persistent store creation freezes at 96%

[jaschoon]

hello:

i am having difficulty creating a persistent store using knoppix 3.8.1. with either a 7gb fat partion (which is seen by knoppix) or a usb pen flash drive the issue is consistent. when i attempt to create the store i-

* choose not to use encryption (although i have tried this and the result is consistent)
* choose a store size (which i have tried either all available or less than the total available)

knoppix then begins the store creation process but freezes @96%. it never completes the store creation and the window must be closed manually. the store does not function properly after that.

i have tried this process with serveral disc instances of knoppix 3.8.1 and believe it is not related to media/iso issues.

any help that anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance,
js

[rwcitek]

That's odd. I've created a persistent home folder (a mis-nomer, BTW) several times. Works great. So, given that it can work, how exactly are you creating your persisent home folder? Have you tried creating it using the CLI program "knoppix-mkimage" from within either a virtual terminal or an xterm? Could it be that you are running out of disk space, that is, you don't have enough room to store your image or that your image size is too small for the number of files you are storing? Do you see any error messages on your first virtual terminal or in your logs (/var/log/syslog) or dmesg? What kind of system are you on: cpu, ram, disk space?

Just throwing out some thoughts.

Regards,
- Robert

[heiby]

I'm seeing the same thing here, also with 3.8.1. I'm trying with a USB flash drive, plugged into an older Compaq P3 Deskpro. Told it to use 25Meg of ~64. It appears (from a "ps -eaf" output) that there is a "umount /mnt/uba1" that has been sitting there for (now) 30 minutes. All the while, the access LED on the USB flash drive has been flashing.

[jaschoon]

robert:

it is a pretty strong box. dual athlon 1900+, 768mb memory. i allocated 7gb fat (i have tried ntfs, too) to the persistent store (in the case of the hard drive) and the maximum (64mb) in the case of the pen drive.

as for the logs, i am pulling them now and will update when i have a bit more info...

likewise, i am having the same issue with my pen drive as heiby. the drive is running (and appears to be writing/accessing) constantly while the create process is running. i have let both creates run for >20mins with no success.

thanks for your help...
js

[jaschoon]

robert:

all of these logs (/var/log/syslog, /KNOPPIX/var/log & /UNIONFS/var/log) are empty.

thanks,
js

[rwcitek]

robert:

it is a pretty strong box. dual athlon 1900+, 768mb memory. i allocated 7gb fat (i have tried ntfs, too) to the persistent store (in the case of the hard drive) and the maximum (64mb) in the case of the pen drive.


Let's start simple and quick by creating a small (2 MB) knoppix.img file on the vfat partition (I'll assume /dev/hda1) like so:


boot: knoppix dma 1
knoppix-mkimage
click "yes" for "Do you want to create a persistent home directory ..."
press the space key to select /dev/hda1
click "no" for encryption.
enter "2" for the number of MB
click "OK" when finished
mount /mnt/hda1
ls -la --si /mnt/hda1/knoppix.img

In the end, you should see a 2.1 MB file named knoppix.img. Does the above work for you?

BTW, in order for the knoppix-mkimage script to work, /dev/hda1 must be listed in your /etc/fstab.

If you want to do further debugging, subsitute this commad for the knoppix-mkimage above:


( set -x ; knoppix-mkimage 2> img.log.txt )

This will "turn on debugging" so that you can view the log file with 'less img.log.txt'.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/~rwcitek

[rwcitek]

all of these logs (/var/log/syslog, /KNOPPIX/var/log & /UNIONFS/var/log) are empty.


If you are in KDE, click K > Knoppix > Services > Start SYSLOG, then make your knoppix persistent image.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/~rwcitek

[drb]

I had the same problem (stuck at 96%) but found the system eventually produced a PH after about 2-3 hours (230 MB on 256 MB Pen Drive).

drb

[harryhood]

I had the same problems with 3.8.1 so I dumped knoppix and started using Kanotix. I now have zero problems with the USB home.

[heiby]

I found that whether I tried creating the image file in-place on my USB memory stick, or tried to copy the 32M file onto it from my HD, it sat there interminably trying to sync all of the information out.

I ended up creating the image file on my FAT32 HD partition, booting Windows 2K Pro, and copying the image file to the USB memory. The copy took less than a minute. Under Knoppix, I had given up on the copy after an hour.

Things seem pretty reasonable now, though shutdown time of several minutes seems to me to be excessive.

[rwcitek]

I found that whether I tried creating the image file in-place on my USB memory stick, or tried to copy the 32M file onto it from my HD, it sat there interminably trying to sync all of the information out.
What you describe suggests that the problem is not with the script that creates the image but rather with the USB device. Perhaps its using USB1.1, although even at 12 Mbps, copying should only take about 30 seconds. Can someone stick in a USB stick and try a simple write test? For example:

mount /mnt/uba1
cd /mnt/uba1/
file.test () { dd if=/dev/zero of=foo.usb.test bs=1k count=$1 ; sync; }
sync
time -p file.test 10
sync
time -p file.test 100
sync
time -p file.test 1000


What were the results?

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/~rwcitek

[rwcitek]

Can someone stick in a USB stick and try a simple write test?
Had a spare moment to fire up Knoppix and test the USB write performance:


root@2[uba1]# rw.test () { dd if=/dev/zero of=rw.test.$$ bs=1k count=$1 ; sync ; }
root@2[uba1]# sync ; time -p rw.test 10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
10240 bytes transferred in 0.000254 seconds (40302038 bytes/sec)
real 0.65
user 0.00
sys 0.00
root@2[uba1]# sync ; time -p rw.test 100
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
102400 bytes transferred in 0.000894 seconds (114545258 bytes/sec)
real 1.29
user 0.00
sys 0.00
root@2[uba1]# sync ; time -p rw.test 1000
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1024000 bytes transferred in 0.017315 seconds (59139134 bytes/sec)
real 9.70
user 0.00
sys 0.02

1 MB/ 10 sec = 0.1 MB/sec
So, 256 MB would take about 40 minutes. That is indeed a long time.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/~rwcitek