Knoppix 3.4 boot disk

[pau1knopp]

Does anyone know how to create a boot disk for KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04. In the new cheatcode it still says you can " you can create a bootable floppy disk by issuing (on Linux) dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k" but there is no /cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img file.

Thanks in advance,

~pau1

[lothario]

Yes, this is true. There is no "/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img" in KNOPPIX 3.4

So I used "/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img" from KNOPPIX 3.3 to create a boot floppy.

I put the boot floppy in the floppy drive and KNOPPIX 3.4 CD in the CDROM drive.

Now the boot floppy boots and tells the system to boot from the CDROM and I can now boot KNOPPIX 3.4

[eco2geek]

Curiously, booting from a v3.3 boot floppy does mostly work. It still looks for kernel modules for kernel 2.4.2-xfs, which aren't there.

Reason there isn't a boot disk for v3.4 is probably that the files necessary to boot the new 2.4 kernel alone are ~1.8M (look in the /boot/isolinux dir on the CD) -- too big to fit on a floppy, even a floppy formatted in MS DMF. Has anyone got (or ever seen) a drive that reads 2.88M disks?

[pau1knopp]

I am actually trying to figure this out so that I can boot from a thumb drive (32M). I can boot version 3.3 this way, but I am not sure what needs to be on the disk for 3.4

It's a little confusing because of the option to boot between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. I would be happy booting to a 2.4 kernel. Any thoughts?

[nishtya]

Wasn't there talk of now being able to create a two-disk boot set?

[pau1knopp]

More info re: this...

On this link

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10210&highlight=

it appears that Klaus makes a recommendation regarding remastering a CD and the lack of boot.img in 3.4

Would any of this apply to making a boot disk? At least in my case, I don't care if it fits on a floppy necessarily, as long as it fits on my 32M thumb drive.

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Calvi Risorta]

Hello:

I've finally been able to download Knoppix 3.4, but I have noticed (as others have) that there's no disk image to create a boot disk from.

I would like to attemp a Knoppix HD install to an ancient Acernote Light 350P laptop which has no CD-ROM with what I have seen is called a 'Poor Man's Installation' ie: copying the CD's KNOPPIX directory to a FAT32 partition on the hard disk and booting from A:\ ...

But it seems that a floppy/set of floppies is absolutely necessary.

Any ideas as to how to go about generating these?

Thanks in advance,

CIV

[eco2geek]

pau1knopp: Why don't you experiment, and let us know your results?

I would think that, if you could make a USB thumb drive bootable for Knoppix v3.3, that you could replace MINIROOT.GZ, VMLINUZ, and SYSLINUX.CFG with their Knoppix 3.4 counterparts (you'd probably have to rename 3.4's ISOLINUX.CFG to SYSLINUX.CFG).

I tried to format a 1.72M floppy (using WinImage), and use all the files from the Knoppix v3.3 boot disk, except replacing MINIROOT.GZ with v3.4's MINIRT24.GZ (renaming it to MINIROOT.GZ). It was still too big to fit.

More ideas on creating a bootable USB drive can be found on Puppy Linux's "flash-Puppy" page (http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm) (and a pre-compiled syslinux binary for DOS can be found on Puppy Linux's download page (http://www.goosee.com/puppy/download/downpage.htm)).

[Fabianx]

Does anyone know how to create a boot disk for KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-05-04. In the new cheatcode it still says you can " you can create a bootable floppy disk by issuing (on Linux) dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k" but there is no /cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img file.

Thanks in advance,

~pau1

Well hi :-),

there is a way to make a bootdisk but loosing all SCSI and USB-modules iirc (so it definietly fits):

http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/CeBit/make_floppy_3.4.sh

should help you to do it. You can also customize that script e.g. to include the USB-modules, but to drop the SCSI ones or vice-versa ...

We were thinking about a two-floppy boot, but no one has done that yet.

cu

Fabian

PS: As always: If this information is helpful to you, please add it to the docs.

[eco2geek]

The boot floppy itself seems to work fine, except...it won't boot into the CD or into an ISO on the hard drive.

I've tried multiple times, in multiple ways, including using the "knoppix_dir=", "knoppix_name=", and "bootfrom=" cheatcodes. No joy.

Is there something more esoteric to nuke out of minirt24 besides the SCSI modules?

[Fabianx]

The boot floppy itself seems to work fine, except...it won't boot into the CD or into an ISO on the hard drive.

I've tried multiple times, in multiple ways, including using the "knoppix_dir=", "knoppix_name=", and "bootfrom=" cheatcodes. No joy.

Is there something more esoteric to nuke out of minirt24 besides the SCSI modules?

Well as explained in the Cheatcodes you can't use bootfrom with _just_ a boot-floppy. What works however is to boot from CD-ROM or wiht "fromhd".

So:

Copying KNOPPIX-folder to HD (VFAT / EXT2) and then booting from there indeed should work.

cu

Fabian

[eco2geek]

Well, I altered your fine script so that all the SCSI modules got nuked except for ide-scsi.o and ide-cd.o (and a few others whose names I probably misspelled in the script), and now the Knoppix CD does indeed boot from the floppy. :) Yay.

(It looks like ide-scsi is the only one it's actually using.)

Hope you put a current bootable floppy image up on the official site. People will want one.

Thanks for all your work.

[joleger]

Could you post the script that works?

Thanks

[eco2geek]

Fabian and Kano wrote a script that stripped out all the SCSI modules in minirt24.gz in order to get it and the kernel to fit on a 1.44M floppy boot disk. Problem was, the resulting boot disk couldn't access the CD. Knoppix 3.3 and 3.4, using kernel 2.4, always print "Accessing KNOPPIX CDROM at /dev/scd0..." when starting up on my computers, so it was obvious that there needed to be some SCSI module(s) there.

This script leaves the modules ide-cd.o, ide-scsi.o, and initio.o intact. Call it what you want (Fabian named it "make_floppy_3.4.sh"). Run it from the Knoppix 3.4 CD or have the CD mounted in /cdrom (it grabs "minirt24.gz" off the CD). Make it executable with "chmod +x", and run it as root.

Problem: If you need a boot floppy to start the CD, how are you going to use the CD to make a boot floppy?


# Make floppy from CD-ROM
# Run this on another system from a running knoppix-cd.
#
# License: GPL
#
# Copyright (c) 2004 by Fabian Franz.
# Thx to Kano for additions.
#
# Altered slightly (5/8/04 by Andrew Heil) to leave in the SCSI modules
# ide-cd.o, ide-scsi.o, and initio.o; and to change the success message
# from German to English.

abort()
{
echo "$@"
exit 1
}

[ $UID -ne 0 ] && abort "Need root-rights."

# preparations
TMPDIR=/tmp/make_floppy.$$
mkdir $TMPDIR || abort "Fatal security error"

clean_exit()
{
[ -d "$TMPDIR" ] && rm -rf $TMPDIR
}

trap "clean_exit" EXIT

ORIG_DIR=$(pwd)
cd $TMPDIR
mkdir floppy
mkdir miniroot
mkdir old_miniroot

[ -r /cdrom/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz ] || abort "CD-ROM in /cdrom/ needed."

cp -f /cdrom/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz .

# First create new miniroot

gunzip minirt24.gz
mv minirt24 minirt24.old
mount -o loop minirt24.old old_miniroot

dd if=/dev/zero of=minirt24 bs=4M count=1
mke2fs -L "KNOPPIX Miniroot" -b 1024 -N 8192 -O none -F -q -m 0 minirt24
sudo mount -o loop minirt24 miniroot

# -- begin alteration by AEH
# rm -rf old_miniroot/modules/scsi/
# mkdir -p old_miniroot/modules/scsi
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/B*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/N*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/a*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/d*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/e*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/f*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/g*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/h*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/ie*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/m*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/n*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/o*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/p*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/s*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/t*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/u*.o
rm -f old_miniroot/modules/scsi/w*.o
# --- end alteration by AEH
cp -af old_miniroot/* miniroot/

umount old_miniroot
umount miniroot

gzip -9 minirt24

# Now make the bootdisk

#BACKUP=$(date +%s)
#mv -f ~/.mtoolsrc ~/.mtoolsrc.$BACKUP
#echo "drive x: file=\"$TMPDIR/boot.img\"" > ~/.mtoolsrc
#mformat -C -t 40 -s 36 -h 2 x:
#rm -f ~/.mtoolsrc
#mv -f ~/.mtoolsrc.$BACKUP ~/.mtoolsrc
dd if=/dev/zero of=$TMPDIR/boot.img bs=1k count=1440
mkdosfs $TMPDIR/boot.img

mount -o loop boot.img floppy

FILES="boot.msg f2 f3 german.kbd isolinux.cfg linux24 logo.16"
(cd /cdrom/boot/isolinux/; cp -f $FILES $TMPDIR/floppy/)
cp minirt24.gz floppy/
mv floppy/isolinux.cfg floppy/syslinux.cfg
[ -n "$LANGUAGE" ] && perl -pi -e "s/lang=de/lang=$LANGUAGE/g" floppy/syslinux.cfg
[ -n "$LANGUAGE" ] && perl -pi -e "s/lang=us/lang=$LANGUAGE/g" floppy/syslinux.cfg
umount floppy
syslinux boot.img

cp -i boot.img $ORIG_DIR

# --- begin alteration by AEH
# echo "Die erzeugte Datei boot.img kann jetzt mittels des Befehls dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 auf Diskette geschrieben werden."
echo "The file this script created, boot.img, can be written to a 1.44M floppy disk by using the command dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0. Note that all data currently on the floppy will be erased."

[fredrikj]

Problem: If you need a boot floppy to start the CD, how are you going to use the CD to make a boot floppy?



Exactly. So we're basically back where we started. Still noone have been able to explain how to create boot floppies withouth being more or less a wizard with linux already, alternatively having an extra computer. Doh.

Ok, I'll stop whining. Knoppix 3.4 is free and great and stuff. It is just to bad it wont boot my old laptop as well as 3.3 did. I really needed that 2.6 kernel.

[Kumagoro]

I have the same prob i have an old laptop no CD drive just a floppy.
In 3.3 i did the poor mans install using Loadlin.
*I copied the knoppix folder over to the laptop, then use loadlin which
makes it act like the live CD*

Anyway in 3.4 9th of may version. I can boot using the old boot disk
i.e the vmlinuz and miniroot from 3.3. It loads up and runs but i have a problem. It doesnt detect my WiFi card. in 3.3 it automatically detects and sets it up (its an orinoco classic gold) but in 3.4 it doesnt even think
its there. Is this becasue im using the old vmlinuz and miniroot?

Can i make loadlin work using the new 3.4 files?

[eco2geek]

So we're basically back where we started. Still noone have been able to explain how to create boot floppies withouth being more or less a wizard with linux already, alternatively having an extra computer. Doh.

You can download the Knoppix 3.4 (05-10-2004) floppy boot disk images from here:

http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/eco2geek/knoppix-stuff.html

Danger! Beware! Turn those pop-up blockers on first! Turn off those cookies!

(I hate Angelfire. Ads, pop-ups, and cookies galore. But it's free. Suggestions?)

Update: Turns out there are two sets of boot floppies -- one for kernel 2.4 and one for kernel 2.6. Plus, the second disk of each set doesn't have a filesystem on it, just a low level format. So all of you Windows users out there are going to have to use RawWrite for Windows (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm) to copy it.

[softwaretester]

I just use Smart Boot manager to boot from floppy to get booting to work on some CD's.

It helped me boot the larger kernel'd live cd distros like Knoppix-STD and Clusterknoppix.
(yep, my laptop's drive doesn't support anything larger than 1.44 emulation for booting. Bios doesn't like it)

[Kumagoro]

I was told in the HDD install forum that the files you need for loadlin
are linux24 with minirt24.gz or for the 2.6 kernel files with 26. Which are
found in the isolinux folder.

It worked and my wifi card worked again.

[raver]

why do i keep getting this error messsage?
"Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit."


thanks

[raver]

"Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit."


what this error reffers to? why

[newby]

why do i keep getting this error messsage?
"Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit."
thanks

I also get this message. I have followed this thread and created the boot disks. They work fine. However, on two different computers when I try to run Knoppix from the CD by booting from the disks I get this message after it says it is enabling DMA acceleration on hda (my hard drive), hdb (my sony rewritable), and hdc (my CD ROM). Then it says searching for Knoppix and then "Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry. Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit." It looks like Knoppix recognized the CD drives (I have tried the Knoppix CD in both), but it can't locate the file system. I wonder if this is something messed up with 3.4? I know nothing about linux, but was wanting to seriously consider switching. Any help would be great! Is there a command I can enter to get the thing going?

[kb]

I need the boot floppy come on this is getting frustrating, does any body have it?

[newby]

Steps from eco2geek (above in this thread worked great for me... just can't get the thing to loard from the CD after booting from the floppies

[kb]

I d-loade rawwrite and d-loaded the kernel 2.4 and 2.6 now what? is there an other way?

[newby]

This is seemingly the case of the blind leading, but I can tell you what I did. I downloaded the 2.4 files and put them on my desktop (knx24bd1.img and knx24bd2.img). Then I downloaded rawwrite into a folder labeled rawwrite on my desktop. The I opened it and unzipped rawwritewin-0.7.zip into the same folder to get four files. I ran rawwritewin.exe from that folder and then copied the two boot disk files to floppies. All worked fine and they do boot, but I still can not get knoppix to recognize the purchased (not downloaded)knoppix 3.4 cd. So I get "Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry. Dropping you to a (very limited) shell. Press reset button to quit." See my comments above.

[kb]

where can i get a boot floopy that makes my comp. boot up from the cd drive?

[kb]

I have not and i believe no one knows where to find this rare and mysterious boot floppy. If any one where to know where to get it cause some of us dont know how to make it please, please dont hesitate to tell us. :shock:

[kb]

I found it I found it I found it. I found the boot floppy. But i only encountered another problem. for the floppy go here.

http://www.textbox.net/textbox/sbootmgr.dsk

[newby]

Did you get it to read your CD? From looking around I am not the only person having the problems I described above and no one seems to know the answer. I had really hoped that Linux would be the solution to my problems, but I am beginning to wonder. All the blurbs made Knoppix sound like just the thing for the novice to try out Linux

[davinci]

You know...under this same general support heading...about 6 or 7 posts before this one...a person gave a link to the floppies

i downloaded the *.img files they pointed me to
an an an and...they actually werk

also...see the winimage they mention in the same post.

the link to the floppies is under this cat, (gs)
6 - 7 posts prior to mine

http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/eco2geek/knoppix-stuff.html

there ya go...(spoon feedin) lol

it made me a little hot...that the chit chat went on about a mysterious
boot disk...i mean..yeah, i had to find it...but seems like...your posts were so close to the answer (literally)...

winimage will write the *.img file to disk

GET YOUR COPY OF RAWWRITE @
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm

yeah..uranus....somethin somethin

get off the $#@#$ computer and clean your room!

you! goto Bed!

and you...you tramp! just kidding...

big fried chicken eatin...chain smokin...weezin...no-room cleanin...
dirty car drivin...can't wait to get home and get BACK on the computer
no code writin'...

...

<davinci mutters a few last in-coherent words...and drifts off sleep in his
greasy recliner> <a chicken leg slides out of his thick fingers...onto the ashy carpet and doobie his dog...slowly sneaks closer to davincis chair...ultiimately...the dog will get the bone>

[pau1knopp]

As the original poster, my answer has been resolved by this thread:

********
there is a way to make a bootdisk but loosing all SCSI and USB-modules iirc (so it definietly fits):

http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/CeBit/make_floppy_3.4.sh
*******

I even burnt the resulting image to a thumbdrive partition so that I could boot a HD / CD install using a thumbdrive. Works great. No problems not having the SCSI and USB modules (yet).

Wanted to post satisfactory results to close out this thread.

Regards,

pau1
I

[psklyarov]

Did you get it to read your CD? From looking around I am not the only person having the problems I described above and no one seems to know the answer. I had really hoped that Linux would be the solution to my problems, but I am beginning to wonder. All the blurbs made Knoppix sound like just the thing for the novice to try out Linux
I am a newby but seem to dabble rather than to learn in any structured way. Pity about your experience with Knoppix 3.4 as previous versions did not seem to have this problem. It is pretty remarkable though so I wouldnt give up yet if I were you. My 3.4 cd, which I downloaded myself and checked, failed to load in any form other than "failsafe". I worked out a way of installing Knoppix onto one of my HD partitions nevertheless. I loaded in failsafe and after seeing the nice pretty GUI fully loaded then keyed in Ctl+Alt+F1. I was then presented with a scary bleak command line. Type in "knoppix-installer" and then follow the instructions. I always choose to boot from a floppy and the root partition, NOT the MBR as I dont want anything to interfere with Windoze which I run on the same PC. Once the install is complete take the CD out and boot with the floppy that installer created. Choose kernel 2.6.2. Then, either on the 1st boot or the 2nd boot, Knoppix will recreate your hardware profile as it recognises that you are in failsafe mode with hardly any hardware loaded. I dont know if you feel brave enough to try this, but if not try an older version of Knoppix eg 3.3 or 3.2 until they iron these bugs out (which is what I presume they are). Or try Mepis Linux which is based on Knoppix and very similar, and when I tried it, didnt seem to have the same cd reading problem.

[oski]

I have tried the floppies made using the Knoppix utilities and the set downloaded following eco2geek suggestion.
In both cases I have the same problem as other people, with a mesagge - cant find Knoppix System Files.

Any other line to follow?

Where can I download the floopyboot for Knoppix 3.3, that sees to have worked for other people?

Any help will be much appreciated

So we're basically back where we started. Still noone have been able to explain how to create boot floppies withouth being more or less a wizard with linux already, alternatively having an extra computer. Doh.

You can download the Knoppix 3.4 (05-10-2004) floppy boot disk images from here:

http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/eco2geek/knoppix-stuff.html

Danger! Beware! Turn those pop-up blockers on first! Turn off those cookies!

(I hate Angelfire. Ads, pop-ups, and cookies galore. But it's free. Suggestions?)

Update: Turns out there are two sets of boot floppies -- one for kernel 2.4 and one for kernel 2.6. Plus, the second disk of each set doesn't have a filesystem on it, just a low level format. So all of you Windows users out there are going to have to use RawWrite for Windows (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm) to copy it. :cry:

[eco2geek]

Where can I download the floopyboot for Knoppix 3.3, that sees to have worked for other people?

With Knoppix 3.3, the bootfloppy image is there on the CD, in the /KNOPPIX directory, named "boot.img". And there's a DOS utility named "rawrite2.exe" there as well, with which you can create the bootfloppy, with the command

rawrite2 -f boot.img -d A

(or just use the "mkfloppy.bat" batch file).

It's Knoppix 3.4+ that requires two boot floppies. Knoppix 3.3 only needed the one.

[oski]

I am a newbie getting frustrated by the dreary "sorry can't find Knoppix System Files, etc etc"

I am able to boot the notebook using the two floppies copied from different sources, and the one for v 3.3. In all cases I am using a CD bought from Cheeplinux v3.4, and in all cases I get the same mesagge.

I am using a Thinkpad 240, Celeron 400MHz, 192 Mb of memory and a 30Gb HDD. The CD ROM is an external PCMCIA.

In all cases the mesagge shows up after Knoppix is trying to initialise the CD ROM.

I tried the same procedures in another Laptop with internal CD ROM, and everything went perfect and smoothly without any problems!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol:

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

So it seems that Knoppix is not able to recognise my PCMCIA slot and/or the PCMCIA CD ROM. Is it correct??????

If it is how can I manage to get my CD ROM identified????

Help please


oski

[victor]

With which program I can make a lowlevel format from the knoppix cd?

[Presently42]

Alrighty. I just got Knoppix and have it on a CD.

I downloaded the boot.img.

It's 1.40 MB. My Diskette is 1.38 (despite the fact that it says 1.44) MB.

What do I do?

[Harry Kuhman]

It's 1.40 MB. My Diskette is 1.38 (despite the fact that it says 1.44) MB.

What do I do?

You could try using a floppy with no bad sectors and not formatted as bootable. But I think it would be far better and far simplier if you just got Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) and either used that to make a floppy that can boot any bootable CD (not just Knoppix) or even installed it to your hard drive's MBR so you wouldn't even need a floppy.

Another program that can do this and has a number of additional features is XOSL (http://www2.arnes.si/~fkomar/xosl.org/). XOSL has a nicer menu system, can hide some partitions during booting, can feed keystrokes to the booting application, includes Ranish Partition Manager, can boot your computer from any hard disk, any CD drive or any floppy, and more. It is somewhat more complex to set up, but not overly complex if you can follow instructions.

[Presently42]

Well, I managed to get it to start up. Thank you.

However, I now have the (possibly infamous?) Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry message.

I've started a new thread, some where... about this.

Rath of Windows, perhaps?

[TyphoonMentat]

For those with Knoppix 3.7, the Feather Linux (kernel 2.4.27) boot disk can be used: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/featherlinux/boot.img

I basically removed a few SCSI modules that I couldn't find many people using, and compressed the kernel using UPX.

[dv440]

OK, I rawrited the FeatherLinux boot.img to floppy. Burned the FeatherLinux .iso, put that in the CD drive. Reboot to floppy, which results in: boot:, linux24, minirt24.gz........, then PC spontaneously reboots.

Repeat with Knoppix 3.7 in CD drive. Same result.

If I remove the floppy, I can boot to FeatherLinux or Knoppix CD just fine.

Tried this on 2 different PCs, same result both time. The CD drives on both systems are standard ATAPI, secondary master.

I'd be delighted if this worked, but it isn't working for me. Any ideas?

[chris_Xnest]

Hi there, Knoppixers

I managed to write a script which installs a syslinux-based Knoppix CD onto HDD in a FAT16 partition and MAKES THE PARTITION BOOTABLE BY ITSELF - NO NEED FOR A FLOPPY OR THE KNOPPIX CD !!!!.
The FAT16 partition MUST be created BEFORE running the script - and at the run time the script will delete all files on that partition.
The FAT16 partition must have between 710 MB and 1 GB

If anyone is interested in this script, you can read the forum subject here:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78001#78001

You will find there a link where you can download the script