tohd problem

[crix]

Hey people, I'm sorry if I am asking a lot of questions, but I am just really new to this Linux thing. Anyway, I tried doing a "poor man's install" by typing this at the boot prompt:

knoppix home=scan myconfig=scan tohd=/dev/hda5

I have already setup a PH and I know that one of the partitions of my HD is on hda5. But when I enter this and press return at the boot prompt, it just goes to a blank screen. It's usually blank then a penguin will come out and everything will start to load right? But what happens in my case is that it doesn't reach the point of showing the penguin. It just hangs right there at the blank screen.

Any help would deeply be appreciated.

Thank you very much.

[crix]

Anybody?... :cry:

[jd]

submit some detail, which you can gather by gentle use of the gnu tool named: fdisk ... Do not confuse this with the m$ executable which sports the same name. The latter only understands (& only works with) older m$ partitions, and will not help us divine what filesystem is lurking on your /dev/hda5

To get to a Linux shell (e.g: Terminal) session, as root, Boot your Knoppix cd with any bootflags which help you simply get the LiveCD session going. Nothing fancy.

To become root, use the command:
su -
and leave the password line blank [hit Enter]

You will want to learn to recognise that the prompt symbol is no longer a dollar{"$"}. The prompt now reflects that root is current user, with a Pound symbol in the prompt string {"#"} also called hatch, or tictac(toe).

Do as little as possible as root, and your life will be more fun.

Do as little as possible with fdisk, below, and your partition scheme will live through our little foray for info. Stray, even a bit, and it can all go pear-shaped quickly. Poof. Your whole hard disk. All data. Gone. All programs. Gone.

You have been warned.

To invoke the gnu tool fdisk, issue the following as root, at a Linux bash prompt (except the lovely Pound symbol, you know what that means):
# fdisk /dev/hda

Ignore (for now, but read) any paragraph which may mention "1024 .. LILO .. 'other OS' ..".

Now that we are "running fdisk" it will only give us minimal prompts; the first is:
Command (m for help):

You will only need to use 3 choices:
m - 'help' .. shows a brief list of single-letter fdisk commands
p - prints current partition table (use this)
q - quits (use this as soon as you have jotted down the "p" info)

If you get stuck, Control_C will bail you from a certain apps.
Important: To finish a bash shell session on a Linux terminal, issue the command:
exit

Since we had a root session running inside a 'normal user' session, keep an eye on the prompt, as you issue one more of that command:
exit

Come back to this forum and Post the table as displayed by fdisk's "p" and we'll know better what to suggest for you.

JohnD

[baldyeti]

Yes we'd need more details about your disk setup indeed. Post the output of "sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda"

My understanding is that tohd will only work if you target either a linux (ext[23], ....) or fat partition. It has to be formatted of course. And NTFS does not work (the wiki page about boot cheatcodes is confusing about it - hopefully it will somday but many people seem to have tried and reported failure).

If you meet the above criteria, maybe you're just being impatient? I have never tried "tohd" myself, but it needs to copy the big KNOPPIX image file (+/- 700 Mb) to your designated partition, which could take a while...

[j.drake]

Also, where did you put the PH - is it a file or a partition, and how is the partition formatted?

Sounds to me like it's getting hung up in the autodetection. Here are some things you might try:

1. Verify that the CD will still boot without any cheatcodes at all. If not, try some cheatcodes to get around common autodetection problems (e.g., noscsi).

2. Try isolating the cheatcodes (IOW, try them one at a time). Also, try specifying the location. For example (assuming your PH is at hda5), try "knoppix26 home=/dev/hda5" . If that works for you, problem may be with config file - try adding the tohd, but leaving the config cheatcode out "knoppix26 home=/dev/hda5 tohd=/dev/hda5". If it doesn't work, just reboot without the home cheatcode and do some troubleshooting - make sure hda5 is writable, for example. If you haven't invested too much into your PH yet, you might try setting it up again and rebooting, without doing anything else.

3. Some people have reported problems with putting their configs and PH in the same location. It hasn't been a problem for me. The saved config file is pretty small, so if you have a thumbdrive, you might try saving the config to it (most likely sda1), and seeing if that makes a difference. If you didn't boot with the thumbdrive installed, you'll have to let Knoppix detect it by plugging it in, opening a terminal window, and typing "dmesg" (without quotes) at the prompt. Be sure to make it writable before installing configs to it (note, you'll have to scroll down to see the address when you run the script). Try rebooting e.g., "knoppix26 home=/dev/hda5 myconfig=/dev/sda1". If that works, reboot and try "knoppix26 home=/dev/hda5 myconfig=/dev/sda1 tohd=/dev/hda5"

4. One other option to try is to boot from the ISO file, using the "bootfrom" cheatcode. Choose a location for your ISO file (some report that you can even read it from NTFS - I haven't tried that, but don't copy it there with Linux) and copy it there. This is the original file you downloaded. If you copy it to hda5, say, the boot string could be "knoppix26 home=/dev/hda5 myconfig=/dev/sda1 bootfrom=/dev/hda5". Although this option is, IMO, somewhat inferior to the fromhd option, it at least carries the advantage of speeding up the process and freeing the optical drive.

I'm very interested to know what you find out.

Baldyeti, if you're referring to the WIKI how-to I recently posted as confusing ( http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/PoorMansInstall ), please let me know what you found confusing so I can fix it. There are lots of ways to do a poor man's, and the method I chose is not meant to be fancy, just simple. All feedback is welcome, good and bad. One thing I know that I have to fix is to point out that Klik doesn't work with 3.6 yet, and I want to add in something about Fabian's new liveCD software installer (which apparently includes apt), once I get it fully figured out. Thanks

jd

[baldyeti]

Baldyeti, if you're referring to the WIKI how-to I recently posted as confusing ( http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/PoorMansInstall ), please let me know what you found confusing so I can fix it.
No, absolutely not, your page is a welcome update to an aging (rotting?) piece of information. Oh well, most wiki's are confusing, anyway. I was actually thinking of the CheatCodes (http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/CheatCodes)page, where it says the "bootfrom" code allows booting from an NTFS partition - I doubt it has been confirmed and failed the only time I tried. I think there's a long-winded thread about just that: booting the ISO off NTFS.

Thanks for taking the time to write documentation!


PS: let's not put too much effort in this thread, fellows; I just realised the original question is a month old...