No internet or USB drives with 3.8

[onosideboards]

Hello--what a great forum!

After I installed and uninstalled IE 7 beta 2, my XP computer won't boot properly. Knoppix 3.8 has saved me in the sense that I can see all of my music, documents & videos--but I have not been able to access a USB thumb drive or the internet. I have a HP pavilion laptop, a little over a year old.

I can see the USB drive, it appears on my Knoppix desktop. But I cannot write to it, nor can I see the files it already contains.

No wireless networks appear when I run Knoppix, and plugging directly into my router or my office network doesn't produce the internet either.

I've tried the tutorials listed on this page: http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/, to no avail. I thought maybe it was a version issue.

Anyway--does anyone have a solution to this problem? I just bought an external USB drive so I can move all my files over before I reformat the computer.

Thank you!!

[Harry Kuhman]

I too am using Knoppix with an HP pavillion notebook.

1) I don't have the flash drive problem that you report, I can see, read and even save to the flash drive fine. Is your flash drive a normal Fat format, or do you have some "special" software on the windows software that provides "security" and controls access to the drive? Also, are the USB ports in your HP usb1 or usb2? Mine are USB 1 which works fine, but I have seen some reports with problems on usb2. Writing to a FAT partition does require an extra step, I'll assume that you have read enough to know that, but it hardly matters if you can't read the files already there.

2) Forget the wireless stuff untill you have wired networking working, wireless suport is spotty at best. Wired into a router should work and set up your connection by DHCP. What router is is (make and model)? Do you have any nasty "security features" in the router turned on, like limiting access by MAC address? What happes if you run netcardconfig? What is the output of ifconfig?

I did have a truly awful experience with Knoppix, WinXP and the HP notebook: Knoppix worked just fine at first after I had first bought the notebook. Then I finally let Microsoft do a "security update" on the notebook. After that the same Knoppix CDs would no longer get a network connection! See these threads for more details: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2117&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
and
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2164&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

I found a sudo mii-tool -r reset and then a netcardconfig was enough to get me going. Later I ended up needing two cheat codes to boot some versions of knoppix (knoppix noscsi acpi=off) and I found that if I used these cheat codes that I didn't have to do the manual reset any longer, the NIC got set up properly. Eventually (I think it was version 3.8 but it might have been version 3.9) I didn't need the cheat codes any more and the network just worked again; but I have never run another Microsoft security update since.

If your notebook has usb1 then I would suggest downloading 4.0.2 and giving it a try. If you have usb2 then it may not help, as I think (but can't confirm) that there may still be some usb issues in 4.0.2, searching the forums might give you more insight.

[onosideboards]

The USB drive I used was not my own--I should really do some further testing because it does recognize my USB mouse (thank god, because it won't recognize my touchpad).

My router at home is Linksys, and it's as old as the laptop. I may have some "nasty security features" turned on. I haven't tried running either of those apps--are they on Knoppix? I suppose I could just plug in directly into my modem, which should work no matter what, right?

My USB ports are 2.0. I'll give your hints a try tonight and then burn a copy of 4.02 anyway if I still can't get anything to work.

I'm not familiar with cheat codes. How do I implement them?

Thanks so much for the links and ideas!

[Harry Kuhman]

The USB drive I used was not my own--I should really do some further testing because it does recognize my USB mouse (thank god, because it won't recognize my touchpad).
You really need to know more about the device that you tried. Or just pick up an inexpensive one of your own and try it, they have become pretty cheap now. Also, if you have a compact flash card, a SD card or some other similar device for a camera and a USB adapter for that you can try that too, they all seem to work for me.


My router at home is Linksys, and it's as old as the laptop. I may have some "nasty security features" turned on. I haven't tried running either of those apps--are they on Knoppix? I suppose I could just plug in directly into my modem, which should work no matter what, right?
Without knowing what model of Linksys you have I'll have to let you check yourself if it has options like MAC address filtering, but turn anything it has off and try again.

Could you just plug Knoppix into the modem? I don't know what type of modem you have so can't give you a yes or no answer. If it's a DSL modem then the answer is a qualified NO, you would have to run the PPPoE config software to use DSL (not hard but an extra step). If it is a cable modem then in most areas the answer is yes, but some cable systems do lock service to the MAC address of the device and changing it will cause problems. But the bottom line is that I would never run a high speed connection without the security a router provides, even with a live CD, unless I didn't care about the computer and what might get on it. You should be able to get Knoppix to work with the router and that is your real goal, bypassing the router will not acomplish much.

And yes, mii-tool and netcardconfig are included with Knoppix, would not have been much point in suggesting them if not.


My USB ports are 2.0. I'll give your hints a try tonight and then burn a copy of 4.02 anyway if I still can't get anything to work.
You HP differes from mine in this area. But it is a good sign that the USB mouse works, I just don't know if there are going to be problems with usb2 devices like the flash drive. I don't expect that 4.0.2 will improve this, but you could always give it a try. You might find discussion in these forums on how to fix the usb2 issue in 4.0.2 though, I saw some discussion of it but didn't play it close attention.


I'm not familiar with cheat codes. How do I implement them?
You type in the line that I gave you in bold text at the boot prompt. Or follow the documentation link near the top of the page and read the wiki section on cheat codes for more details and other cheat codes that you might want to use. You might also want to look at the 4.0.2 bugs section while you are there.

[onosideboards]

Thanks again.

I just tried my new USB hard drive but it doesn't work either. Neither does my own USB thumb drive.

Plugging directly into the modem worked, which I had already suggested to myself above. :)

I'll search around some more in the forum though the last three times didn't turn up much, that's why I created a new topic. Thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

Plugging directly into the modem worked, which I had already suggested to myself above. :)
Well, that tells us that Knoppix is supporting the NIC fine and that it does DHCP properly, so it seems extremely likely that there is some setup issue with the Linksys. I know Linksys routers have worked fine with Knoppix for many others.

[onosideboards]

I just tried 4.0 with my USB drive. I at least get the Permissions tab under Properties (I didn't with 3.8 for some reason), but no matter how many times I make it read & write, it wont' stick and I still cannot write to the USB drive.

And when I right-click on the area of Konqueror where the files belong, it tells me I don't have permission to edit the settings of the USB drive. That makes no sense because I don't even get that error when I right-click on the desktop icon and edit the properties.

I'm not concerned with accessing the internet - all I want to do is recover the 40 gig of data on my hard drive.

[Harry Kuhman]

I just tried 4.0 with my USB drive. I at least get the Permissions tab under Properties (I didn't with 3.8 for some reason), but no matter how many times I make it read & write, it wont' stick and I still cannot write to the USB drive.

Don't fool with the permissions tab. There should be an icon for the flash drive on the desktop (maybe a name like sda1). Right click on it. use the actions ... submenu. Or you could have done man mount at a shell and learned how to remount the drive read/write.