My Situation...

[iamdigitalman]

Alright, here we go:

I have my old workhorse of a laptop, the Compaq Armada 4220T, which I reserected from the dead. origonally, it had a 6.4gb HDD, but almost half of it was dead. I cut the part that was bad into it's own partition, and installed Windows 98se on it. That worked...for about 3 months. so I purchaced a New Toshiba MK2018GAP 20gb HDD. It was registering only to 7.15gb. so, I thought it was defective, and was about to send it back, until I got a laptop HDD adapter for $3.00, and hooked it up to my dad's Windows XP box, and ran my trusty Knoppix 3.7 12-8-2004 build CD, booted, and I ran QTparted, and she found her right away. there she was, 18.16gb (some of it is taken away fro drive structer). well, I installed Knoppix on the HDD, and threw (well, gently placed) it in my laptop. It booted fine, and then we hit a snag.

at the loading screen, the info spilled over past the monitor. WTH? the fun didnt stop there. in the KDe, she was spilled over not only vertically, but horizontally. That, plus the internal mouse (trackball) didn't work AT ALL. Wierd, beacuse during loading, it said found generic PS/2 mous at dev/psaux. so I thought, maybe it's borked. I restarted the beast, and hooked up my old Logitech Model M-C48 grey wheel PS/2 mouse to the port, and she loaded. SAME PROBLEM!! I rebooted AGAIN, and tried the inland optical PS/2 wheel mouse from my dad's computer, which I KNOW works, because it works just fine when I loaded the KDE, and works flawlesly. Then, I rebooted again, and got my old trusty Microsoft Serial Mouse 2.0A, back when Microsoft made quality products. well, hardware, at least.

So, here I sit, typing this at 9:30, and I need a solution. fast. oh, before I forget, here are the specs:

Compaq Armada 4220T
Pentium 266mhz, though Knoppix claims it is a Mobile Pentium @ 287mhz.
64mb ram (32mb internal, 16mbx2 dimm sticks)
Toshiba MK2018GAP 20gb HDD
internal 1.44mb floppy drive
24x CD-ROM (can't read CD-Rs or CD-RWs, that's why I cant boot Knoppix off the laptop, and have to do it on my dad's rig.)
Ports:
1x RCA video out
1x VGA 15-pin monitor port
1x 25-pin printer port
1x 9-pin serial port
1x PS/2 mouse/keyboard port
2x PCMCIA card slots
1st card slot: Compaq brand CF card PCMCIA adapter, filled with 128mb Sandisk CF card
2nd card slot: 3Com Etherlink III ethernet card
Knoppix v3.7 build: 2004-08-12 (December 12th, 2004).

that's about it. thanks for ALL the help, in advance. -digital ;)

[Harry Kuhman]

I think your problem is caused by installing on one set of hardware and then trying to switch the drive to different hardware (aside for the normal problems of installing Knoppix to a hard drive that you likely don't want to hear about).

A 24x CD-ROM is pretty recent in the evolution of CD drives. Some early 1x and maybe even some 2x drives didn't have the gain adjustment needed to read CD-RW (CD-RW is less reflective than CDR and needs a higher gain to read it), but just about everything after 2x should read both with no problem and any drive that reads CD-ROM should read CDR. Is there a known hardware problem here? Have you actually tried Knoppix in both types of media? (I've seen cases where I had problems with CDR in a bad drive, but CDRW would still work since the gain increase overrode the optics problem.) You do mean that it can't read it, right, and not that it can't boot a CD (a different problem that we can solve)?

You might consider a Debian install rather than a Knoppix install, but I'm not sure how to talk you through a network install starting with only a flippy (likely Underscore could help you with that though, if you do indicate that you would go with the Debian install).

[iamdigitalman]

I retracty my statement. I made 2 fresh boot floppies, and I ran them on the machine with CD in the drive. it booted!! before, it only got to where it was looking for the disk. But now, it boots UNTIL I get a message about insufficent memory, and it asks me to make a ram disk. So, I hit o.k. and It gave me this error:

/usr/sbin/mkdosswapfile: line 11 /usr/bin/id: Input/output error

and it repeats over, and over.

I would rather use the install already on the disk, and work around all the small problems.

the reason I choose Knoppix, is because I think it is the most versitile and stable linux flavour out there. I have it installed on my 1 computer, used as a server, on another, a mini 486, that captures video from my PS2, and sends it down a wireless connection to the server. It also looks like a good windows replacement, with alot of good everyday apps, like openoffice, Mozilla, and a Microsoft emulator. I also like the security feature of it automaticlly dropping you in a limited account for secutiy purposes. I just need to get the damn thing working!

oh, I used to have it on a CD-RW somewhere, so I could use it in Live mode, and write and erase documents.

Plus, I am currently downloading version 3.9 from the Perdue server. only 24 hours remaining!!

So, PLEASE, PLEASE help me!!

thanks!! -digital ;)

[Harry Kuhman]

the reason I choose Knoppix, is because I think it is the most versitile and stable linux flavour out there.
That may be true of Debian, the actual Linux distro that Knoppix is built on. But a couple of years of watching the hdd install forum and hdd install problems that overflow to the other forums here convinces me that it is not true for the intended-for-live-CD Knoppix, that is great for what it is intended to be but can be a house of cards when installed to hard disk. I don't think there is versitility you will get with Knoppix that you can't get with a Debian install, and you'll get more stabilitty with a Debian install.


I made 2 fresh boot floppies, .....
People generally don't fool with making two boot flopies any more now that the kernel will not fit on a single floppy (the smart ones used the tool I'm going to mention even before that and didn't have to make a new boot floppy every time the Knoppix kernel changed). If you make one Smart Boot Manager floppy (or even just install it to the hard disk MBR!) you can boot without ever changing a floppy.


Plus, I am currently downloading version 3.9 from the Perdue server. only 24 hours remaining!!
Yea, the Purdue server is dead slow at times. But shame on you for not using BitTorrent, you would get the download much faster. With the mirrors you can only get the download as fast as the fastest source you can find will feed it to you. With BitTorrent you get it as fast as all available sources combined will feed it to you, and the sofware takes care of finding those sources for you. Don't complain about mirror speeds if you are unwilling to learn to use the most widely use downloading tool on the Internet.

Also, I question the wisdom of downloading 3.9. It has known bugs. I would suggest either 3.8.2 or waiting for 4.0 (which I sure hope is officially released soon, it's now almost 3 weeks since the Linux-Tag release).

[iamdigitalman]

ok, I canceled 3.9 download, and 3.8.2 will be complete within a half an hour. I will take 10-15 minutes to burn it, and then I will run it on my dad's, create boot floppys, run on laptop, and report back with my succes/failures.

I just thought of something: what if I were to use a version like 3.4 or older, as they run by default with nowheel, and my trackball (internal mouse) doesnt have a wheel. or does it matter for laptops? I havnt seen any laptops with a trackball/trackpad that has a scroll wheel. bad thing about that is earlier than 3.4, and I can install to the HD. what version, if any allows both HD install, and nowheel by default? -digital ;)

[Harry Kuhman]

My notebook has a "scroll wheel" space on the touchpad. I think all HP and Compaq ones have for several years.

As far as different version, there are always tradeoffs. If you don't care about having the latest and greatest of things then I actuall like 3.1 more than 3.4 (3.4 needed cheat codes for my notebook, 3.1 did not. 3.1 had a lot more games that were removed release by release to make space for things I didn't use. But 3.8 was a big improvement, no cheat codes needed again and several things that didn't work before now worked correctly including my Wireless NIC.

[iamdigitalman]

Well, I booted with the 3.8.2 CD, using the 3.7 bootfloppys, as 3.2.8 has no mkbootfloppy command. well, I typed "knoppix nowheel fb800x600" at the boot prompt, and I had mouse function, and my screen wasnt spilling over. Now, what file is it I make changes to to have the nowheel and fb800x600 options when knoppix is installed to the HDD? isnt it /etc/lilo.conf or something like that?

also, since I have both CDs, which should I use? 3.7 or 3.8.2? when I biited 3.8.2, it didnt launch cardmgr, and didnt detect my PCMCIA 3Com EtherLink III or Sandisk card. 3.7 does that when I boot.

I will try this in the morning. -digital ;)

[Harry Kuhman]

Don't make boot floopies, make a Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) boot floppy or install SBM to your hard disks MBR. Or use XOSL (http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm) (I like XOSL a lot better, but most people here don't have the patience to spend the extra one minute it takes to set it up over SBM.) If you do use Boot Floppies they contain a particular Linux kernel in them, and you may be using a different kernel than was intended for that Knoppix CD. SBM or XOSL boot the kernel from CD so they get the intended kernel.

3.7 or 3.8.2 - use which works better for you. 3.8.2 contains the union file system, but there seem to be a lot of issues with a number of devices including writing to CDs.

[iamdigitalman]

Don't make boot floopies, make a Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) boot floppy or install SBM to your hard disks MBR. Or use XOSL (http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm) (I like XOSL a lot better, but most people here don't have the patience to spend the extra one minute it takes to set it up over SBM.) If you do use Boot Floppies they contain a particular Linux kernel in them, and you may be using a different kernel than was intended for that Knoppix CD. SBM or XOSL boot the kernel from CD so they get the intended kernel.

3.7 or 3.8.2 - use which works better for you. 3.8.2 contains the union file system, but there seem to be a lot of issues with a number of devices including writing to CDs.

Well, I dont have a CD burner on the laptop, but what I am saying, is that while booting off 3.8.2, the cardmgr that usually pops up, and beeps from the speakers as it initalizes each PCMCIA card I have, does not appear under 3.8.2. is it still there? and if not, is there an alternate app that manages my PCMCIA devices? thanks fot the links. -digital ;)