Download sends CD drive thrashing after 80mb

[rollo11]

Trying to download the Kanotix .iso using Knoppix.

Tried using Firefox and Konqueror, and different mirrors, but the same thing happens. After about 80Mb of download, the CD-DVD drive jumps into action and the system grinds to a halt. The first time I had to do a hard reset.

Is this something to do with disk space allocation..? This is a brand new laptop with a hard disk partitioned into four, being three ReiserFS partitions and a swap.

Help really appreciated.

[UnderScore]

Are you running Knoppic from CD or are running Knoppix from the HD?
Are you saving the ISO to the Knoppix home directory /home/knoppix/, which uses your system's RAM as a RAM drive to store data?
Are you saving the ISO to a place on the hard disk, /mnt/hda3 perhaps?

[rollo11]

Thanks for your help.

I'm running Knoppix from the CD. My aim is to download and burn a disk image. I assumed it wouldn't be necessary to customise or remaster the installation in order to do this. Maybe that's not correct? My machine has 256Mb RAM.

Tried downloading a 700Mb file using Firefox without specifying the download destination. Crashed after 80Mb.

Tried downloading the same file using Konqueror and specifying the download destination /disk, which I had previously mounted to point to /dev/sda3 (a ReiserFS partition of my SATA hard disk). Crashed after 80Mb.

Any idea what I have to do to make this work? The simpler the better, or I will just trip up again...

Thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

This is a brand new laptop with a hard disk partitioned into four, being three ReiserFS partitions and a swap.
Is there some reason why you want to keep using a Live CD based system rather than install a Linux distro intended for Hard disk on this system? It would seem ideal for Debian, which would resolve this problem and load a lot faster.

[rollo11]

I can't install anything until I am able to:

1. Download an installation .iso
2. Burn it to a CD


All I have is this machine. And all it has is Knoppix.

[OErjan]

try downloading the Debina netinstall.
like this. it is a minimal Netinstall iso that boots and downloads the instalationfiles over the net during install, it is 40Mb or so.
check the MD5sum and burn slow (just like Knoppix). have fun. OErjan
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r1/i386/iso-cd/debian-31r1a-i386-businesscard.iso
read more here
http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

[rollo11]

Thanks for that, I have noted it. But I want to download and burn Kanotix!

What do I need to do to make this work? All I am trying to do is download an .iso long enough to burn it. Details of what I have tried are above.

PS - Harry: Debian is probably not ideal for me. As you can see here, I can't even download a file under Knoppix.
PS - OErjan: Net installs are probably out - if you remember, I have an issue with my ethernet card which complicates things.

I have been at this for two weeks now. But I plan to get there in the end.

[Harry Kuhman]

I can't install anything until I am able to:

1. Download an installation .iso
2. Burn it to a CD

All I have is this machine. And all it has is Knoppix.
Now that's just crazy talk, since what you indicate you are trying to do is download another Live CD, even if it is known to be somewhat better at working when put on a hard disk than Knoppix. But you have plenty of memory to download the baicc Debian Internet Installer. Assuming that you can then make a CD (and having that Knoppix CD stuck in the drive at this point presents it's own problems), then you could install Debian after just downloading and burning a few meg, far least that the 80 meg threshold that you seem to have limiting you.

[Harry Kuhman]

Thanks for that, I have noted it. But I want to download and burn Kanotix!
Kantonix, being a Live CD, is not what you indicated that you wanted to do above.


What do I need to do to make this work? All I am trying to do is download an .iso long enough to burn it.
Well, one thing that would help would be to be running a real hard disk distro. Then the ram disk issue would not hit you. Once you had Debian installed you could download and burn Kantonix and all the other Live CDs that you like.


PS - Harry: Debian is probably not ideal for me. As you can see here, I can't even download a file under Knoppix.
PS - OErjan: Net installs are probably out - if you remember, I have an issue with my ethernet card which complicates things.
I'm not clear why Debian is not ideal for you, since Knoppix is basically Debian with a lot of extra packages loaded, many of which you will never use. OK, it's a mix of different Debian flavors that often causes people problems if they add or update anything, but that only favors Debian, not Knoppix.

Forgive me for not remebering all discussions or knowing what your ethernet issue is. Yea, that might be a problem, but I don't know what the issue is and it doesn't sound like you have tried Debian to know if it would be an issue or not. By the way, I have an 8.03 meg "mini.iso" file sitting on my hard drive and burnt to a CDRW on another system right now. It boots fine for me, discovers my network and configures itself, and lets me download and install my choice of the Debian Stable, Testing or Unstabe versions from a wide variety of download servers.

I do think you should be able to download files to your Linux partitions, but if you are not able to do this or the Live CD insists on writing them to a temporary file on the ramdisk first, then it might be wiser to use the Line CD to download something useful.

[rollo11]

Thanks Harry for your help.

So downloading and burning CDs is always problematic under standard Knoppix? And there's no fix to make it possible?

This is turning into an ordeal... The problem with net installations is that I have to issue a command to change the MAC address of my ethernet card. (Yes, I know ideally I should have a router, but right now I don't.) Does the Debian net install give access to a Bash command line before attempting a network connection? This wasn't possible for the net install of Suse.

When I tried a net install of Ubuntu (which is basically Debian, right?), I didn't even get that far. I got an error ("Permission denied") when trying to run ./debootstrap. I have no idea what I am doing with Debian, and searching on this error produced nothing.

At this point I am just looking for the path of least resistance to a HD-installed Linux. It's in order to keep my sanity. Downloading and burning a user-friendly distro looked like the best idea, but even that turns out impossible...

Thanks for more pointers, I do appreciate you helping me.

[Harry Kuhman]

...So downloading and burning CDs is always problematic under standard Knoppix? And there's no fix to make it possible?

This is turning into an ordeal... The problem with net installations is that I have to issue a command to change the MAC address of my ethernet card. This wasn't possible for the net install of Suse. And when I tried a net install of Ubuntu (which is basically Debian, right?) I got an error during the installation ("Permission denied" when trying to run ./debootstrap). I have no idea what I am doing with Debian.

At this point I am just looking for the path of least resistance to a HD-installed Linux. It's in order to keep my sanity. Downloading and burning a user-friendly distro looked like the best idea, but even that turns out impossible...

Thanks for more pointers, I do appreciate you helping me.
Downloading and burning under Knoppix is not always problematic under Knoppix, but there are issues one must consider. The most obvious is that Knoppix is a Live CD, intended as a way to introduce people to Linux or use as a portable or emergency system. But by it's nature it is normally in the CD drive, so if you try to burn a CD you have an issue if you remove the Knoppix CD. There are ways around this. If you have enough memory then you can use the toram cheat code to copy the entire Knoppix CD to memory (and then the CD can be removed to free up the drive). If you have multiple optical drives this may not be an issue at all. Or if you don't have enough RAM or multiple optical drives you can use another distro that is smaller like the Knoppix based DSL and the toram trick (yes, this doesn't reslove the issue of how to burn a DSL disc if you only have Knoppix). And if downloading and burning any ISO is an issue and you still have a floppy drive then you can even install Debian from the Internet with just a few Floppy disks to get you started. See http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

[rollo11]

Well I made some progress. Hooray.

Did two things, at least one of which meant I can now download to /mnt/sda3

* Gave write permission to /mnt/sda3 with a chmod 777 - why didn't Konqueror or Firefox issue a warning if this was the problem?
* Setup up a generous swap file with the Knoppix app

But the ordeal is not over... I may start a new thread, to keep to the rules.

Thanks for the Toram cheat code hint. And for the latest Debian plug... But you didn't answer my question about whether there is access to a command line in the Debian installer. Because if there isn't then my netcard will not connect, and it will be a non-starter. Thanks again. I'm getting there.

[Harry Kuhman]

.....But you didn't answer my question about whether there is access to a command line in the Debian installer. Because if there isn't then my netcard will not connect, and it will be a non-starter. Thanks again. I'm getting there.
The reason I didn't answer a command line in the installer question is 1) I didn't see it. 2) I don't know, since the installer likes my network and just takes care of everything, but I do remember that quite a while back I did have to do some network configuration on an old installer and it let me do so, although I don't recall the details. and 3) I don't know what you have to do to make your network work. If it's something like manually setting your IP address then I don't expect any problem. If it's to compile and install a special NIC driver then I think you're s.o.l. Considering that the Debian Internet installer is about 8 meg and that you now have the toram magic to let you get at your CD burner (I'm assuming that you have enough RAM and it works for you since you seemed happy about this approach) why not try it rather than keep discussing it? By the way, I don't have enough RAM on any of my systems to use this with Knoppix but just used it with DSL and it worked fantastic.

[rollo11]

As described above (it's even pasted into your own post Harry), my network problem is that I have to change the MAC address in order to get a connection. This seems impossible using network install boot CDs.

Well, the next batch of problems is just around the corner, but this one is solved. So thanks again.