Hard drive read access error

[freddagg]

Hi, Im pretty new to this but am stubborn not to let it beat me.
When installing version 3.4 from cd onto the only HD in the pc it asks to partition the drive (4gb drive). Since thereis only one drive in the pc, it is already selected so ok so far.
It then say the hd is read only and the only options are to quit or go back.
Ive had a quick look in the bios for any read only toggles or similar but no luck. The hard drive currently has a win98 os on it that Im planning to overwrite.

Any ideas?
Cheers F

[Harry Kuhman]

Any ideas?
Do you have available unpartitoned space on this hard drive? If so this is great but quite unusual. Normally one has to use some program like Partition Magic to shrink existing partitions and make space. If or after you have space, I would use some program like Ranish Partition Manager to make the new partitions. (I'm just not as comfortable with the Linux partition software, have only used it in Linux installs, but it should work too. I just know I can make what I want with Ranish.)

None of this should be taken to imply that I think you actually should install Knoppix to a hard disk. I generally consider that a Bad Idea™. At least try install Debian before insisting on installing Knoppix; the Debian install has become much cleaner in recent years.

[freddagg]

Thanks for the reply. I may try that partition trick or else add a new (old) drive.
The reason I was after Knoppix OS was to run on a 500mhz p3 as a simple file server and streaming music server. Will the debian fit this application?
Cheers F

[Harry Kuhman]

Will the debian fit this application?
Knoppix is Debian. Actually, it's a rag-tag mix of several different versions of Debian (knows as stable, testing and unstable) that don't always play well together. Things have been chosen carefully so that thay do work good together when run from the Live CD, but things frequently break when Knoppix is "installed", particularly if you try to install anything else or update the programs you have to new versions. This can brake the careful balance that the Live CD was built on.

Added to that, some things just tend to break when Debian is installed to the hard drive. If you look at the HDD install forum, the second post ever made there was about networking in Knoppix working fine from the Live CD but failing after a hard disk "install". It's been going on that way ever since I've known Knoppix. And the number of hard disk install problem posts is larger than any other forum except the catch-all General forum (and many of the problems there are hard disk related).

The applications in Knoppix can be downloaded and installed fom the Debian website (http://www.debian.org/) by following the links to the packages. For example here is the list of packages available (http://packages.debian.org/testing/) from the Debian website for the testing version of Debian. I'm sure you'll find everything on Knoppix and more is available for Debian.

In addition to being a Live CD, Knoppix really set the standard for doing hardware detection (really important to do on a Live CD that is intended to be able to be booted in many different systems). And when it first came out the installer in Debian (and most other Linux distros) was pretty bad. It needed a lot of technical details about your hardware, and installing was often a battle of finding the right information after many trys and restarts. But the Debian installer has matured a lot since then, a Debian install is pretty straight forward now. It's not perfect, but neither are Knoppix or Windows. If you try to install Debian but find problems that you just can't live with and decide to accept the faults of a Knoppix hard drive install, well at least you have looked at both and are making an informed decision. But if you choose to install Knoppix without even looking at a current install of Debain, then I have to think you are making a short sighted choice without full knowledge. You may think you are doing it the lazy way at first, but you may end up fighting more problems in the long run and you likely will have learned a lot less about Linux than you would learn by doing a regular Debian install and setting up just what you want.