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Fabianx
08-11-2004, 08:43 AM
See: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/knoppixhks/index.html

Whats different about this book compared to others is, that many great Hackers of knoppix fame have contributed to that book. (including me, but I don't know if I am that great)

Have fun.

cu

Fabian

eco2geek
08-11-2004, 10:04 AM
Wow, dude -- you've hit the big time! Congratulations.

(Damn! Not out until October.)

Superstoned
08-11-2004, 02:24 PM
See: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/knoppixhks/index.html

Whats different about this book compared to others is, that many great Hackers of knoppix fame have contributed to that book. (including me, but I don't know if I am that great)

Have fun.

cu

Fabian

imho u're great ;-) without you there whoulnt be such a nice installer script...

greenfly
08-11-2004, 05:27 PM
Hi. I'm Kyle Rankin, the author of the book. Like Fabian said, this book is in many ways a product of the Knoppix community, and many of the members of major Knoppix and Knoppix-based projects have discussed their projects in their own words, so you get the info from the horse's mouth so to speak :)

I hope everyone enjoys the book when it comes out, and that you find it useful. I lurk here from time to time, so feel free to ask here or on #knoppix (I'm greenfly in there as well) if you have any questions about the book.

jostber
08-18-2004, 02:36 PM
Hi,

This is looking good... Any Table of contents coming up soon?

- Jostein

greenfly
08-18-2004, 05:11 PM
Hi,

This is looking good... Any Table of contents coming up soon?

- Jostein

I imagine O'Reilly will post some sample hacks and such in the days to come, but I can give you a general overview.

Chapter 1: Booting Knoppix -- A lot of different hacks using cheat codes to get Knoppix booted on a system

Chapter 2: Use Knoppix As Your Desktop OS -- Introduces a new Linux user to the Knoppix desktop and the primary desktop apps it has

Chapter 3: Tweak Your Desktop -- This covers live software installation, creating persistent settings, and other desktop tweaks

Chapter 4: Install Debian with Knoppix -- Like the title says, this chapter has different hacks that cover the Knoppix installer in different scenarios (single-boot, dual-boot) including how to turn the Knoppix install into pure Debian "unstable" afterwards.

Chapter 5: Put Knoppix in Your Toolbox -- This covers a wide range of hacks for a sysadmin, such as using Knoppix for an emergency router, webserver, and using Knoppix to image and audit systems for security.

Chapter 6: Repair Linux -- This chapter covers Linux-specific repairs you can do with Knoppix such as step-by-step through restoring lilo and grub, fixing lost or corrupted MBRs and partition tables, and how to install packages on an underlying Linux system

Chapter 7: Recover Windows -- This chapter is like the previous, only with a focus on fixing Windows. It goes over things like fixing boot.ini, scanning for viruses, blanking Admin passwords, and even editing the registry--all with Knoppix

Chapter 8: Knoppix Reloaded -- This chapter goes over many of the popular live CDs including Morphix, ClusterKnoppix, Quantian, Knoppix-STD, and a lot of others. When possible these hacks are actually written by the creators of the project.

Chapter 9: Knoppix Remastered -- This chapter goes step-by-step through the Knoppix remastering process, including tips to keep the file size down, and how to use Klaus's scripts to automate the process.

Hope this helps :)

vman
08-19-2004, 05:14 PM
Congrats.
On top of it. Already have my copy pre-ordered!

:)

Zeaq
08-22-2004, 03:11 PM
Chapter 9: Knoppix Remastered -- This chapter goes step-by-step through the Knoppix remastering process, including tips to keep the file size down, and how to use Klaus's scripts to automate the process.

I have to make a knoppix remaster at the moment. If I would buy your book it would because of chapter 9. Are there many new tipps about it? Or could we found all we need in the internet, too?

moustache
08-23-2004, 01:57 PM
Chapter 7 looks very intriguing.

Moustache

greenfly
08-23-2004, 05:20 PM
Chapter 9: Knoppix Remastered -- This chapter goes step-by-step through the Knoppix remastering process, including tips to keep the file size down, and how to use Klaus's scripts to automate the process.

I have to make a knoppix remaster at the moment. If I would buy your book it would because of chapter 9. Are there many new tipps about it? Or could we found all we need in the internet, too?

The first hack is somewhat similar to what you would find in the Knoppix.net howto, however it's reorganized to provide better separation between the source and master directories, and it's (I think) easier to follow. Other hacks involve how to shrink down file size, which is something you could find a bit here on this forum, and a bit if you read through all the Debian documentation I suppose, but the hack that covers Klaus's scripts is as-of-yet undocumented in any other book or on the Internet. Also there are hacks for remastering Morphix in the chapter.

MaldiGola
09-18-2004, 10:39 PM
Any idea on when this will be released? O'Reilly still says Oct. and Amazon etc... just says "Not Yet Released". Can't wait for this to come out...

greenfly
09-20-2004, 05:03 PM
Any idea on when this will be released? O'Reilly still says Oct. and Amazon etc... just says "Not Yet Released". Can't wait for this to come out...

The scheduled release date is October 27. Hope you like it :)

MaldiGola
09-21-2004, 01:26 AM
Thanks Greenfly! I'm already pre-ordered at Amazon. I'm hoping it will answer many of the questions I have regarding Knoppix plus lots of other cool tips and tricks. :D

timread
09-21-2004, 07:50 PM
Searching for this book in amazon.co.uk I came accross another book:

Knoppix Komplete
by Samuel Hart, Sam Hart

A little information is available here:

http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/kk.htm

That is due out in 2005. There is no details there. Anyone know anything?

Tim

aahicnow
09-24-2004, 02:24 PM
Greenfly I was just reading some of the sample hacks and I may be way off here , but the stuff in the sample hacks seems to geared to the beginner level user. Is there more techinical info provided ?? Guess I am asking what user level is the book geared towards?

greenfly
09-24-2004, 05:43 PM
Greenfly I was just reading some of the sample hacks and I may be way off here , but the stuff in the sample hacks seems to geared to the beginner level user. Is there more techinical info provided ?? Guess I am asking what user level is the book geared towards?

Oh cool they threw those up. Thanks for letting me know about that.

Well some of the ones they posted were a bit simpler (ie the Migrate to a New Hard Drive is probably the most technical one that is listed) but I would say that hack is in the "Intermediate" range for the book. The first couple of chapters are aimed more for beginners, the middle sysadmin chapters are aimed at Intermediate and Expert users (and yes there are more expert-level hacks in there, we just didn't list them as sample hacks). The end of the book remastering hacks are either Intermediate or Expert level.

Some of the more Expert-level hacks cover topics such as how to create your own live-install programs (Fabian wrote that one) creating emergency routers, web, file, and other servers, wardriving with Knoppix, collecting forensics data, editing the Windows registry, and a number of hacks covering software RAID.

Really I've tried to give something for everybody in the book. Beginners will have info they need to use Knoppix without being lost, experienced sysadmin will find nice tricks to save them time and do a lot of the common rescue CD tasks all from Knoppix, and even expert Knoppix users should learn things from the more advanced hacks (apparently even Klaus learned some stuff he didn't know was possible when he read it).

It'll be in stores October 27th, so if you are unsure that you want to preorder you can always flip through it in the bookstore :)

greenfly
09-24-2004, 06:44 PM
Update: I'm trying to get a more advanced hack up there, so check the page over the next few days.

aahicnow
09-25-2004, 03:29 AM
Thanks for the response greenfly, I was not to sure about spending over 50.00 can on a beginners book. But from what you are saying it should be worth it.

MaldiGola
09-25-2004, 02:11 PM
Does anyone know how to get Hack #78 to work thru a proxy server and with an ftp gateway that uses the form of: usernameofremoteserver@fqdnof mygateway ?
This would be very helpful at my work. Especially since we require all visitors with laptops to run a full virus scan while unplugged from the network (supervised by our IT staff).

Greenfly?

greenfly
09-26-2004, 09:56 AM
Does anyone know how to get Hack #78 to work thru a proxy server and with an ftp gateway that uses the form of: usernameofremoteserver@fqdnof mygateway ?
This would be very helpful at my work. Especially since we require all visitors with laptops to run a full virus scan while unplugged from the network (supervised by our IT staff).

Greenfly?

Someone recently emailed me about this actually. This particular thread probably isn't the best place to cover this, but I'll give you a quick response based on what I told that person.

If you are behind a proxy, probably your only options are to examine the f-prot install script and see if there's a way to add proxy support to the command-line tools it uses to grab the files (I don't have it handy to search through).

Otherwise you can download it from home, and saveconfig (and be sure to save your local settings) and it will cache those f-prot files so that when you boot on a machine at work with that usb key or whatever media you saved to, you will have the files cached locally.

greenfly
10-21-2004, 06:02 PM
A quick update. The book has made it to Safari (http://www.safaribooksonline.com) for those of you who have an account there. Also preorders should start being shipped from the 25-27th of October, and it should start appearing in stores then as well.

richardljohnson
11-08-2004, 01:38 AM
Book hit Barnes and Noble Friday the 5th in my area and Boarders "should" have it on the shelf around the 10th. Got my copy and just starting on it.

Richard-

mlwhitt
11-11-2004, 09:58 PM
Saw in a Barnes and Noble and decided to order from Amazon today. $20 is more than a good deal for such a well thought-out book. I can't wait for my copy to get in.

Knoppix rules!

UnderScore
11-15-2004, 09:34 PM
My review of "Knoppix Hacks" is posted at NewsForge.com http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/11/1843238.
Many thanks to Kyle Rankin and O'Reilly for bringing Knoppix to the masses.

James Pryor

greenfly
11-15-2004, 09:39 PM
My review of "Knoppix Hacks" is posted at NewsForge.com http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/11/1843238.
Many thanks to Kyle Rankin and O'Reilly for bringing Knoppix to the masses.

James Pryor

Hi James, thanks for the review.

By the way, my explanation for including the 3.4 Knoppix is in Hack #2. It was a tough call. Basically I could have included 3.6 (the latest official version) but it seemed rather unstable and at the time even things such as klik weren't working so I opted to drop back to the stablest version.

UnderScore
11-15-2004, 10:20 PM
By the way, my explanation for including the 3.4 Knoppix is in Hack #2. It was a tough call. Basically I could have included 3.6 (the latest official version) but it seemed rather unstable and at the time even things such as klik weren't working so I opted to drop back to the stablest version.
Yeah, I spotted that in the book & I agree with your choice. I figured I would mention the version just to let people know that Knoppix is included with the book.
Congrats on a job well done.
James

ryptyde
11-16-2004, 06:48 PM
This being my first post here I'm happy to say that "Knoppix Hacks" has been a pleasant experience since picking it up at a "Borders" here in Michigan.

Harry Kuhman
11-17-2004, 08:47 PM
Knoppix Hacks hit the front page of Slashdot this afternoon.

C0SM0S--
11-30-2004, 09:48 PM
I bought this book last week. Actually I bought two. It makes a great Christmas gift for that Windows friend that is thinking about trying Linux. It comes with a copy of Knoppix. I am very impressed with all of the possibilities it brings to mind. Things that I would have never even considered are explained and made simple.

Great job!

The-Big-E
12-01-2004, 01:01 PM
Hey Kyle,
Great book! When can we expect the sequel?

greenfly
12-02-2004, 06:31 AM
Hey Kyle,
Great book! When can we expect the sequel?

Thanks! This book is just barely out right now so I'd imagine it will be a few years before it needs an upgrade :)

rcook
12-02-2004, 05:25 PM
I really enjoyed it. Some hacks are very relevant to my interests. I am itching to try the Kiosk, #24, but have been on the road, etc.

I haven't been able to dig out the Kiosk from the forums, it may be burried there but very much obfucated. You laid it out very clearly.

The-Big-E
12-15-2004, 06:40 AM
Hey Kyle,
Great book! When can we expect the sequel?

Thanks! This book is just barely out right now so I'd imagine it will be a few years before it needs an upgrade :)

Not an upgrade I am talking about hacks 101-200

roc
12-22-2004, 09:14 AM
I'm no expert at Linux or Knoppix, but I must say that I just bought this book and it is fantastic. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Tom Tiger
04-21-2006, 03:23 PM
Excellent work Kyle :-) It has all the things I keep forgetting (bought mine on the Linux Expo in the Netherlands)
the remastering section is great.

SiKing
06-22-2007, 11:35 AM
This book is just barely out right now so I'd imagine it will be a few years before it needs an upgrade :)
Any thought to the upgrade, yet? If yes, I would not mind contributing; how would I go about doing that?

greenfly
06-24-2007, 06:16 PM
This book is just barely out right now so I'd imagine it will be a few years before it needs an upgrade :)
Any thought to the upgrade, yet? If yes, I would not mind contributing; how would I go about doing that?

Funny you should say that, I'm near the end up the update to Knoppix Hacks right now! Plans are for it to be out this fall. Unfortunately it's too late for you to be able to contribute, but perhaps next time :)

SiKing
06-24-2007, 09:48 PM
Unfortunately it's too late for you to be able to contribute, but perhaps next time :)
So what do I do, so that I dont miss out "next time"?

greenfly
06-25-2007, 08:26 PM
Unfortunately it's too late for you to be able to contribute, but perhaps next time :)
So what do I do, so that I dont miss out "next time"?

Honestly that's tough for me to say. There are a limited number of hacks aren't written by me, and for the most part those hacks are written by the creator of a project (for instance Klik) about their project. The majority of the hacks I write myself.

Are you in involved in Knoppix development or the creator of a Knoppix-based live CD? If what you are involved in makes for a useful hack, and particularly if you have writing experience, it would increase the likelihood that you might be asked to contribute if another edition comes out.

-Kyle

SiKing
06-27-2007, 04:05 PM
Are you in involved in Knoppix development or the creator of a Knoppix-based live CD? If what you are involved in makes for a useful hack, and particularly if you have writing experience, it would increase the likelihood that you might be asked to contribute if another edition comes out.
None of that. I'm just some guy that started poking around too much into one feature of Knoppix, because it did not do what I wanted it to do - persistent home and configuration, hack #21 I believe. :) I have some ideas on how to enhance it, and how to hack it up (in the spirit of your book).

greenfly
11-28-2007, 05:23 PM
Note: At first I wasn't going to update the thread because I didn't want to seem like I was self-promoting and spamming the forum, but then I figured that some people might be interested in the news.

In any case, I just wanted to update the thread to let everyone know that Knoppix Hacks Second Edition is finally out and available. You can find out more about it at the official O'Reilly page: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514938/

I'm really pleased with how the book turned out. It had been three years since the first edition was published and as all of you know, quite a bit has changed in Knoppix since then with the addition of AuFS and the DVD edition alone. Anyway if anyone has any questions feel free to ask in this thread (moderators: hope that's okay).

eco2geek
12-21-2007, 01:57 AM
Congratulations on coming out with the 2nd edition!

FYI, I recently had to replace my primary PATA hard drive ("hda"), restore the backed-up data from the old drive to the new drive, and reinstall GRUB to the MBR. GRUB was already installed on the secondary hard drive's first partition ("hdb1"). In other words, openSUSE is installed on hdb1, and no changes to its existing "/boot/grub/menu.lst" were necessary. I tried using Hack #53, "Repair GRUB," from Knoppix Hacks, 1st Ed., but it didn't work.

What did work was to get root, start a GRUB shell, and install it to the MBR on hda that way, i.e.

# grub
grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
#

Other random Knoppix-related thoughts:
In this long thread (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11796), Gilles van Ruymbeke (hope I got that right) gave us 3 things: 1) A "GRUB for Windows" that allows you to boot a Knoppix "Poor Man's Install" (PMI) from an NTFS partition; 2) a completely rewritten initial RAM image ("initrd.img") to allow you to boot your PMI up without having to boot from the physical Knoppix CD/DVD ; and 3) VMWare versions of Knoppix, complete with "persistent homes." It'd be nice to see all the binaries he created posted in one place (especially since he did a new "initrd.img" for each new version of Knoppix). He deserves a lot of credit for his work.
Knoppix is getting rather "long in the tooth." The last official version, 5.1.1, was released in January, and the last unofficial version, 5.2.0, was released in March. What if there isn't another official Knoppix release -- ever? What live Linux "toolkit distro" will you use to replace it?

greenfly
12-21-2007, 10:45 PM
Congratulations on coming out with the 2nd edition!


Thanks!



FYI, I recently had to replace my primary PATA hard drive ("hda"), restore the backed-up data from the old drive to the new drive, and reinstall GRUB to the MBR. GRUB was already installed on the secondary hard drive's first partition ("hdb1"). In other words, openSUSE is installed on hdb1, and no changes to its existing "/boot/grub/menu.lst" were necessary. I tried using Hack #53, "Repair GRUB," from Knoppix Hacks, 1st Ed., but it didn't work.

What did work was to get root, start a GRUB shell, and install it to the MBR on hda that way, i.e.

# grub
grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
#



Good point! I have run into that sometimes myself--especially on machines with XFS as a root partition. It seems that grub-install sometimes just refuses to work and I've had to fall back to grub like you did above. That's one reason that I made sure to include a complete set of the grub command-line commands in the Knoppix Pocket Reference, but I thought that something like that might be a bit too wordy and reference-like for a Hacks book.




Other random Knoppix-related thoughts:
In this long thread (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11796), Gilles van Ruymbeke (hope I got that right) gave us 3 things: 1) A "GRUB for Windows" that allows you to boot a Knoppix "Poor Man's Install" (PMI) from an NTFS partition; 2) a completely rewritten initial RAM image ("initrd.img") to allow you to boot your PMI up without having to boot from the physical Knoppix CD/DVD ; and 3) VMWare versions of Knoppix, complete with "persistent homes." It'd be nice to see all the binaries he created posted in one place (especially since he did a new "initrd.img" for each new version of Knoppix). He deserves a lot of credit for his work.
Knoppix is getting rather "long in the tooth." The last official version, 5.1.1, was released in January, and the last unofficial version, 5.2.0, was released in March. What if there isn't another official Knoppix release -- ever? What live Linux "toolkit distro" will you use to replace it?

I can't speak to hosting for Gilles's work, but as far as Knoppix's age, we do sometimes see a good deal of slack time in between Knoppix releases. So far for me Knoppix hasn't let me down when I've needed it to repair a system so I plan to stick with it for the time being--there just isn't a better overall live CD out there in my opinion. That having been said, I suppose if I did run across a brand new machine I needed to recover and Knoppix for some reason wasn't able to boot, I would probably try something like the latest Ubuntu live CD.

OldCanoeist
01-16-2008, 10:57 PM
Hi greenfly;

In hack #109 in the recent edition it is stated that bootfrom is compatible with NTFS. But using it with NTFS implies writing to NTFS.

I find comments in some forums that writing to NTFS is dangerous.

Any comments?

greenfly
01-17-2008, 05:38 PM
OldCanoeist,

Writing to NTFS traditionally has been very dangerous if not impossible to the point that the write functionality in the NTFS driver for the Linux kernel was disabled for some time (which might be where some of the perception comes from), but recently developments in Linux have allowed it to write to NTFS without using something like captive-ntfs. I haven't personally heard any stories of NTFS corruption due to the current way Linux writes to NTFS. I haven't seen any corruption myself in the tests I ran for the book, but then these days I don't have many Windows machines around that I use regularly, so I don't write to NTFS too often.

So basically I haven't heard of major problems with writing to NTFS with the current version of Knoppix, but in either case it's always a good policy to keep backups of important files.