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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[john_smith_45678]

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

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

[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

[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

[kelnos]

gets to do girls at pub

please, this is slashdot. ^_~

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

[thegreat682]

Porno collection found, roll 12 or better to collect

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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[js7a]

I would be suprized if any of the salespeople noticed.

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

[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

[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

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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!

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

[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

[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: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.

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...

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: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.

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: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.

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

[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

[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: 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: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: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.

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

[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 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.

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

[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.

I prefer Clusterknopix

[twoslice]

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

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).

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: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

[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.

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: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.

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 :-)

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.

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?

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

[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: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: 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: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.

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

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

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

[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.

Knoppix & MAME!

[antdude]

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

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. :)

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.

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: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.

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

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.

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?!

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: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.

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:There are many limitations to Sysprep:

[jabberw0k]

Does the box include a free HappyFunBall ?

$ 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!!!!!!

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.

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.

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: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?