trying to install.... busy hard drives

[benjamin1254]

i am trying to install the dvd 4.0 version i bought off ebay the other day. I am currently runing it seeing as my other distro ubuntu died on me. I have re formated the hard drive with partition magic. i have also made 2 partitions that i want one for linux swap partition and one for the initial install. yet when i go to install everything the command prompt comes out and says both hard drives are busy and mounted. when i right click on my main hard drive i see that it says its not mounted at all. i even tried enabling the read/write on the hard drive did that un mounted same thing come out. they are both busy and i would like to know how to make them avalable for use so i can install this ever so wonderful distro of knoppix 4.0 on dvd. :cry:

[pip]

I thought I had successfully managed to install 4.0 from DVD until booting from the hard drive.
Knoppix/Debian had seen my IDE controllers and drives as UDMA, and tried unsuccessfully to turn on the DMA for them. The result was a lockup with the error message being 'Drives Busy', then an error status code. Even putting ide=nodma in the kernel line did not stop the OS from trying to make the DMA part active later on. The drives/controller had run under Win98 with DMA active and no problem, but I have read that people have been having problems with Kernel 2.6 (which Knoppix 4.0 uses) and DMA. I had to stop the DMA from being running initially and also from being activated later on during the hotplug session. Now I have a working machine, although I cannot share my drives with my windows machines, but thats another matter.
Try running your PC using the DVD as normal (DMA is switched off by default) then enable it from the main menu. My machine locked up when I did this, which proved running the drives with DMA enabled on my PC with Kernel 2.6 was a no no. Perhaps you can disable it in your bios settings just to test. I hope I've given you another avenue to investigate.

[UnderScore]

boot the knoppix DVD with the cheat code:
knoppix nofstab noswap

Let us know if this helped

[beko]

I have the same problem here also benjamin1254 & I bought the DVD from ebay also,the DVD running in the live mode very good but I like to install it on the hard drive ,I have 3 hard drives in my system one of them is 8 GB I formated it useing partation magic to 7.50 GB ext3 & the rest for the swap & every time I start installing using knx2hd or knoppix-installer it say it need to format again because knoppix can't find suitable partations for it so I start to foloow it's instructions but when i choose the hard drive it say busy so I thought this is because the hard drive is already mounted so I went to check it I didn't find unmount & just found mount ,I tried to change the premission for reading & writting then tried again & now it's not saying busy it's saying read only,in fact Iam almost give up from all that & I wish I can find anyone have a solution for this. :roll:

[UnderScore]

OK. You may need to use a cheat code.

Boot the knoppix DVD with the cheat code:
knoppix nofstab noswap

Let us know if this helped.

[beko]

First Thank you for you reply
I did as you said & this time it didn't give device busy as it used to do & I could format the root & the swap partations & I thought everything is fine but when I saved the changed I made for the hard drive & closed QTPARTED it gave me the same message again that say there is no suitable partations for knoppix & it will start QTPARTED again , look to the attached picture what it say in the root shell maybe you can get any idea about what Iam having exactly !!!!!!
http://www.geocities.com/moh.ahmed@verizon.net/snapshot1.jpg

& Thank You again for your help.

[lotech]

Take it easy, you are just one of us sleepless hopeless Knoppix users waiting for a fix to it, keep check back for update release, or you go back to 3.9 for an easier life !

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I get a different error when using qtparted. I've never seen this error before this school year, but now I see it on about 33% of my hdinstalls!

When I try to resize the XP partition (VFAT32) from roughly 40GB to about 20GB to make room for the linux installation, I get the following error:


An error happen during ped_file_system_open call

after resizing but before creating or committing, or:


An error happen during ped_file_system_resize call

after creating the an ext3 (about 19GB) partition and a linux-swap partition (about 512MB) and committing the changes.

I tried the cheat given above


knoppix nofstab noswap

on the outside chance that this would help (I've been pulling my hair out for months over this and am now desperate to get these PCs up and running dual-boots) but it didn't help. I get the same errors.

What's wrong with this?

Please help,
AJG

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I get a different error when using qtparted. I've never seen this error before this school year, but now I see it on about 33% of my hdinstalls!

When I try to resize the XP partition (VFAT32) from roughly 40GB to about 20GB to make room for the linux installation, I get the following error:


An error happen during ped_file_system_open call

after resizing but before creating or committing, or:


An error happen during ped_file_system_resize call

after creating the an ext3 (19GB) partition and a linux-swap partition (whatever's left) and committing the changes.

I tried the cheat given above


knoppix nofstab noswap

on the outside chance that this would help (I've been pulling my hair out for months over this and am now desperate to get these PCs up and running dual-boots) but it didn't help. I get the same errors.

What's wrong with this?

Please help,
AJG

[UnderScore]

You may have to first scandisk the FAT32 partitions. See http://www.mepis.org/node/5634

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, so you're talking about scandisk, the windows/dos utility, right? The problem with that is that I don't have admin rights when logged-into windows. I never needed such rights before.

So, the deal I made with the techies at my school was that I'd leave their XP installs alone as long as they left my linux installs allone. The one exception being, of course, my resizing the XP partitions to make space for linux in the first place!

Actually, here's another exception - when the techies ghost my hdds! This problem first came about when all my Dells, one by one over the period of the last few months, had to have their mobos replaced due to having a thermal event (leaking capacitors) which prevented booting. So, when Dell sends a replacement mobo, the techies replace the old one and ghost the hdd from some windows PC down the hall (not in my dual-boot lab for some reason).

Why they have to ghost the hdd after replacing the mobo is beyond me. They tell me it has something to do with getting the correct DHCP settings from a working PC that otherwise is a pain...? So, I told them to fix their XP partitions as something was obviously wrong with the XP partitions after ghosting. So, I guess I already suggested they run scandisk, but they never did....

BTW, several of the PCs I'm having trouble with were originally installed as dual-boots by yours truly without a problem! I also suggested they make a ghost image from one of MY working PCs (a dual-boot) to use when ghosting instead. In fact, maybe they could use this image to fix the bad ghostings....

Is there a way I could "ghost" a working dual-boot PC, ie: using linux as I don't have windows admin rights, so I can fix their handiwork myself?

Thanx,
AJG

[OErjan]

to ghost a disk i would use dd, should be possible to do with NFS mounted source.

dd if=/dev/myHDD of=/mnt/image/image.img
to replace

dd if=/mnt/image/image.img of=/dev/myHDD
here you have some more.
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21845&highlight=dd

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I'd like to use your dd procedure to make an image of a working PC with all the partitions intact, however, this is going to be a huge file, right? If I don't compress the file, as described above, how big will the image file be for a 40GB hdd? Will it image all 40GB even if many GBs are not as yet used? If I compress, what compression rate would I get, about 50%? I just don't know where I'd store such a huge image file! If the image file only copies stored files and not physical space, and I compress at 50%, then the image could be as small as 4GB, but I still don't know where I'd store it....

Is there some way to install the image directly as its being made - a straight transfer of data without having to save an intermediary image file at all?

BTW, here's some stats if it helps:
These are Dell GX270s with 40GB hdd, 750MB RAM and Pentium IVs running at 2.8GHz.
Also, the partitions on the working machines are set-up roughly as follows.
hda1: Windows 95 rescue (<1GB)
hda2: Windows XP primary boot partition (19GB)
hda3: KNOPPIX-installered Linnux ext3 partition (19GB)
hda4: linux-swap (whatever's left < 1GB)

TIA,
AJG