was clicking away on Knoppix. It scared me becuase I forgot I had knoppix burned. and I thought he had rebooted my system into linux and changed from Gnome to KDE

But the more I think about it the more I like the idea of setting him loose on a live distro, I dont have to worry about him buggering up my work system (yes I have a spare system for him but its not fast enough for most of his games)

When I first started in computers I was his age and if I made a mistake I rebooted, no OS , MS basic in Rom and a 6502 on an OSI challener (the good 'ole days may date me a bit since that comp came out in 77 and I was 7:)but I got my feet wet in assy programming then. I didnt have to ask dear old dad for any help beyond well, everything, but I didnt have to worry about bonking an OS either.

When I found him on the system he was drawing cats on gimp, bestill my little code monkey....

Re:My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really

[vegetablespork]

Ah, the OSI Challenger. D/C/W/M. You know the Superboard II/C1P's emulated in MESS now, thanks to the efforts of a gentleman in Switzerland named Claudio. He even has a few of his old basic programs there.</offtopic>

Re:My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really

[MajorDick]

Cool, but alas I still have om challeneger, well it was actually a superboard kit, and somewhere Ive still got the 8" floppy for it and a few disks, it all still works , my caps didnt go bad for some reason like the Altair and IMSAI did, I have a great ascii golf game my dad wrote for mainframes in the 60's (he actually got on TV a few times for that one) takes wind and everything into account but we converted it to basic to run on the old OSI....ah the good old days

Re:My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really

[image]

Wow. Think about what you just said. Your six year old child was able to figure out how to boot from a CD, use the KDE interface, and run and actually use Gimp. In 30 minutes. All without any help from you.

And some critics say that Linux is too complicated to be used by adult professionals in the workplace.

You obviously have a very smart son, but the point remains -- Linux is definitely ready for the mainstream, usability-wise.

Re:My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I am amazed of the advanced growth of child nowadays. My daughter is only two years old and is already traversing the menus from my linux box never miss to launch and play by herself his favorite toys potato guy, gimp, kiconedit, kpaint, and frozen bubble! Now she is doom to be one!

Re:My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really

[gnarlin]

He is young, he is learning fast... ;)

Nice troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

not as stupid as all the other brain-popping trolls, but a troll nevertheless :)

The real shocking thing is only that you can get stupid people to mod you up without even reading your stuff!

I prefer Clusterknopix

[twoslice]

ClusterKnoppix is Knoppix on steroids. Instant OpenMosix cluster using PXE network boot for clients.

Re:I prefer Clusterknopix

[Minkey Brines]

FYI: If anyone wants it, I have gotten Clusterknoppix to use non-standard DHCP ports. This means that if you show up at a Windows-only lab, say at your college campus, you can pop in the Clusterknoppix CD into one machine and re-use an Etherboot floppy to get the WHOLE LAB up and running as a HIGH PERFORMANCE PARALLEL SUPERCOMPUTER. I can almost see it... An army of Penguins invades Windows-land! :-) Temporarily! Basically it reuses the existing network and doesn't step on the existing DHCP server. It took me about 10 minutes to get 23 cluster nodes up and running.

Re:I prefer Clusterknopix

[mabhatter654]

My only problem is that the ClusterKnoppix patches always seem to slightly break some stuff [and being a live CD you can't just fix it] It was really cool, but just a bit fustrating to use once you got used to vanilla Knoppix. that said, now that Knoppix has slowed down a bit, maybe they've had a chance to catch up.

Being put off

[corian]

Some people might be put off by the word "unstable," or the word "Sid" (the name of the mentally unstable kid in the movie "Toy Story").

I suppose that I'm one of those people. To me, the strong emphasis on free software / GPL / alternatives to "big corporate entities" that seems to be a part of the Debian community seems antithetical to the idea of naming their product after DISNEY CHARACTERS. Isn't Disney _exactly_ the big evil company the oppose? Isn't Disney the one working to extend copyright indefinately, put all sorts of protections and technical blocks on DVS, &c &c?

So the name "Sid" is a Debian turnoff to me. And probably others.

As for Knoppix, I didn't find it self-configuring very well on my Latop, but I DID find the Image perfct as a way to set up and configure disc images in a VMWare virtual machine. So, the concept IS a very good one. The distribution (or at last the Desktop) seemed inclined to include quite a few things just for a "coolness" factor which didn't contribute to either usuability or functionality. Strip the whole thing down a little cleaner and meanear and you've got a really nice tool.

Re:Being put off

[certron]

Well, suppose you are one of those people. Can I tell you that Sid can also be expanded as "still in development" or "Sid is dangerous"? You can be put off as much as you want, it does not change the product itself.

If you want to not use debian, that is fine. I think someone in the debian team used to work at Pixar, so they are making their releases named after Toy Story characters for a while (bo, rex, hamm, woody, sarge, others).

Re:Being put off

[transiit]

Yeah. I hear you. The reason I stay away from microsoft is because they name so much stuff after ski slopes, and after a horrible skiing accident when I was younger, I couldn't possibly ever use their operating system because it might bring back the trauma.

Or could it be that Bruce Perens used to work for Pixar?

Or could it be that naming revisions after Toy Story characters (it isn't a disney film, it's a pixar film. disney just handles distribution) worked out as a good way to refer to the versions?

Grow up. It's just a naming scheme. Do you boycott coca-cola products because they sometimes do cross-promotions with disney?

-transiit

Re:Being put off

[1u3hr]

... the idea of naming their product after DISNEY CHARACTERS.

I would have assumed that "Sid" referred to Sid Vicious if it hadn't been explained.

Re:Being put off

[Ziviyr]

I'm not big on disney movies either, and the naming might bug me too. But heres a trick:

Don't watch them.

I have not seen any substantial parts of those movies, people have to explain to me who "Sid" referrs to, I don't care when I hear it, and my underpants don't bunch up every time I see "Sid" after that. (I actually see "unstable" most of the time in package managers anyway)

Frankly its a name, lots of names out there, don't know what they all mean, some guy named Sid might cure cancer someday, they can informally call it whatever they want and I'm barely aware of it.

I'm frankly more likely to be turned off of round plates because they're less space efficient than square ones. Heck, maybe I'll buy some square plates tomorrrow!

Re:Being put off

[M. Baranczak]

Do you boycott coca-cola products because they sometimes do cross-promotions with disney?

No, I just boycott them because they taste like shit.

Re:Being put off

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

I would have assumed that "Sid" referred to Sid Vicious if it hadn't been explained.

That was my initial reaction after reading this as well. I think Sid Vicious was much more unstable... although maybe that's what inspired pixar to name their character sid...

Re:Being put off

[kwoff]

I think "stable" is often not really meaningful as people using stable branches want new features backported and this introduces instabilities. Who wants to work on a stable branch when they can develop "sexy" new features. In practice it seems that "unstable" just means you get to use the newer features, while "stable" is just a lagging-behind, second-thought version.

Re:Being put off

[Tin Foil Hat]

When I hear the name "Sid", I think of Sid Vicious. You know, from the Sex Pistols?

Damn, I think I just dated myself.

Trick to knoppic I never learned

[Gyorg_Lavode]

How do I make and get it to realize the damn home image I put on my usb key?

Re:Trick to knoppic I never learned

[Anonymous Coward]

knoppix home=/dev/sda1 at boot time.

Re:Trick to knoppic I never learned

[freeweed]

Click the Knoppix CD icon on the task bar. There's an option to save Knoppix settings, tell it to save to your USB key. During this process, it tells you just what you need to do to load those settings. You have to type in a command at the boot: prompt (the next time you boot, natch), something like "knoppix home=/dev/sda1". Done. It loads from there.

I've just started playing with Knoppix tonight, and I gotta tell you, I'm sold. THIS is what Linux should be.

Re:Trick to knoppic I never learned

[millette]

"I've just started playing with Knoppix tonight, and I gotta tell you, I'm sold. THIS is what Linux should be."

You see, GNU/Linux can be a lot of things at the _same_ time. Isn't that great!

Article mirrors

[ladislavb]

If you find it hard to access the main site, please use one of these mirrors:

• Bratislava (Slovakia)
  
• Cluj-Napoca (Romania
  
• Dallas (USA)
  
• Timisoara (Romania)
  
• Vienna (Austria)

Mini Knoppix

[Cyno01]

Try morphix, its knoppix without the kitchen sink, fits on most USB drives. I havn't used it pesonally, but i've heard good things.

Re:Mini Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

Without the kitchen sink? Why couldn't they include emacs?

Partimage?

[gtrubetskoy]

FWIW, I had pretty good luck with partimage. The NTFS support worked fine for me back in 2001, which was about when I used partimage last... Don't know whether it has improved since.

my trick

[DrLZRDMN]

how about the old kill it with a free cupholder script trick?

7200, 5400 HD RPM and 52X CD-ROM RPM

[Daath]

FYI a 1X CD will revolve 210 times per minute at the outer edge, whereas it will revolve app. 539 times per minute on the inner edge.
Hence a 52X speed CD-ROM will revolve 10920 and 28028 times per minute on the outer and inner edge respectively - What makes CD-ROMs slow is the spin-up and spin-down. Hence random access reads are extremely slow.
Also a 52X is only 52 times faster than a 1X CD-ROM in theory and never on the entire disc. Most new CD-ROMs use CAV (constant angular velocity) and will revolve with the same speed on the entire disc, but will have different transfer rates depending on where on the disc you read.

Re:7200, 5400 HD RPM and 52X CD-ROM RPM

[freeweed]

FYI a 1X CD will revolve 210 times per minute at the outer edge, whereas it will revolve app. 539 times per minute on the inner edge.
Hence a 52X speed CD-ROM will revolve 10920 and 28028 times per minute on the outer and inner edge respectively

Wait. Did you just say that with a straight face, or am I misreading?

If the inner edge revolves more often than the outer edge, just how are they being held together? How many times a minute is the centre of the disc spinning? :)

I think you're getting velocity confused with rpms :)

Re:7200, 5400 HD RPM and 52X CD-ROM RPM

[Daath]

Wait. Did you just say that with a straight face, or am I misreading?

If the inner edge revolves more often than the outer edge, just how are they being held together? How many times a minute is the centre of the disc spinning? :)

This isn't bull ;) On an audio CD it spins app. 539 times per minute on the inner edge to get it's 150KB/s, whereas it only needs to revolve app. 210 times a minute on the outer edge. It's linear - so in the middle it would be app. 374 RPM...

Re:7200, 5400 HD RPM and 52X CD-ROM RPM

[ageitgey]

He didn't say "at the same time". He should have said "210 times per minute when reading the outer edge and 539 times per minute when reading the inner edge". That would have been more clear.

The drive spins the entire disk faster when it is reading the inner edge to maintain a constant read speed.

But like the original poster said, this is no longer true in most modern "52x" drives that just read data more slowly along the inner edge of the disk as compared to the outer edge.

Re:7200, 5400 HD RPM and 52X CD-ROM RPM

[Daath]

And when I read your comment again, I got the joke - It's 4.18am here, and I should sleep, not write things like these on /. ;)

Re:linux hardware test

[FlipmodePlaya]

I've had some real problems getting to Knoppix to work, as compared to some other Live CD distros. Maybe it's because it's made for German hardware (especially in the monitor area), or because I have had bad discs. I was testing it on my PC (which has run Linux beatifully before), and could not get it up. Some quick research on its cheat codes did no good. Still, I find Gnoppix and the Slackware Live CDs infinitely easier to pop in and run than the several others I've tried.

One thing Knoppix will never do...

[Anonymous Coward]

is get you laid.

rescue

[naxi]

I used knoppix to rescue my data when my school laptop with xp refused to boot windows at all.

Next time I plan on testing out my new copy of mandrake move.

Knoppix as a stereo

[Doctor Crumb]

The stereo in my living room is hooked up to my roommate's computer, which runs win2k. I don't have a login on it, so whenever I want to listen to my mp3s in the living room, I toss in a knoppix CD. It detects everything and works great.

used this as a temp system in the lab where I work

[Anonymous Coward]

The Windowz machines had a virus that was making a mess, while fixing some machines I ran the rest off of knoppix and kept the place open for the users... who liked linux a lot

Re:Jesus Saves!

[Clover_Kicker]

...but Gretzky gets the rebound and SCORES!

Knoppix.

[Raven42rac]

Knoppix is just plain awesome. That is a really good idea as well, bringing a self-booting Knoppix CD to test Linux compatibility. Now if we could just get around paying the MS tax.

MEPIS is better

[Anonymous Coward]

If you like Knoppix MEPIS is better...

Knoppix may be shutdown by software patents

[Billly Gates]

I read about it on CPU magazine. No its online otherwise I would link it.

Anyway, the EU is about to vote on software patents and treaties with things like clicking on a file menu is owned by someone.

Knoppix is European and can not afford the costs of software letigation. Just like to spread the word.

Re:Knoppix may be shutdown by software patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop the taxs, Gates TAX is evil..

They give insentives to OEM builders that meet certain goals to give loawer OS $prices for the more systems they sell with there product. This is great and i am sure with in there right. but makes it harder to push alternative OS for a big company. say I am not as big as DELL or HP and I have a computer store that sells a small amount of systems. If I give into there sell more and get it less Am I not breaking there legal contract if I load linux on some systems I sell.

DELL don't they get a discount deal as long as they sign something that says that they can not sell without a XP OS.. how do i avoid paying the MS TAX?!

Cheer to Klaus

[glassesmonkey]

What a great guy who has contributed so much and is also very helpful. I know I wouldn't be in love with Debian if it wasn't for Klaus.

Re:Cheer to Klaus

[Wolfrider]

--I'll give a 'w00t' to that. Knoppix facilitated my migration from suse 7.3 back in 2002.

Run it all the time on my laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

The HD went out on my Thinkpad 390E and it sat unused in the corner for months until I got the idea of running it off of a Knoppix CD. Right now I'm sitting on the comfy sofa browsing & whatever on a system without any hard drive in it at all. A lot more comfortable than sitting at the desk!

It's kinda like that Groundhog Day movie where Bill Murray wakes up and it's always the same day with the same things happening and he knows it -- every time I reboot I have to reconfigure Mozilla the way I like it. Of course, I can just X over to my main Linux machine when I need more persistence or CPU.

Taking it to the store???

[Desult]

Frankly, I can't imagine that anyone fully aware of and capable to use Knoppix would be buying a personal machine off the shelf (business machines are another story). The only reason I would imagine would be to take advantage of the price point or warranty... but even still. In that case I would imagine you'd be buying it online to reduce the CompUSA/Circuit City/etc middleman... and in that case you wouldn't be guaranteed same hardware would ship from Dell/Gateway/whomever as is in the shop. Any information freely available online (from other enthusiasts, perhaps) would seem to be as reliable as an in-store Knoppix boot.

I haven't bought an off the shelf computer for myself for, gee, 7 years? I quite enjoy putting together the pieces myself, and building a computer that totally meets my own needs, and not the "Smart Business User" or "X-Treme Gamer!" mold. I'm quite capable at building my own computers, I buy and build (usually off the shelf, though) computers for my workplace, and am more computer capable than 99% of the people I know, but I don't use Linux on the desktop. I am slowly but surely acquiring UNIX-like skills by using FreeBSD as a server at home and at work, but I don't have the time nor patience to learn a new desktop OS. It therefore surprises me that users who are confident enough that they will be running a relatively insider-OS (Knoppix as opposed to Redhat/Slackware/whatever) will not be building their own rigs, with full knowledge of the compatibility therein.

Obviously it is so, but it's weird to me. As a programmer, I would definitely recommend you girls get your hands in some hardware (ground yourselves first, of course ;)!

-Greg

Re:Taking it to the store???

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I view Knoppix as one hell of a way to go find a Compaq/HP or other laptop that can be supported by Linux.

I've been playing with Linux for several years now, having started with SLS floppies, but I am getting real tired of wondering what laptop to buy. Yes, I'm familiar with some of the Linux Laptop web sites, but frankly, they're a real PITA to plow through. In South Florida, there is a chain of discount stores that compete with Best Buy, Circuit City and CompUSA.I'd LOVE to be able to try Knoppix on a Compaq laptop, and possibly buy it - WITH A WARRANTY - for a decent price.

When contemplating shelling out a kilobuck or so for something, I want to try it BEFORE I buy it. I don't have that luxury with mail order, at least not in an expedient fashion.

Re:Taking it to the store???

[fishbowl]

I've bought "off the shelf" machines lately: My Toshiba Notebook and a Shuttle XPC. Couldn't have done better with parts. Well technically, the Shuttle is parts.

I did the exact same thing couple of weeks ago...

[PepsiProgrammer]

I also have a dell laptop (latitude c840) my hard drive died for the second time a couple of weeks ago, and I used knoppix and a usb memory stick until I got my new hard drive.

(Dell is fast at shipping stuff, got my hd the next day)

Due to the relative lack of bandwidth here, and lack of cd's (on vacation) I went ahead and installed knoppix on my laptop, my first experience with debian. And its pretty nice (alas, I do long for gnome though...)

Knoppix will be good when..

[Lord Bitman]

once there is a decent Koppix-builder, Knoppix will officially be the best thing ever. (I am the official judge of such things)

Imagine being able to custom-build a Knoppix CD through a simple GUI interface, allowing you to do such things as:
-Create a CD which exactly mimics the look and feel of your usual workstation- a few clicks and you can burn the CD, go on a business trip, and feel like you never left

-Create a CD which, in addition to all that knoppix normally has to offer, has a boot option which scans for a network connection, ssh-tunnels into your home computer, and opens a VNC connection- feel like you never left

-Create a CD which, though still acting like knoppix, has your own damn preferences instead of the crap Knoppix defaults to. (My browser's start-page is SLASHDOT, thank you very much!)

-Create a CD which, after inserting, will autorun a reboot in windows, format the hard drive, install knoppix (or, if a network connection exists, the latest woody), completely configure the system based on hardware auto-detection, eject the CD, then powers down. Just imagine- a no-step debian install. Don't want to drop it in accidentally, but a kickass proof of concept it would be!

-Or any other purpose:
--A CD that locates windows shares/drives and makes them available through SAMBA/NFS/FTP (no-step server for access by whatever computer needs it)
--A CD that loads all your diagnostic tools with no extra clutter
--A CD that does nothing but burn KNOPPIX CDs
--A CD that plays Quake
--A CD that shows off a pre-written product demo

Knoppix is great, but to have a CD auto-detect all hardware and then do something USEFUL with that, that would be perfect. No more hassles of "I got this great movie I want to show you, do you have the SPANKME Codec?" -- just burn a Knoppix CD set up to play the movie on boot.

I think it would be cool, Maybe even useful.

Re:Knoppix will be good when..

[damiam]

No more hassles of "I got this great movie I want to show you, do you have the SPANKME Codec?" -- just burn a Knoppix CD set up to play the movie on boot.

Already been done. Also, Morphix can fufill most of your other requests, although it's not point-and-click customizable quite yet.

Re:Knoppix will be good when..

[AlXtreme]

Not yet, we've been working on this, however having good scripts to autobuild knoppix-based modules and livecds has a higher priority (the fancy UI's will come afterwards, there already is a prototype though). There's quite a large community and a large number of projects working on livecds, we're trying to make our lives as easy as possible.

Having said that, Knoppix (still) rocks :-)

Re:Knoppix will be good when..

[mabhatter654]

What they need to do is get together and re-roll a new meta-distro live CD distro...sort of the polar opposite of Gentoo. [one set of meta instructions to create LiveCDs for many computers rather than one set of sources to run optimally on just 1 pc] All the pieces are independantly in place, but need to be rolled into one spot so people can use them like the parent said. That would be a killer-app for sys admins...roll the CD from up-to-date source off the net with just what you want, then stash it on the PCs in all the usual ways...LiveCD, HDD, terminal server. Even MS couldn't keep up with that! Just a little more time!!!

Knoppix for nonprofits?

[ir0b0t]

I ordered my copy of Knoppix after reading the last Groklaw posts. I'm excited by Knoppix's potential to liberate cash-strapped nonprofits (think rural emergency shelter) from the need to tie up scarce dollars in MS software licenses. In the context of lawyers who work for low-income persons, a compressed, bootable Linux and an open source office suite is nothing short of revolutionary. Remote, rural nonprofit-run offices with dated hardware need to be emancipated from the need to continually budget for MS upgrades every two years or so. (It would be even better if it booted from a floppy and the word processor ran prompts from the command line. Given enough time . . . . ) Heartfelt thanks to Knoppix, Debian and anyone else who worked on this in some way!

Re:Knoppix for nonprofits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote, rural nonprofit-run offices with dated hardware ...can't run Knoppix because of not enough RAM.

Re:Knoppix for nonprofits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Save your time and start writing grants.

The feds are throwing money away to purchase technology for non-profit/social service agencies.

Re:Knoppix for nonprofits?

[ir0b0t]

Doing more with less through cooperative effort is better for taxpayers and, I think, more efficient. That's another reason I'm attracted to the open source movement and minimalist Linux distros like Knoppix.

Re:Knoppix for nonprofits?

[mabhatter654]

Note...Knoppix is not minimalist, use one of the variants like Morphix for that. Knoppix is very hard on a system in it's default startup. Don't even consider it if you don't have 128MB ram and the ability to let it use another 128MB on the HDD for swap. [swap is REALLY important for Knoppix to shine, little secret on slow systems] Less than that and it hurts. Note, it runs OK on a P3 350MHz if you keep the open apps down [2-3 at a time]...but it's really tweaked for 1GHz+ systems.

Re:Knoppix for nonprofits?

[ir0b0t]

Thanks for clarifying --- I'm guessing Knoppix may be something I will be able to use to learn more about Linux and continue to journey away from MS. I'm not to the point where I easily understand Linux files and what they are for, how to adjust them, etc. I have a dozen books and practice as much as I can. Its just slow learning for someone w/o much tech background and who was originally reared on MacIntosh. (I've made a note of your post to keep with my Knoppix cd.) Back to the drawing board on the minimalist "instant law office" project.

Re:Knoppix for nonprofits?

[mabhatter654]

hey, look around at distrowatch if you need something really small. I wasn't ripping on Knoppix, just that it's pretty much a full-blown Linux distro with lots of eye candy...it's quite nice. There are ways to strip it down while running it, and there are derivitive distros that don't weigh in with such fat requirements for much older systems which you were talking about using....it the right tool for the job kind of thing.

That said, knoppix does have terninal server function which allows you to remote boot another PC, that requires a fat server, but can accept pretty thin clinets...If you haven't surfed the fourums at Knoppix.net, I'd suggest you do that first. There's lots of good help available...and chances that somebody already has better answers that you can use for your project...it's quite a helpful forum...better than most!!!

Knoppix is great

[Anonymous Coward]

for testing *nix.
But it sucks for working with NTFS drives.
Sure, it can read them.

But for working with nt/2k/xp drives, I rely on BartPE.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

I carry both with me, as both have their uses.

Graduation...

[SharpFang]

Seems Knoppix will be the platform I'll use for defending my graduation work. My school has no decent Linux workstation classroom, and I just couldn't force myself to write all the software I need in visushit. So, Knoppix CD, floppy or USB drive with my work, the custom hardware I'm working with, and - voila!

The rest take 5d20 Damage (n/t)

[PepsiProgrammer]

n/t = no text

Use DD afterall & do Comp Forensic guys know t

[ivi]

So, SQL Server lets one "hide" a relational DB in an unformatted partition... there may even be a performance advantage in doing so...

[Do computer forensic folks know the above?]

Anyway, I'd hate to wipe an old hard disk before finding that its copy (eg, made with dump & gzip)
didn't get the DB copied onto it...

Is therething that does such a job (correctly) -better- (ie more time-effectively) than DD?

I hope so too! YHBT!

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT! YHBT! The Fakelstein troll got a bite!

Re:I hope so too! YHBT!

[Clover_Kicker]

> YHBT! YHBT! The Fakelstein troll got a bite!

No, I was actually trolling you, and now you're the biter.

Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[automatic_jack]

I've been playing with Knoppix a bit recently and enjoying it, but it has pissed me off with two systems.

One has a Biostar motherboard with a Via Rhine network card on it. For some reason, though Knoppix will load the Via Rhine module for it, the card won't come up. It works fine in Debian with the same module, and I've seen posts that the module is somehow compiled slightly wrong in Knoppix. But to fix it, I need to install the Knoppix kernel to a hard drive and then recompile the module! No thanks...

The other is my laptop which has a Senao pcmcia wifi card. Again, in Debian with wlan-ng I can make the card work fine using the prism_cs driver, but Knoppix seems to really, really want to use the orinoco driver for the card. So much that, no matter WHAT I do, I can't get it to use the prism_cs driver. Highly irritating!

Oh well.

Re:Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[SharpFang]

I only get pissed off by a whole lot of typing on startup.
knoppix myconfig=/dev/sda1 home=/dev/sda1 splash vga=normal lang=pl
excuse me. Can't we have some bootparam floppy to keep all that stuff?

Re:Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[shadowcabbit]

I use Knop-STD and it flat-out refuses to recognize my laptop's built-in wifi card. (Broadcom 802.11g) No problem with anything else-- and it runs beautifully-- but the wifi is what I'd really like.

Re:Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[redune45]

Sadly Broadcom 802.11g cards are not supported officially in linux.

However, check out Linuxant's Driverloader It loads the Windows driver and allows it to drive the wifi card in linux.

In fact I'm using it right now - great stuff. Although I don't know how you would be able to integrate it into a Knoppix CD

Re:Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[bstadil]

knoppix splash ===> Boot with fancy background splashscreen

Somehow I do not feel your pain.

Re:Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[Wolfrider]

--Make a boot floppy using the tool on the cd, IIRC ' mkfloppy.bat ' - or dd the boot.img to floppy.

--Mount the floppy and modify the ' syslinux.cfg ' file with your custom boot parms. Voila. Unmount and reboot, everything should be the way you like it.

Re:Two things about Knoppix that piss me off

[Anonymous Coward]

You might also want to try out ndiswrapper ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ ). Works great for my linksys wpc54g.

Games?

[teslatug]

I love Knoppix and I first tried it with version 3.1. I just got version 3.3 and I found out that Ksnake and Ksirtet are gone. Why did they do this??? Those are a couple of my favorite games and they're good to show off to people. There is a ton of crap they could take off, and how much space do those two games take anyway?

Knoppix=converts

[pak0ra]

Knoppix has definately gained some linux converts in my dorm...especially since they saw the ease with which i could demo a whole fully functioning OS from a single bootable cdr.

800M

[SharpFang]

They should definitely release a "Bonus" knoppix version designed for 800M CDs. Great most of CD drives supports those anyway!

Re:800M

[Anonymous Coward]

Knoppix already requires an 800meg cd...

Re:800M

[SharpFang]

Excuse me.

%du -h KNOPPIX_V3.3-2003-11-19-EN.iso
703M KNOPPIX_V3.3-2003-11-19-EN.iso

Now is 3M overburn so much that you need an 800M CD?

Re:800M

[Wolfrider]

--Not very likely. Although they did do a limited-edition Knoppix DVD over the summer.

Re: Full text

[Gleng]

Knoppix is great like that. Once you've booted from the cd, you can run a program to install it to the hard drive and you end up with a nice Debian based system with everything preconfigured and sorted out.

The best thing is that, because it installs straight from the Knoppix desktop, you can chat, play games and read web pages while it gets on with it. :)

Absolutely fantastic for those who are new to *nix because it gives them a chance to get used to the desktop and the apps before digging deeper and learning more about the system, which they can do whenever they're ready.

Re:Use DD afterall & do Comp Forensic guys kno

[damiam]

Norton Ghost, possibly?

It's only geeky to Windows users.

[IANAAC]

If you are considering running Linux on store-bought systems, this is a perfect way to find out if it will work or not.

Linux users don't have the luxury (yet) of knowing if drivers exist for specific harware (other than looking at a HCL that may or may not be current.

System Rescue CD

[Avihson]

You have to load the 72mb of OS into ram. That should be no problem with the system requirements of any post Windows 98 OS. Check my above post for the link to the System Rescue CD. Saved my bacon a few times in the last couple of months.

A happy user of QTParted

Re:System Rescue CD

[Sexy Bern]

Agreed. I only discovered and burned it the other day, rescued what I could from a dying drive by bunging it over the network to a Linux box.

Couple of hours later, new drive installed, O/S installed, SMB share on Linux box gives me my documents back.

Only thing I'd mention about sysresccd is that partimage on it is something like 6.3 beta, whereas on my normal Linux box it's 6.2. The two different versions simply won't talk to each other. If you're in a similar situation in future, this is what you do:

1. On your server/host machine, run "ldd partimage" to get a list of dynamic libraries required.
2. Copy your partimage and all the required dynamic libraries into a dedicated directory, and share it out read-only via NFS or SMB on your server/host machine.
3. Boot from sysresccd on the target machine, smb/nfs-mount the exported directory and run the partimage from your other server/host machine.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!! (sorry).

   This way, the server and client versions are running the same partimage binary and you shouldn't have any problems.

Re:System Rescue CD

[Sexy Bern]

Sorry, that last sentence is a bit muddled. I meant to say the server and client are running compatible versions of partimaged/partimage.

Re:Chinese Crap

[Lost Penguin]

Does Taiwan count?
I have an old Acorp dual P-3 1.4Mhz that ROCKS.
5 PCI slots, RAID - Promise FastTrak:(
Intel 815 chipset, Intel says this chipset does not do SMP ????
The only down side is for some reason it will not take more than 512 MB Ram
(But it has 3 slots, go figure.)

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You.
Are.
Retarded.

mod down parent

[Anonymous Coward]

the grandparent is already modded down, there is no need to decrease the signal to noise ratio to post something redundant

But what if...

[Anonymous Coward]

I call my mare Knoppix?
Ha!

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP

YEAH!

[gregm]

That would be like changing the name of a food that that has the name of a country in it that you're not happy with because they chose not to support your plan to start an illegal war. Oh wait.... Nevermind

Re:YEAH!

[transiit]

Hey, I like iraq fries.

Or were you referring to Turkey?

-transiit

(please cite for me any occassion when I ever used the term 'freedom fries')

Re:YEAH!

[rmohr02]

He's saying the government tried to change the name, not you. Obviously he's not agreeing with your argument and then laughing at you.

Re:YEAH!

[transiit]

I don't recall any laws passed requiring a nationwide change away from the name "french fries"

Although I did see a lot of news coverage when the congressional cafeteria made such a change.

Amazing how the television news (which exists primarily for ratings (in the name of luring in more advertising dollars)) sometimes self-propogates the news stories. Oh, wait....it isn't. It's surprising that people still fall for it.

Of course, I also changed away from the same news channel this morning (before falling asleep) because it looked like they were going to spend the next three hours covering footage of the alleged Brittany Spears wedding. Fair and balanced.

Everybody's got an agenda. Some take less to see through (such as those that think the patriotic duty is to remove the french from fries) Even so, I still find it hard to believe that there's any justification to avoid debian or it's derivatives just because they use a name from a disney-distributed flick, at least not when there's more reasonable things to complain about.

-transiit

Re:YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

please cite for me any occassion when I ever used the term 'freedom fries'

This post here, final line.

Re:YEAH!

[transiit]

if recursion is the only way to answer my question, than I think I've proved that point.

Me too

[Neo-Rio-101]

My girlfriend's laptop PC's hard disk took a dive, and since it was so old, I couldn't get a suitable replacement notebook Hard disk. So she used Knoppix for a while until her new PC got delivered. (She uses XP now, cause she can't get Gaim to do voice chatting.) I love the way Knoppix recognises USB devices. It even recognized by portable HD drive (that uses two USB ports). If only RedHat could do that...

My only problem...

[CBob]

Was that the ver of Knoppix I tried wouldn't play nice w/the multiple network connections I had on my nforce2 based system. Prob something w/nvidia(MSI)'s onboard network drivers. Worked GREAT on the venerable old P3 450 Gateway box I tried it on tho.

Knoppix Data Recovery for Grandma

[CedgeS]

Knoppix is excellent for data rescue and recovery work. This data recovery howto for Knoppix has proved invaluable for many of my friends. It has also been translated into Polish

Re:Knoppix Data Recovery for Grandma

[charlieafrid]

You just saved my a............. Thanks alot for the link. I am wintel guy but I have been playing around with Knoppix for a while now. I think I will move to linux sooner than later.

Knoppix firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

Knoppix is very cool, but even though it only offers two services in default mode(x11 and bootpd)I would feel naked without a firewall. The default iptables policies are all ACCEPT. You can easiely fix this by adding just two rules. The simpliest rules you could add are "iptables -P INPUT DROP" then "iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT" . Now you have statefull firewall that lets you establish any kind of outgoing connection you wish and the returning packets are let back through the firewall.

Re:Knoppix firewall

[inode_buddha]

Mods: +1, Informative for this "Knoppix Firewall" AC. The basic idea mentioned is very similar to what I use day-to-day. Also, there's an extra-cool hack here (SysAdmin Magazine) for this kind of thing. I hope this AC or somebody picks up on this - it looks like a good replacement for floppyfw, using some script hacks; nothing fancy, just effective.

Re:Knoppix firewall

[boneshintai]

I'm tempted to mark this off as firewall cargo-cultism. Barring bugs in the kernel, a port that is not listening cannot accept packets. Given that iptables runs in the same kernel, I'm inclined to believe that it's equally-likely to have a bug that causes it to accept packets it should drop/reject.

With a read-only system such as knoppix, it's extremely hard for a trojan to set up a rogue service on a high port for long enough to be useful to an attacker, and next to impossible to arrange for that to come back next time the system is rebooted.

Don't glue the CDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to rotate!
Just insert the CD and glue the CD drawer to the case!

Knoppix & MAME!

[antdude]

How about putting MAME and a few arcade games? ;) KnoppiXMAME.

colleges do this

[iamhassi]

" Probably works nice with network booting, then selecting a configuration, start cloning and then reboot into a brand-spanking new & fresh OS installation."

Campus computers were setup like that. The drives were wiped when restarted, and on boot it'd load a cloned OS over the network onto the hard drive.

Kept the geeks from installing viruses and required no maintance, since the OS for every PC on campus was all on one server, just had to be sure every PC was similar so the drivers could be the same.

I recently did a hard-drive install of knoppix 3,3

[Clockwurk]

and had some mixed success. The install was pretty painless (other than figuring out the formatting utility) and the OS itself isn't bad.

I ran into a couple of problems though. Sndconfig refuses to work with my sound card. I have an audigy and the emu10k1 (or whatever the hell name it was) installs by default. Running the sndconfig command (after struggling to find a way to close x windows without shutting down) I was greeted by a "module is not in the specified search path"... No information was given as to which path was the search path nor any information as to how to change the search path.

Knoppix also installs by default close to every program ever written for linux including both KOffice and OO.o perhaps a little bit of an overkill.

The other problem I have with knoppix is changing the refresh rate and screen resolution. When using the live CD, the refresh rate and the screen resolution are some of the "cheat codes" you can enter. In the hard-disk install, no oppurtunity is offered for the entering of such codes. I'll probably end up having to edit some .conf file :'-(

The final minor annoyance (and it is minor) is that the CD version boots using both color and a nice resolution (1024x768) for the streams of console text that appear during booting. The hard-disk install does not. It's pretty minor, but the colored text and resolution was really nice and made reading the text much easier.

Knoppix is a really good live CD, but the harddrive install leaves a little to be desired. Hopefully that changes with new versions.

Re:Jesus Saves!

[Anonymous Coward]

Knoppix saves shite. He's talking about souls not fucking piss ant text files stupid.

Hiphip horray for Knoppix!

[naelurec]

Ways I have used knoppix..
- to backup data from bashed W2K machines to a network drive
- to scan a networks for security issues
- to test systems for Linux compatibility
- to demo linux to people
- to show off crossplatform apps
- customized as a product demo CD
- customized as a read-only server setup
- as an aid to test for hard-to-detect hardware issues
- as a boot disk to access other Linux boxes
- test for server/client configurations

Needless to say, I use Knoppix a LOT. I have created lots of Knoppix disks and promote it to anyone who has an interest in learning about or who uses Linux. I have found it to be awesome at detecting a wide variety of hardware and a great "second opinion" when troubleshooting a Windows box for hardware issues .. pop in Knoppix and see if the hardware exhibits the same problems.

Re:Hiphip horray for Knoppix!

[Fr33z0r]

It's extremely useful as a "real" distro too.

1) Boot Knoppix cd
2) Open root shell
3) Type "kpx-hdinstall" (or whatever the command is)
4) ???
5) Many happy time!

Being Debian based and having a working (although slightly broken - some of the mirrors on the most recent release are hosed) apt-get you just need to "apt-get update", "apt-get dist-upgrade", "apt-get synaptic" and you've got a fully fledged, up-to-the-minute distro installed with a nifty little package manager (and "alien" for RPM's of course - which I think is nice because I needed to take off lesstif and add openmotif yesterday)

It's functional, overwhelmingly so considering what it is, and I don't see any reason why, (when I get around to building a "real" Linux box) I should put something like Mandrake or Fedora on, sure the load screen is nice in Fedora (and the atrpms apt clone is dead sexy - or was in RH9 at least) and urpmi is something I'll miss... I'm not sure how much though, compared to apt.

The problem is it's a Live-CD first and foremost, and as such has a lot of junk people don't need (or want) from a distro (like OpenOffice, the NES emulator, TV stuff, blah blah blah) - We live in an age of broadband, if someone were to cut that stuff out of the Knoppix CD, leaving just a barebones distro with KDE/Gnome and a graphical package manager, with the kernel source and necessary libraries included too it would be the best distro out there bar none IMHO.

Let's face it, why on Earth did we have to download all three discs of Mandrake 9.1 - the 3rd being the "Internationalisation" (or whatever) CD *which was the one with the kernel source on it* when all we want is a base install with a decent package manager?

That is what we want, right? Isn't that one of the reasons people bitch so much about Microsoft? For bundling a bunch of junk like media player and IE into Windows?

A *really good* base installation CD with a decent package manager that satisfies its own dependencies is what the world needs more than anything right now - I have broadband, I can handle waiting for the packages I want to download while I'm setting up my OS the way I want it, but I don't want to wait for over a gig and a half to download (and spend the time burning 3 CDs) before I can even *start* installing my system.

So yeah, </rant>, a basic install CD with kernel sources is what the Linux world really needs, and so far, from what I've seen, Knoppix is the closest thing we've got.

I kinda feel like making one myself now :D

Stores sell many things

[freeweed]

Some of us buy laptops :)

Re:Stores sell many things

[Desult]

That's true, I hadn't really considered that. Still, I would be worried as much as about small but significant differences in production models versus the store show models that might be 6 months old. I suppose a 90% certainty is better than relying on newskoollinuxlappies.com though =)

-Greg

er, no

[Doktor Memory]

Between these utilities you can do pretty much everything ghost can and much much more. ...unless the system you want to modify uses NTFS as its filesystem and you want to do anything other than a bitwise copy.

I was downloading this yesterday afternoon...

[stvangel]

and didn't notice until I tried to use it this afternoon that I only got 50 meg of it. I then went to a different site and was downloading it at about 120K per second. Being the idiot that I am, I accidently got the German version. Going back to the site, I can only get 25K per second tops. The Slashdot effect at work.

Forget about building a special distro just for the 800 meg CD's out there. It's not really that much more space for something that's not "standard" in the first place. Why doesn't somebody go ahead and make a Knoppix-type distro for DVDs? Most newer machines have them and with 4.7 gig of storage space you can put pretty much everything on them. With one of these properly configured and a decent sized USB memory drive, this is all somebody really needs for a truly portable computing experience. You could fit Gnome and KDE as well as a good installer on them. Forget about making a "Live" version of a distro. With one DVD containing a live version of Linux as well as a full installation environment running on it, it's a true one-stop-shop.

Does anybody make a credit-card form factor DVD +/-R like they do with the CD-Rs? If you could fit a full Knoppix distro onto something that size that you can fit into your wallet, that'd be really useful. While CD's aren't all that big, they're inconvenient to carry around all the time "just-in-case".

It's really too bad that you can't burn a distro to a CR-RW or a DVD +/-RW and use the unused space as a worm drive of your configuration or data. You'd have to refresh the disc every so often as your available space would dwindle, but you could get around even needing a USB key-fob. Unfortunately the common disc-formats in use make this very difficult, but it's something to think about...d

Re:partimage

[Anonymous Coward]

PARTIMAGE its on the knoppix disk from versions june 2003 up..

Knoppix should have a GAME Only CD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take all the cool games knoppix has ever had on there and add them back remove the othere stuff and add more great games linux has to offer like TUX

Re:Jesus Saves!

[Anonymous Coward]

radio waves

DD often far faster

[billstewart]

What's this "empty space on a disk" you're talking about? :-) Maybe dump/restore has gotten faster,
and it certainly helps if you've defragged your source disk before copying, but normally copying files is slower because it's much more complex and has to bounce around the disk a lot more, while dd can just rip right along without slowing down. (As somebody else mentioned, you do want to use large blocks with dd, of course.) Norton Ghost does have some extra functionality on Windows, dealing with the !(#W(@!# Registry settings, which aren't always friendly to exact copying, but on Unixes that's a lot less of a problem.

Doug Gwyn's "Adventure Shell"

[billstewart]

There seems to be a copy of Doug Gwyn's Adventure Shell here. It seems to date from 1986, back when we actually used text to communicate with Unix machines.

You are in a directory. A stairway called .. leads up. There are files here.

Get foo.

Throw foo at /dev/lpr.

There is a DVD version available !

[Anonymous Coward]

the Rare DVD version was relased back last year some time.. they should do anouther one. Visit knoppix.net and search for dvd knoppix or something like that

and if anyone has it they should make a bittorrent file of it. since bittorrent is the coolest thing. that makes the more people that want a file the faster you get it technology.

so forget 800 megs.. thats some sort of silly thing with the price of dvdrws dropping in price.. frig dvd is the future of computing..

4 gigs of stuff..

Knoppix is great

[sharph]

I would like to say that I am trying Knoppix for the first time right now. I'm definately handing a copy to my non-linux friends.

you forgot these uses

[Anonymous Coward]

_to backup (image a harddrive) using partimage
you know cause windows messes up if you actualy use it.
-to test your memory out with the "memtest mem all" shell command
-to prove to your school computer administrator that there is reall no need to licence MS office products (Developemnt and the such)

Frig if we could show schools that there is a alternative and they actualy moved over to it development would start to be taught and windows would eventualy disapear. (wow you have no idea how good it feels to say that!)

windows licencing, crippled ware buggy OS.
you know knoppix is sid and sid being the unstable really is a joke cause beside windows XP with all the latest patches everything even tweeked up with software and settings is really considered beyond unstable compared to knoppix or heck linux in general.

-Linux is used generaly in harddrive diagnostic softwares provided by manufactorers, memtest is gotta be one of the best for testing memory .. heck its linux..

people keep telling me linux needs a kkiller app.. well gezz man have you seen MLdonkey or evolution or frig mplayer.
i don't rember mplayer sending my personal info or what I am pklaying everytime I load up to play a video.. friog MS violates your privacy daily many times a day 16 diffrent ways! good write up here http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm

your software firewalls don't exactly packet sniff. blocking off some ports is not gunna keep you safe from parts ms windows wants to get through back to big brother.

When I run linux Its like you have been freed from all the crap..

when you run windows, it does not matter how fast your new harddware is it will get clogged up just using your IE browser.. before you know it you will have weird search bars questions asked to you with yes or no questions that make no sence and bang its slowed down with spyware.. if its quick don't worry you will need popup stoppers search bars and anti virus programs that will slow you down. if all that network traffic from your system from spyware (never ending war0 does not slow you down the 16 diffrent way MS violatesd your privacy daily will

People will hopefully wake up?!

knoppix is awesome...but...

[MoFoQ]

I wish they enable firewire and usb (1.1/2.0) cdrom booting by default...(been lazy to customize it myself....especially with all the pitchforking in recent times).

CD-R Lifetimes?

[billstewart]

I realize it's probably not _that_ critical, since you can always burn more CD-ROMs, at a whopping 15 cents US each (or what is it? $1 CDN after the music tax?), but how long do CD-Rs last for this kind of work? Months? Weeks?

Re:CD-R Lifetimes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can attest to the fact that a CD-R knoppix distro can run for greater than two months nonstop. I had some simulation code that needed to run for a long time (depth first tree search of a game set) and I had it running on a spare computer from March 15th (one month before tax day) to April 20th (girlfriend's mom's birthday) when it was accidentally shut off.

OT: Sig...

[spectre_240sx]

This has probably been said before, but the first amendment give the right to free speech. It says nothing about listening to that free speech.

Mental illness alert.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anger problem.

Pixar, not Disney

[pjc50]

The originator was Bruce Perens, at the time when he worked for Pixar. Pixar just use Disney as a distributor, and will only do so for one more film, at which point they will be free to do it themselves.

Windows XP should literally be against the law.

[Futurepower(R)]

"I think it's atrocious that Windows doesn't even come with a workable backup mechanism. Their backup tool doesn't even back up the OS!"

Here is a Slashdot story about drive imaging Windows, and what a huge hassle it is: Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software?.

I think an OS that does not come with full backup tools does not observe the ethics of Fitness for Merchantability. Windows XP, as it is sold now, should literally be against the law.

Re:Windows XP should literally be against the law.

[rikkards]

Yeah but if it did, Symantec and PowerQuest could have Microsoft brought up on Monopoly abuse.

There are many limitations to Sysprep:

[Futurepower(R)]

Selling an operating system that is crippled so users cannot make backups should be against the law: #7879376

Sysprep: Be sure you have the latest version Windows 2003 of Sysprep. Earlier versions are buggy. There are many limitations to Sysprep. This is copied from official Microsoft info:

- Sysprep must be installed on drive C.

- Multiboot configurations are not supported when you create a Sysprep
image.

- You cannot run Sysprep on a computer that is a domain controller, or a
computer that has the Certificate Services service started or the Cluster
service started.

- Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) installations do not support
Sysprep. You must use Volume media to build images from because OEM media
may have problems with product activation.

- Sysprep should not be run on a system that has been running for a long
time.

- It is best not to run Sysprep on a computer that has been upgraded. Use a
new installation as a starting point for Sysprep images.

The following lists Sysprep operations that are not supported by Microsoft:

- When you use Sysprep to create a Windows 2000 image, and then
upgrading the image to Windows XP, then re-imaging with Sysprep

- When you use Sysprep to create an image on a computer where a
in-place upgrade of the operating system was previously performed

- When you use Sysprep to create an image on a computer that has been
running for extended period of time

- When you use Sysprep to create an image on any computer where the
default user account has been overwritten by the Administrator account

- When you use a Sysprep to image a computer that has a different
Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) than the source computer. For example,
when you use a Sysprep image that was taken from a computer with a PIC
HAL and then attempt to image a computer that contains a APIC HAL

- Using Sysprep to create an image from a source computer that has had
a custom OEM installation.

If all the above rules are ok for you, you may go ahead to check the
following article again.

302577 HOW TO: Use Sysprep.exe Tool to Automate Successful Deployment of
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=302577

For more information about how to use Sysprep.inf for multilingual support
see the online help.

For a more detailed explanation about answer files and their valid
parameter values, please refer to the Ref.chm file in the
\Support\Tools\Deploy.cab folder on the Windows XP Professional CD-ROM.

Re:There are many limitations to Sysprep:

[jabberw0k]

Does the box include a free HappyFunBall ?

Re:There are many limitations to Sysprep:

[rikkards]

Don't know.
I'm not allowed to look at it directly. :)

Re:There are many limitations to Sysprep:

[shaitand]

Just to debunk (not by any means denying that's the official microsoft voice on the issue), as usual that is mostly microsoft trying to scare people away.

Mainly this, Sysprep works perfectly well on OEM versions AND upgrades.

Basically all sysprep REALLY does is, change the pc name and SID + knock out motherboard and ide drivers.

It's kind of like performing the first half of a win98 install, then ghosting that to different systems, you will get clean hardware detection every time and simply cut the install time down (since copying everything with ghost or knoppix at that point takes about 2 min where the installer takes 20).

Activation issues are not an issue.

So most of those things work (especially the big ones), just don't expect microsoft to help you with them. Have you ever called microsoft anyway? and if so, did ever make the same mistake (of calling) again?

Re: Full text

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you?

I knew you could do this with morphix but with knoppix? I'll need to have another look at it then coz it does everything I want out of a linux system.

Re: Empahsis of Free Software

[krmt]

To me, the strong emphasis on free software / GPL / alternatives to "big corporate entities" that seems to be a part of the Debian community seems antithetical to the idea of naming their product after DISNEY CHARACTERS. Isn't Disney _exactly_ the big evil company the oppose? Isn't Disney the one working to extend copyright indefinately, put all sorts of protections and technical blocks on DVS, &c &c?

I'm surprised that you think of the GPL in this way. I don't like to think of it as anti-corporate, so much as pro-freedom, and that includes the freedoms of corporations. This includes corporations such as Redhat and IBM, who have both done quite a bit to help the whole of Linux, including Debian. The GPL is meant to provide a level playing field, where the corporations have the same rights as individuals, so why not take names from something that was birthed from a corporation? Or do you not think that Debian Developers run hardware or buy 'net access from corporations?

Yes, Disney is one of many working to extend copyright indefinitely, and that's a problem, but as others have said, there are historical reasons for the naming scheme (hi Bruce!), plus it's a fun naming system. But beyond that, Debian developers are too busy worrying about real issues, such as the validity of the GNU Free Documentation License (hint: it's not Free by Debian standards) and how to fix it, or *gasp* getting the next release out the door (yes, it's coming soon, the installer was frozen for beta2 today, which may be the actual release version). In comparison to these issues, the codename for Debian Unstable suddenly seems a lot less of an issue.

If you'd really like to press forward with the problem, I suggest fixing some bugs so the focus can be shifted to such things.

testing new systems

[kwoff]

Like others, I used Knoppix when I went to buy a new laptop. One problem, which the store-owner was insightful enough to point out, is that because Knoppix is intended to be a general distribution (though it supports a lot of different hardware), it might be somewhat "dumbed down" so that, although you couldn't get an ultra-new system to work immediately by sticking a Knoppix CD into it, you might be able to if you googled a bit to find the problem. In fact, though I went in the store determined not to get an HP laptop (which I had very bad experience with before), that was the only one with my desired specs which would boot immediately from the Knoppix CD (some Sony Vaio and another brand didn't boot). It might be that I saved myself a lot of trouble by avoiding those machines, but then it might just be a simple problem with Knoppix itself not yet supporting the hardware.

Re:testing new systems

[CBravo]

do you want to do that? I don't ... Knoppix is much further than debian stable, so knoppix will do for me. I prefer somewhat stable hardware.

Re:Knoppix - let me try again.

[TheScienceKid]

What's really gonna bake your noodle is can you write to anything other than a pre-existing file or change the size of a file? I'm afraid your noodle's cooked.... because it doesn't. To quote linux-2.6.0-test11/fs/Kconfig ....

config NTFS_RW
bool "NTFS write support"
depends on NTFS_FS
help
This enables the partial, but safe, write support in the NTFS driver.

The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without
changing the file length. No file or directory creation, deletion or
renaming is possible. Note only non-resident files can be written to
so you may find that some very small files (

It is perfectly safe to say N here.

Re:Knoppix - let me try again.

[TheScienceKid]

sorry.... slashdot keeps cutting the middle out. I can't figure out why, you'll just have to read the config help on NTFS Write support in 2.6 yourself.

Distro that benchmarks computers (SPECviewperf)

[gtada]

Right now I'm looking for a new laptop, and it occured to me that it'd be great if Knoppix came with SPECviewperf so it could do benchmarks while you're shopping.

I love KNOPPIX(Jpn Ed.)

[oddmake]

KNOPPIX is known to Japan.
I install Japanese edition to hdd.
There are variant KNOPPIX,too.
KNOPPIX Edu TG(Japanese),KNOPPIX-GridComputing,KNOPPIX-RW(Rewr itable KNOPPIX) (ISO image)
My friend bananan_w also tries "PXE-bootable-NFS-root-KNOPPIX" which needs no HD drive or CD-ROM drive.
We Japanese also loves KNOPPIX!

a script to build a bootable DVD

[axxackall]

I asked same questions on Gentoo forums and I've got an impression that usually people with DVD+/-R/RW don't know how to build a bootable DVD. The problem with a bootable DVD is in its size - its image would be too big to become commonly downloadble. But if you have a Linux box in your hands then such problem doesn't exist anymore. The solution is to distribute a guiding script instead of an image. If you already have Linux with DVD authoring tools then such script, being configured and told about what settings and what applications you want on the disc, would build all desireable application packages, pre-configure the system for your desirable environment, make a proper image and burn it. Source code is more compact than binaries. And it's a high chance that you have most of needed source code on your Linux box already. So, with such a guiding script, the downloaded size can be even less than with a CD image. By the way, does any of you know any links that I can follow and gather bootable DVD advises? I may build such script by myself (as I actually need it!) and share it with the rest of us.

Re:a script to build a bootable DVD

[millette]

A lot of programs and drivers still have problems with files greater the 4 GiB or so. It's a shame, but it's getting better everyday accross the chain. If you think about it, there aren't many other files bigger then that for the common mortal.

Linux Bootable Business Card

[dark_day]

I've found the Linux Bootable Business Card to be very useful for simple repair work and you can keep it in your wallet.

linux bbc

Re: Full text

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, first Overly Critical Guy, a known Linux-basher who spreads FUD and lies, tries to switch to Linux. And now NanoGator. Something big is a comin'!

OT: Your sig ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Support the First Amendment: Read at -1.

A similar sig I once saw on /. was "Thank you for reading at -1"

Problem with ghost on NTFS...

[Ayanami Rei]

the gho file format DOES NOT retain security ACLs and other certain extended attributes from the source machine. It can copy the file layout and files, but not much more.

Of course, it is sort of pointless to copy certain SIDs from one machine to another because there is no guarantee that they exist on both machines. But that's no excuse not to translate them into "names" and then translate them back on the other end.

In this respect, I don't find Ghost very useful for NTFS. A simple application of "tar" on a RO NTFS mounted fs in linux is just as featureful.

(I forgot to add...)

[Ayanami Rei]

and so really the only way to do a good job (get a logically equivalent NTFS but without bit-by-bit copy) is to use something like Veritas on a one time basis. Unless you already have a license, this is probably overkill.

I think maybe a better idea is for someone to write a tool that would go in the ntfstools suite that uses the logic in ntfsresize to pick out sectors of the NTFS that are being used, and only back up that (but a bit-by-bit copy). This is similar to the technique Arconis as well as Retrospect uses to back up NTFS transparently (but "blindly") with decent performance.

For all I know (I'm not a member of the mailing lists or anything), this is already in the works.

Your mistake was...

[Ayanami Rei]

purchasing a computer at best buy.

Your $2800.00 would have been better spent at some online store (even dell.com).

Re:Your mistake was...

[mfchater]

I wanted a computer with a 17 inch monitor. Trust me, I wanted to buy from Dell, however they dropped the ball big time when they decided to not go with a 17 inch screen.

$ history

[Ayanami Rei]

1 find -name '*britney*'
...
10 tar xvfz 70m5-r00t-k17.tgz
...
47 eliza
...
94 help
95 help help
96 del C:\*.*
97 I HATE THIS FUCKING COMPUTER!!!!!!

META-MOD AS UNFAIR

[Morosoph]

All caps should help here! This is neither a troll, nor offtopic. I have a feeling that a troll somewhere has found themselves in possession of mod points.

To mod up a non-anonymous cut and paste post or link, mod it as funny; if the author's gone to the trouble to make a mirror, informative is the best mod IMO.

OT

[Stevyn]

Twice huh? I'm glad I'm not the only one. At least they're replacement was fast and I keep all my data on an external firewire hard drive.

No way man.

[Ayanami Rei]

Pepsi tastes like sugar water. I'd take a Coke anyday. And fast food chain that carries only Pepsi products (hence Pizza Slut and Taco Hell) never gets my business.

Re:No way man.

[M. Baranczak]

I don't drink either coke or pepsi. (Although coke is almost palatable if you add enough rum and lime juice.) And I avoid fast food places, unless I'm truly desparate. I'm telling you, life's too short to eat crappy food. Thanks to Mickey D's and BK, most Americans don't even know what a good burger is supposed to fucking taste like! The good burgers are out there, but they've been effectively squeezed out by the big chains with better advertising. (My personal pick: Kope's Garage in Ithaca, NY.)

Where did this thread start, anyway?

knoppix hdinstall

[Cruciform]

Putting knoppix on a hard drive has to be one of the least painful installations of any OS I have seen, on par with WinXPs 'walk away and let me do my thing'.

Except that Knoppix finishes installing in 20-22 minutes on an old Athlon 800. Sweet. :)

dd and speed

[TA]

'dd' is slow only when you don't specify a blocksize. The default is just 2048 bytes, which makes it really slow. Just specify a larger blocksize, e.g. dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=131072
If you want to make an exact copy of a disk full of data then there is no faster way than this.

Knoppix+Remote Config?

[bigattichouse]

Is it possible to store the config/files remotely? I'd love to have a "diskless" system where I could carry a CD around that has my "host" configured. Pop in the CD on any machine and boot to my desktop, have access to my files, etc.

Re:Knoppix+Remote Config?

[mikefoley]

I'd love to see something like this. Then I could create "GrampyLinux" for my stepDad. He lives in Ireland and keeping the files on my server would mean I'd be able to modify/fix things and he'd pick them up on the next connection.

Ideally, the thing to do would be to rsync the stuff on the USB key with a remote directory automatically. That probably wouldn't be too hard to do.

Re:Knoppix+Remote Config?

[mabhatter654]

Your Rsync idea has been tried, but it's a bit heavy because of the chloop compression that changes everthing for the smallest program change. Surf the Knoppix Forums for the scripts!

You are lying!

[jotaeleemeese]

When was this individual provided the Corporate Retraining [tm] that using that communist software requires?

You have commited a crimental. Only Windows is user friendly!

Re: Full text

[NanoGator]

NFI what you're on about.

Training.

[jotaeleemeese]

Let me introduce myself: I provide corporate training and start many business relationships with /.ers in dire need like yourself.

My portfolio of publications:

-Don't iron the irony.
-Humour for nerds, stuff that is funny.
-Extreme programming for people that don't get the joke.

Thanks

Not true.

[jotaeleemeese]

The particular example you gave would not be patentable in the EU.

I have no idea what you are talking about, but there is nothing in the new software patents that would kill Knoppix or any other EU Linux distribution.

META-MOD AS UNFAIR

[Anonymous Coward]

See also This comment.

~Morosoph

Preinstallation Kit

[idontneedanickname]

A quick Froogle search turns up quite a few people selling those preinstall kits. Here's just the first shop that pops up:

http://www.amamax.com/wi20proprein.html

http://www.amamax.com/swmswinxppreinstacd.html

Re:Knoppix - let me try again.

[chainsaw1]

Since you are accessing NTFS, we can assume you have WinNT version X and thus you can have full write support if you want it.

Granted this is more work than just recompiling the kernel, but it _can_ be done.

Instant PVR with KnoppMyth

[Duchamp]

I'm building a Myth based PVR using KnoppMyth. http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

It's quite amazing how easy it is to get running.

Before you try it, I recommend you cruise the discussion forum to be sure your hardware is supported.

META-MOD AS FAIR

[Anonymous Coward]

Click the link if you're not at work. It's a troll.

Newer versions of parted handle NTFS just fine!

[waferhead]

Ghost has issues just like anything else... I have had better luck with parted v ghost for quite some time, and then you run (another program) (Been a month or so since I had to do it...) to finish the resize.

dds better use is for recovery/forensics, to make a backup copy of a read-only fs, so one can attempt recovery on the copy, v an original hosed up disk.

Trying to fix a mounted volume (ala windows) is a bad idea if you ever hope to see data off a damaged volume...

META-MOD AS FAIR

[bluephile]

Click on the link if you're not at work. It's a troll.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'X' in CD-ROM speed is (if I remember correctly) based on a 150KB (or is it Kb?) transfer speed. Serial ATA hard drives allow for up to 150MB transfer speed, which means about 1024X CD-ROM speed.

Re:My Knoppix Problems

[jubei]

1x cd-roms transfer 150 kilo BYTES a second, not bits.

Remember that a typical mp3 (which is compressed) is 128-196 kilobits a second.

Re: Full text

[Gleng]

Yup, just boot up Knoppix, open a terminal, then:

su
knx-hdinstall

It'll ask you about where you want to install everything, and then just gets on with it. Easiest Linux install ever. :)

knoppix - I tried it.

[freeze128]

I tried knoppix several months ago. Sadly, it didn't detect my onboard sound hardware (Analog Devices) or my network card (3com 3c905). This left the experience a little flat. I can believe that it might have trouble with the sound hardware, but not finding a 3COM?!?! That's unforgivable.

Maybe that guy's 6-year-old can get the drivers working for me.

Re:knoppix - I tried it.

[mabhatter654]

network card (3com 3c905)...that card seems to have lots of problem with linux...don't know why. But I've seen it come up all over the place as a problem child card...to bad it was [probably still is!] such a hot piece of hardware for sys admins back in the day.

Why the -mod?

[Little Brother]

As I type this the parent is modded 0, Flamebait(might be 1 Flamebait before my short post -1 filter). I truly don't see what the problem with this. Anyone know what's up?

Anyone know why I care?

Re:Chinese Crap

[eean]

I agree, I have a Gigabyte motherboard, its pretty nifty. Gigabyte is from Taiwan.

And by the way (responding to Anonymous Coward), I bought my computer from Cyber Power. I thought it would be obvious enough that the alternative to retail is online, but apparently not. You see, there is little old Texan company called "Dell". Perhaps you haven't heard of it.

Or...

[TheConfusedOne]

Jesus saves!...But Gretzky gets the rebound, he shoots, he scores!!!

Jesus saves sinners...and redeems them for valuable cash prizes.

Ghost Replacement

[extrandall]

Hate to say it, but I've spent plenty of time looking for Ghost replacements, and found none.

Well, you haven't looked hard enough...
http://www.altiris.com/home.asp

Altiris can do the following:
Reimage Machines
Clone an image onto another machine
Allow Remote Controlling
Create "Rips" for Installing software
Create Dos bootdisks with network support
Capture user settings to migrate to another machine
Run Scripts (For installing Patches etc.)
Edit the HDD & Software Install Images, without having to create a new image from scratch (A Huge Time Saver!!!)
Remotely Configure the machine's Netowrk settings (IP address, PC name etc.)
Remotely Wakeup, Shutdown and Restart Machines

Mind you, Altris costs a lot to license, but works a hell of a lot better then ghost in a corporate environment.

TEST BEFORE MODDING (GOOD LINK)

[Morosoph]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/allencastro/knoppix/d wres.htm is the address I have got repeatedly, and it looks like, well, a mirror.

Either this redirects different browsers differently, or else this coward is himself a troll.

Re:Need bootable USB bookmarks

[saskboy]

Or if security isn't a concern, just post them into your /. Journal.

"Have you ever called microsoft anyway?" Yes, LOL.

[Futurepower(R)]

"Have you ever called microsoft anyway? and if so, did ever make the same mistake (of calling) again?"

LOL. Yes. See Huge cultural differences, not just accent. I'm experienced with Microsoft people thinking that they are gods and I am inferior, but this guy was worse than even that.

What you said about Sysprep fits with my experience.

Oh, I know good hamburgers, buddy. And tacos.

[Ayanami Rei]

Best burger: Five Guys
Best tacos:
Picante (The Real Taco), or you can default to the very good chain Don Pablo's, or Baja Fresh.

Of course, all of this stuff is mondo expensive. A burger, cajun fries and coke at 5 guys is essentially $10 after you donate the change to the tips jar.
It's a splurge.
So I will settle for Mickey Ds or Burger King especially when those deceptively good (but artery-hardening) fries are accompanied by a tall, diet coke (my absolute favorite chemical cocktail by far...) and the food comes 10 times faster.

Also, about Taco Bell. It can't be written off completely. Because it's a franchise... We have this Taco Bell in reston (which I've mentioned before) which is absolutely FANTASTIC. It's difficult to describe. All the food tastes completely unlike any other taco bell... its actually good and the vegetables/meat/tortillas are fresh, and you don't get indigestion afterward. I see them making the tortillas out of dough in the back any time you go in there.

I have this feeling that they don't necessarily use the same distributors that the less involved owners default to. The prices are higher of course than some other ones.

Only problem... the sell that Pepsi swill. I'd be there more often because if not because of that.

Forget caution; Progress or get out of the way

[TropicalHotDogNight]

I would urge caution when going to a computer store and booting up Knoppix, maybe go grab a salesguy and say "I'd like to do this, cool?"
That's tantamount to I urge you to ask an unusual question of someone not able to understand it nor authorized to answer yes. Why invite the No response?

Booting ANY PC with Knoppix to test (for Linux compatibility) is just smart shopping, and often an opportunity to demo Linux at the same time. You're not installing anything, you are seeing whether it's the typical Compaq crippled shit or something actually worth purchasing (e.g. Toshiba). (Compaq dropped down to last place in PC Magazine's survey of support for the last 2 years--tied with eMachines! HP was almost as bad. Replacing failed hardware is trivial; getting stuck with shitty support, wrong & non-existent documentation, profoundly flawed software, hours on hold, is a nightmare. I happen to know.)

The first part of the review article at distrowatch.com is a title/summary: It is safe to say that the Debian-based Knoppix live CD has raised the bar of Linux distribution standards to a new level, especially with its automatic hardware detection and on-the-fly decompression. Knoppix is commonly used as an emergency rescue disk, as a Linux demo CD, as a tool to test a new computer before purchase or as a utility to read password-protected Microsoft Word documents on a Windows partition. It can even be used as a full-blown Linux distribution for every-day tasks. Robert Storey explains the reason why Knoppix has been given a permanent home on his computer's hard drive and why he never leaves home without it.
I like to take a few copies whenever I leave home. Whether the store employees or other customers reaction is negative or inquizitive, I just give them a cd & say this is the most important PC development in years. "Oh yeah; progress is cool." --Beavis