[SOLVED] Need clarification on persistent home

[hotplainrice]

Hi everyone,

My system boots off a USB HDD, and I seem to have not been able to make the persistent home option to work, I created sda5 with fat32 and did Knoppix menu -> Configure -> Persistent home. After a few tries with 'home=scan' , 'home=/mnt/sda5', 'home=/dev/sda5', 'home=/mnt/sda5/knoppix.img' etc. , whatever I gave up.

-Knoppix 5.0.1

Questions, questions, questions : Where is the script that handles persistent home live?
When does the persistent menu come up during boot?
Does the scanner only scan for primary partitions and NOT logical?
Can it scan fat32?
:) Whats better? persistent home or Save KNOPPIX configuration?

Thanks. :twisted:

[Jacky]

Search your disks for a file named "knoppix.img". Only this file will be recognised by Knoppix as a persistent image file. If you can't file the file, that means you did not create the persistent image correctly.

In 5.0.1 you do not actually need to enter any cheat codes. Towards the end of the boot up sequence, you will be presented with a large blue screen saying "knoppix has found an image file....." You will be asked whether you want to use it. You must change the answer yes (the default is "cancel"- which will bypass the persistent image).

Yes, the persistent home can be stored on a Fat32 partition, including logical partitions, and usb external drives.

A persistent image stores more than "Save Knoppix Configuration", but I think probably takes up more space. It saves every change to the system files you have made -- that is not always a good idea. If you made a change to a system file that breaks knoppix, and you have a persistent image, the "breakage" will be saved along with it.

[hotplainrice]

Search your disks for a file named "knoppix.img". Only this file will be recognised by Knoppix as a persistent image file. If you can't file the file, that means you did not create the persistent image correctly.


Yea, I did that a couple of times and found knoppix.img.


In 5.0.1 you do not actually need to enter any cheat codes. Towards the end of the boot up sequence, you will be presented with a large blue screen saying "knoppix has found an image file....." You will be asked whether you want to use it. You must change the answer yes (the default is "cancel"- which will bypass the persistent image).

Never got that.


Need help trouble-shooting it. Thanks Jacky.

[Jacky]

Very strange..............

In my case

1) "knoppix home=scan" always works.
2) no cheat codes at all always works.
3) "knoppix home=/dev/sda5/.......... does not work
4) "knoppix home=/media/sda5/knoopix.img works

Since it is the shortest, I always enter no cheat codes at all and allow Knoppix to scan and load the image. I have been able to load from fat32 and ext3, primary and logical, ide and usb drives.

I can only suggest the following:
1) perhaps the .img file is somehow corrupt. If there's nothing valuable on it, try deleting all knoppix.imgs on your disks, then create a new one. Preferably start with putting it on an ide partition if you have one. Start with one of a smaller size.
2) don't use the encryption option
3) try the /media....cheat above.

[hotplainrice]

Solved it, :)

What I did was..

The filesystem is kept vfat.

1. Still used sda5, but changed type to linux. No effect.

2. Removed sda5, created sda2 with type Win95.
Made it vfat, created persistent image.

:) Now I have a somewhere to call home, sda2 :)

[jjmac]

-=- knoppix.img not being recognised at boot -=-

I have been having a similar problem with getting version 5.0.1 to recognise my knoppix.img file at boot.

Have been spending most of the day working on it. Glad i bothered to scan over the topics in this forum section before posting a new queiry, as there are some hints in the above that relate to what i've been doing today. Mainly to do with the use of cli options along with the 'home=' option.

It appears that in hotplainrices case it was a filesystem type problem. Not quite sure just what the fs problem was there though.

But i also see it mentioned by Jacky that ...

>>
2) no cheat codes at all always works.
3) "knoppix home=/dev/sda5/.......... does not work
4) "knoppix home=/media/sda5/knoopix.img works
>>

The last two wouldn't work for me, and i used 'dev' in both paths, rather than 'medis'. So i will try media and the 4th option. And 'no cheatcodes'

I'm using a 17 inch NEC C500 monitor, around 9 years old. And a low end 4 MB s3virge Diamond card, (Diamond Stealth). It generally gets me by. But i always have major initial problems with tiny fonts with all the distros i use.

The high resolution default vga state really drives me up the wall. And i can't stand display managers. I insist on booting to the console, and then starting X up from there. Either with 'startx or via a custom script to select an other window manager from my favorite 'fvwm'. Which over the years i have configured into a very low footprint, non-minimal manager. It rocks.

I am not a kde person nor a gnome person but i respect a persons right to be so. But i wont accept those as defaults, as all the distros seem to insist on.

In any case, i have been using '2' and 'vga=normal' along with 'dma' and 'lang=us' with my path to knoppix.img on the cli. It appears the 'noeject' is missing from v5.0.1 too.

So i will try without any other options and see what happens :). But if i can't get a readable bootup ... i go bonko.

It has been a frustrating day, but finding this thread has provided some hope there. So i the cli hint is it.

Glad it's fixed for you hotplainrice, but i can't really see what you mean there. Unless your saying that the partitions fs wasn't supported by the knoppix kernel ?

Cheers :)


jm

[hotplainrice]

hey jm,

what i meant was..

The microsoft vfat filesystem worked. I thought that was the problem. The problem was that I was using LOGICAL partitions, those starting with the number 5. And LOGICAL partitions lives in one of the primary partitions. There can only be 4 primary partition.

So the first primary partition, sda1, is where my knoppix lives.
The second , sda2, now is where knoppix.img lives.



Hopefully, that explains it. Google up (not sure but i think it is) MBR for PC.

[Jacky]

Hello Jim, any luck?

After experimenting, and studying the autoconfig and knoppix-image scripts, I found that there was a way to load a persistent image after boot up.

The way to do it is:

1) mount the drive where the image is stored. Read-only will do.
2) open a root shell and issue this command (change the path to where your image is): knoppix-image /media/sda5/knoppix.img
3) Knoppix will ask if you wish to load the image, select yes or ok.
4) you will get messages saying the image was loaded and merged.

Changes to system files, stuff added in your /home directory etc will now all take effect. However for items (in your persistent image) to show up on the desktop, you need to issue "restartx" from a root shell.

There are some quirks: after restartx, a Log Out from the K-menu merely sends you to the text-mode prompt rather than proceeding with a restart or shutdown. You have to shutdown Knoppix manually from the prompt with e.g. shutdown -P now

[jjmac]

hotplainrice:

Can't see why it shouldn't work with a logical, but i'll consider that. As far as the kernel seeing the logical device though, it won't have a problem. And as thats whats only important for referencing the device, i doubt if it would have any bearing. But still, something to consider. Thanks for the clarification.

------------------------------------------:

Thanks for that Jacky :)

No real luck as yet ...

I hadn't thought of mounting the partition and then issuing a command after booting in. I'll try that.

It does mean that v5.0.1 is seriously broken though.

I boot with 'knoppix-txt' ... On a 17 inch crt monitor i find the 10pxl, 12pxl default quite horrendous. I just can't read such small fonts (grin). But that seems to be a common thing amongst the distros. One that i call 'gross slackness' .

I also prefer booting to the console and then starting X up manually, usually using a custom script to select a desktop. In v5.0.1 i tend to go for xfce4.

I also got the quirk mentioned above with kde only allowing an image to be saved to a floppy. Which sounds like kde is trying to impose training wheels on the bike, so to speak, for some wierd reason.

Seems to be the way Linux is going in a lot of distros theses days too, trying to make things <cough> simpler </cough> for people. But only making it harder as a result really (grin).

The cheat codes should work. If they don't, then the version is broken. And a person shouldn't have to do a remaster just to hack out start up scripts to make them work properly.

The 'myconfig=' option works fine, but even then i have to be careful how many cli options i use. So i'll just use

knoppix-txt 2 lang=us myconfig=<path-to-dev>

I haven't gone far with it since thursday, but iv'e copied out a few directories, mainly just /etc, to compare the scripts with v4.0. On a preliminary look the knoppix init in /etc/rcn.d does look a little strange around the part that checks for the home= parameter. But i'll have to look further at that.

I'll try your suggestion in the mean time though .. :)

Thanks for the feed back :)


jm

Thought :

Are dinosaurs really extinct, or just really good at hiding ?

[jjmac]

-=- A little more on this -=-


Tried the above ... no luck.

But the myconfig= works. So iv'e been working a custom 'knoppix.sh' script to mount the knoppix.img and just copy over my edits to the ramdisk. Not just $HOME, but /etc edits as well. Been having some success. And expect it to become usable in that way over the next few days.

But it shouldn't need to be worked around to such an extent.

As some people do get the home= parameter to work i figure there may some differences in the iso images for 5.0.1 Possibly relating to the build date.

The knoppix-autoconfig file with mine looks like it's incomplete in its' range of checking. I'll need to look at it more fully to be sure. But so far, it seems to mount the knoppix.img file but on the very next line it unmounts it ! With out any message echo for both operations. Which would explain it the apparent 'not being found' experience.

It seems to be in an incomplete state, or , in a state that requires some serious remastering by design !

Weired really. If it is supposed to be a method of demonstrating Linux and doubling as a rescue technique ... it falls over badly on both counts. Can't see any other reason for a LiveCD if not for those two main purposes.

It tends to taint an otherwise potential work of art ... unfortunately .. as it does have a lot of interesting apps/facilities that are worth looking at, eclipse for one.

But if a person can't get it up in the first place, without having to jump through so many hoops, that amount to an almost complete reconfiguration of the boot scripts ... ho hummm :)

Can't recommend 5.0.1 to anyone, thats for sure.


jm

[hotplainrice]

Weird.

Tried asking one of the knoppix dev?

[jjmac]

Howdy hotplainrice.


No, not as yet.

I thought i'd go through the stages, that is, try and draw on other peoples experiances first.

The disc checks out for a media check target 'testcd'.

But, i have noticed the file 'version' in the knoppix dir. It contains the string ...

'5.0.1 2006.06.01'

representing the version and build date for the iso. And the docs ask that it should be quoted with any bug reports.

So, at the moment, i'm suspecting there may be differences between the images being used by people. Due to fixes that may have been applied to different iso builds.

I haven't had much time over the week to spend a lot of time on it, but i need to look at the knoppix-autoconfig a lot closer. Just so that i can be sure of what i'm saying, if i'm going to bother one of the developers :).

As the 'myconfig=' option works fine, and the .btz file resides on an extended-logical (/dev/hda14) , if that is indeed the problem with getting the knoppix.img to mount .. it is a bug.

Have been mounting it via the knoppix.sh script, associated with the 'myconfig=' switch though.

Other issues, such as mouse configuration quirks in X, also tend to point to a problem (ommission) in the knoppix-autoconfig init script too, i think.

It is, of course, an opportunity to get into the workings of the disc it self. But i'd really rather be getting int the workings of 'expect' instead. (grin)

>>
Weird.
>>

Your not wrong :)


jm