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View Full Version : Is there a "loadlin" for knoppix?



12-19-2002, 05:57 AM
I have tried to search it in google but I found nothing. Everyone says "using a bootable CD or a bootable floppy". However, I just want to run the cd from a running windows system. Is there a "loadlin" for knoppix?

eadz
12-19-2002, 07:21 AM
Not in the current knoppix, no. It would be an interesting idea though.

Phredd
12-22-2002, 06:35 PM
...for VMWare? http://www.vmware.com/

Dave_Bechtel
12-23-2002, 05:07 AM
--Knoppix (and *nix in general) is not designed to boot from within Windows. For one thing, it confuses the hell out of Win (you will probably get a scandisk at the next reboot from dirty-drive flags) and the system won't be in the consistent, fresh state that Linux expects on bootup.

--Just put the CD in the drive and boot the computer. If you can't boot from the CDROM, use rawrite to dump the knoppix\boot-en.img file to floppy, and boot from the floppy. It's that simple.


I have tried to search it in google but I found nothing. Everyone says "using a bootable CD or a bootable floppy". However, I just want to run the cd from a running windows system. Is there a "loadlin" for knoppix?

SUOrangeman
12-23-2002, 04:14 PM
For better or for worse, I've got a dual Athlon system based on a Tyan MPX-4M mobo and no floppy drive. If you've read about Tyan's AMD+SMP systems, you may have seen a thing or two about CD booting not working accurately (only Win2K and WinXP CDs work for me!). So, it would be nice to have an option to start Knoppix via loadlin from a DOS prompt (hard drive boot).

I haven't looked at the files on the boot floppy image, but it *may* just be a matter of extracting those to a directory and rigging loadlin to run accordingly. (Yes, I am aware that SMP may not be available to me using this method.)

-SUO

Dave_Bechtel
12-24-2002, 06:59 AM
--If you can't get that to work, I'd just throw a floppy drive in. You can get them at computer shows for ~$15. You should also see if there's a flash upgrade available for your BIOS that fixes the problem.

--I've gotten around the computer not being able to boot from CD (or done the following for speed/convenience) by repartitioning the disk so that there's a 1-cylinder primary partition (2/3/4) after the Win stuff, and putting a boot flag on it. The computer then boots from that partition instead of Win, and you can reassign the boot flag using either Win fdisk or linux. Once you have the partition in place (I will assume partition 4):

As root:
' fdisk /dev/hda '
o ' a '
oo ' 4 '
o ' a '
oo ' 1 ' == Activate 4 and deactivate 1
o ' p ' == Print partition table; the boot flag should now be on 4
o ' w ' == Write and exit

--To init the new partition:
' dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda4 '

--To copy the boot-en.img to partition 4 so the computer will boot from it:
' dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot-en.img of=/dev/hda4 '

' reboot '

--The computer will now find the floppy image on hda4 and boot from there.

--To reassign the boot flag from Win, run fdisk and hit ' 2 ' - Set active partition. Set it to the non-DOS 1-cylinder one. Reboot.

--Obviously, to reassign the boot flag from Linux, re-do the above mentioned fdisk steps. :)

--BTW, this method also works fine if you want to run Knoppix from the hard drive; just copy X:\knoppix\knoppix to c:\knoppix. If you actually have a Knoppix CD in the drive when it boots, it will run from the CD; if not, it finds the image on the HD and runs from there - which is good, especially if you want to upgrade the Knoppix compressed file on the HD. ;-)


For better or for worse, I've got a dual Athlon system based on a Tyan MPX-4M mobo and no floppy drive. If you've read about Tyan's AMD+SMP systems, you may have seen a thing or two about CD booting not working accurately (only Win2K and WinXP CDs work for me!). So, it would be nice to have an option to start Knoppix via loadlin from a DOS prompt (hard drive boot).

I haven't looked at the files on the boot floppy image, but it *may* just be a matter of extracting those to a directory and rigging loadlin to run accordingly. (Yes, I am aware that SMP may not be available to me using this method.)

-SUO

SUOrangeman
01-02-2003, 03:27 PM
I do like the idea of having a very small partition to serve as a "bootable floppy." However, making use of 'dd' sorta assumes that some competent *NIX is up and running.

And, yes, I am trying to force the issue of moving beyond the era of the floppy drive. Heck, we've got single hard drives inching towards 250 and 320GB. Bootable CDs would definitely suffice, by Tyan seems to be having a little trouble with El Torito and friends. :?

-SUO

Dave_Bechtel
01-02-2003, 09:06 PM
--If you just need quick-and-dirty stuff w/o Reiserfs or complex networking, try Tom's Root/Boot: http://www.toms.net/rb/

--1.44 floppy becomes a 1.7(?) with special format, boots, dumps everything to Ramdisk so you can use the floppy drive. There's also a 2.88MB El Torito boot image. :)

--IMHO, IBM did a Good Thing(TM) when they standardized on the 1.44M starting with the PS/2 MCA series; remember, all we had before those were basically 360k, el cheapo 720, and half-assed 5 1/4" 1.2M drives.

--The "era" of the floppy drive is long past, but you still can't beat it for built-in (BIOS) *writable* support. If you could make a Zip-100 drive act as /dev/fd0 ( A:\ ) in the BIOS (or an LS-120 hybrid even) it would be a good leap fwd; but for most common, everyday stuff it would be overkill.

--Of course I'm still waiting for packet-writing CD burners to be BIOS-supported; then we can use those 3.5" CDRW's as floppies. :shock:


I do like the idea of having a very small partition to serve as a "bootable floppy." However, making use of 'dd' sorta assumes that some competent *NIX is up and running.

And, yes, I am trying to force the issue of moving beyond the era of the floppy drive. Heck, we've got single hard drives inching towards 250 and 320GB. Bootable CDs would definitely suffice, by Tyan seems to be having a little trouble with El Torito and friends. :?

-SUO

SUOrangeman
01-07-2003, 02:30 PM
Even after trying all of the great suggestions posted above, I still cannot boot into Knoppix on my Tyan-based system *without* a floppy. The CD is good, as it boots just fine on other systems. I've created small primary partitions (on hard drive and Zip disks), made them active, and dropped the boot floppy image on those partitions via dd. Nothing works *on this system* (other systems perform as expected).

Although this isn't the end of the world, Tyan still hasn't solved this bootable CD problem with this board. If I want to install anything non-MS, I'm gonna hafta *GASP* install a floppy/LS-120 drive. Oh, the horror!

-SUO :)

Dave_Bechtel
01-07-2003, 10:49 PM
--What kind of error msgs do you get from the HD-based floppy image? That should have worked as a last resort...


Even after trying all of the great suggestions posted above, I still cannot boot into Knoppix on my Tyan-based system *without* a floppy. The CD is good, as it boots just fine on other systems. I've created small primary partitions (on hard drive and Zip disks), made them active, and dropped the boot floppy image on those partitions via dd. Nothing works *on this system* (other systems perform as expected).

Although this isn't the end of the world, Tyan still hasn't solved this bootable CD problem with this board. If I want to install anything non-MS, I'm gonna hafta *GASP* install a floppy/LS-120 drive. Oh, the horror!

-SUO :)

SUOrangeman
01-08-2003, 03:26 AM
Tyan gives me this wonderfully descriptive error message:

"Boot failed"

Again, I have lived with this board for 7+ months with a known problem with booting CD. I know that all of my media is good (as they work in other systems). I just am trying to not muck around inside of my machine anymore, just to start an OS install.

Anyway, I've borrowed some Mac weenie's USB floppy and am about to give that a whirl.

-SUO

01-09-2003, 03:21 AM
--If you just need quick-and-dirty stuff w/o Reiserfs or complex networking, try Tom's Root/Boot: http://www.toms.net/rb/

--1.44 floppy becomes a 1.7(?) with special format, boots, dumps everything to Ramdisk so you can use the floppy drive. There's also a 2.88MB El Torito boot image. :)

--IMHO, IBM did a Good Thing(TM) when they standardized on the 1.44M starting with the PS/2 MCA series; remember, all we had before those were basically 360k, el cheapo 720, and half-assed 5 1/4" 1.2M drives.

--The "era" of the floppy drive is long past, but you still can't beat it for built-in (BIOS) *writable* support. If you could make a Zip-100 drive act as /dev/fd0 ( A:\ ) in the BIOS (or an LS-120 hybrid even) it would be a good leap fwd; but for most common, everyday stuff it would be overkill.

--Of course I'm still waiting for packet-writing CD burners to be BIOS-supported; then we can use those 3.5" CDRW's as floppies. :shock:


I do like the idea of having a very small partition to serve as a "bootable floppy." However, making use of 'dd' sorta assumes that some competent *NIX is up and running.

And, yes, I am trying to force the issue of moving beyond the era of the floppy drive. Heck, we've got single hard drives inching towards 250 and 320GB. Bootable CDs would definitely suffice, by Tyan seems to be having a little trouble with El Torito and friends. :?

-SUO

Now you'll get me on a rant of why I hate Iomega. They agressively sold the inferior zip drive and not many people bought the ls-120 drive which was the "future" in my opinion. Now you can hardly get ls-120/ls-240 drives anywhere. And certainly not as a standard item in a PC.

If it were up to me, all computers would come with a LS-240 drive as standard. It is certainly enough to load a mini-knoppix on to and certainly the "floppy replacement" Now I see Zip-750 drives out... We need a good floppy replacement and CD-RW doesn't fit the bill. (Can't boot a cd-rw and also write to it in the same session)

Quick update
01-09-2003, 08:57 PM
I was able to boot Knoppix with a USB floppy drive and successfully installed it on my hard drive.

My only glitches were/are:

1. knx-hdinstall is not aware of USB floppies, so creating the floppies at the end of the routine do not work. I presume that the script is hard-coded to /dev/fd0 and the USB drive shows up as something else.

2. I get a CRC error when booting the HD install with LILO. I suspect that this is a result of my partitioning scheme and LILO "lives" above the 1023rd cylinder. When I ran Mandrake and Debian, I always had a small /boot partition below the hallowed cylinder. knx-hdinstall doesn't offer such luxuries yet. Loadlin works fine, so I can't say that I am Linux-less anymore. :)

I guess it's time to learn GRUB!

-SUO

Dave_Bechtel
01-09-2003, 09:00 PM
--The USB floppy drive prolly shows up as a SCSI disk (sda or the like.)

>> I guess it's time to learn GRUB!

--When you do, kindly post what you did on this forum; I've never used grub and would like to learn more about it.


I was able to boot Knoppix with a USB floppy drive and successfully installed it on my hard drive.

My only glitches were/are:

1. knx-hdinstall is not aware of USB floppies, so creating the floppies at the end of the routine do not work. I presume that the script is hard-coded to /dev/fd0 and the USB drive shows up as something else.

2. I get a CRC error when booting the HD install with LILO. I suspect that this is a result of my partitioning scheme and LILO "lives" above the 1023rd cylinder. When I ran Mandrake and Debian, I always had a small /boot partition below the hallowed cylinder. knx-hdinstall doesn't offer such luxuries yet. Loadlin works fine, so I can't say that I am Linux-less anymore. :)

I guess it's time to learn GRUB!

-SUO

Guest
01-09-2003, 10:22 PM
I was trying to find a loadlin for knoppix as I have a laptop that has no floppy and bios does not boot from CD-rom. Other than that this machine is ripe for knoppix.

There very little chance of getting a working floppy drive for this machine without splashing a some cash. It has no USB ports so that's out.

I found the original loadlin (circa 96) from Hans Lermans site, but it didn't work, no real surprize. I guess things have got a bit bigger since 96.

I don't want to run it from Win 9x, just straight from dos!

It would be really use to have some other way to boot Knoppix, without floppy or cdrom

:)

SUOrangeman
01-10-2003, 02:44 AM
I got LILO working, but I still mucked up something (probably in /etc/lilo.conf).

I'm used to using /etc/fstab for laying out my mount points, but KNOPPIX seems to ignore it. I must have too many bad years of RedHat, Mandrake, and tock Debian 3.0 under my belt. I guess that will be tomorrow's problem.

As for the "no-boot laptop," have you heard/read about the network boot option. Although I don't have the proper equipment (crossover cable ... or a router/hub/gateway that supports PXE), I've read the 'knx-terminalserver' information. It leads me to believe that any box already running KNOPPIX (even from CD) can be used to network boot other machines. I can only imagine that one *should* be able to perform an HD install to a machine even if it was booted via the network. Anyone try this?

-SUO

iivanoff
01-10-2003, 05:08 PM
As I understand you do not have a floppy drive.
If your HDD is large enough you can copy the KNOPPIX file (700 MB) from the cd-rom /KNOPPIX directory to a directory with the same name on the HDD. Next you will need a program like WinImage for Windows to open one of the boot diskette images that are on the CD and extract to your HDD KNOPPIX directory the files vmlinuz, miniroot.gz and syslinux.cfg. The last one id just for refference for the command line options you can use. You have to find loadlin.exe and place it in the same directory. Next create a knoppix.bat file in the same place. Edit the knoppix.bat file and write a single line (just an example):
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz VGA=788 lang=us
The startup script in miniroot is set to scan all drives for a KNOPPIX file and to install the one it finds. Of course this will still be a readonly system. In my version (3.1) there is no option to save prefernces to a hard disk instad of floppy. Good luck