Dual Boot, Differences from Debian

[schnarff]

Hello All,

I just picked up the latest Knoppix CD (4/9/03, I believe) and have been running it for a couple of days now. I've got everything but printing working, and that's only because there doesn't appear to be a driver for my (very new) Canon MultiPass C755 printer yet. Considering that I couldn't get most of my on-board peripherals to work under Win98, but I can with Knoppix, I'm very much ready to make the switch.

However, I need to preserve Win98 for a few reasons: OpenOffice isn't quite there yet, and Wine off of the CD basically freezes whenever I try to run a Win app that's more complex than Notepad; games; and for my wife's occasional use. Thus, I'd really like to dual-boot.

I've been roaming around through this board, looking at info on how to properly configure Grub to do this, and have seen much conflicting information (particularly as to whether the hdd-install program will let me set up/configure Grub from within it). Since I know things are changing very quickly with this distro, it'd be good to get current info on what my best bets there are. In return, I'll be happy to write up a detailed dual-boot HOWTO (I've done a fair amount of technical writing in the past) to help others like myself and to save you all some time.

Meanwhile, I've also seen a lot on how Knoppix "becomes Debian" once I've done a HDD install. I wanted to know -- is it actually Debian enough that I could, say, use any of the standard Debian features (.debs, etc.), or perhaps even follow the Debian upgrade path? Or is it just different enough that I'd be forced to stay with Knoppix forever (assuming that it sticks around)? I'm just concerned because I've seen enough smaller Linux distros die, and I don't want to be stuck with one that disappears.

Thanks very much in advance for your help on this.

Alex Kirk

[Stephen]

Other than some knoppix related scripts that are installed on the machine when you do a Hard Drive install it is Debian, you have all the options that any other Debian user has.

Your better off sticking with lilo for the bootloader you have to uncomment two lines in the config file and write the changes and you have a dual boot setup.

Anybody is welcome to add the documentation (http://www.knoppix.net/docs/) at any time and I don't think you have to worry about Debian going away any time soon it is a long running project with a lot of developer support.

BTW the latest version is 2003-04-15.

[schnarff]

Thanks, Stephen!

All of my fears and worries turned out to be unnecessary. First off, I realized rather quickly that even if I screwed up my MBR -- my largets concern -- I could still boot off of the CD and fix it just fine. Once I had that in my head, I just took the plunge.

I did like you said and uncommented the "other=/dev/hda1" line, marked it as "Windows" and saved lilo.conf; when I was running the install script, it just asked if I wanted to write Lilo to my MBR, and did so spectacularly. No problems at all.

The only problem now is that my sound isn't working. I think this is because, to get it to work, I was passing "alsa" as an argument to the knoppix kernel, and I'm not sure if Lilo is doing that right now. Any advice there would be nice.

Meanwhile, to anyone searching this forum for tips/reassurance/etc. on hdd-installs -- just let the script go once you've configured Lilo, and you're set!

Alex Kirk

[Stephen]

As root in a console window adduser < user name > audio to add the user to the audio group logout and back in the sound should work. While your at it you may as well add your user to the cdrom group, to save yourself problems accessing the cdrom.

If that doesn't work try sndconfig and follow the directions of the sound configuration program (this as root in console also).

[schnarff]

Stephen,

I just ran sndconfig (albiet remotely), and I'm back to the *exact* same place I was before I was specifying "knoppix ... alsa" as my boot option from the CD -- I get identical messages about missing libraries, etc.

I looked at lilo.conf, and interestingly enough, my append="..." line changed between when I configured it before install and afterwards -- I'm assuming that the installer made some changes to it. I tried putting "alsa" at the end of the line and running /sbin/lilo, but that didn't help me out -- though I at least know it went through, since "dmesg | grep alsa" shows "Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ... alsa".

I'm thinking my problem here is that I'm now using a different kernel than was on the CD, and this new kernel isn't getting alsa support right. Am I correct? How might I fix this?

Thanks,
Alex Kirk

[schnarff]

Oh, and I just checked: my user for the moment, knoppix, was already a member of the 'audio' and 'cdrom' groups. Really makes me think it's the kernel here.

Alex Kirk

[Stephen]

my problem here is that I'm now using a different kernel than was on the CD, and this new kernel isn't getting alsa support right. Am I correct? How might I fix this?

Thanks,
Alex Kirk

Why are you using the new kernel does it have support for something you need that is not in the original kernel with the CD?

[schnarff]

Ummm, actually, I didn't do anything to specifically select a new kernel -- I just assumed that, since the system went from Knoppix to Debian with the install, and since my sound support seems to have died, that the kernel laid down in the install was different. If the install is supposed to lay down the same kernel as what was being booted with the CD, though, I'm using an identical kernel -- and am completely lost.

Alex Kirk

[eadz]

It uses the same kernel.

The "Knoppix goes to debian thing" is more of a "Debian is harder to get working than knoppix" thing :) It's a grey area, but the main reason is that with sort of problem the solution is the same for debian and knoppix.

As for your sound, if the alsa still doesn't work with the alsa append line, try running knoppix from the cd again, and see which modules it is using (lsmod).

Then back in your installed Knoppix try using "modconf" to add the missing modules. Also check the the volume is set correctly ( try kmix ).