How to Make and Use a Knoppix Live CD.

[xBdTartarus]

Hi,
I would like to know how to make and use a Knoppix Live CD. I want to use it for running virus scans on Windows NTFS hard drives. I know it won't be able to delete them. I just need to know how to make the CD and how to use it for this purpose. Can the CD run on top of the OS that is currently running, or do you have to boot to the Knoppix Live CD on power up?

Thanks,
Tartarus

[Harry Kuhman]

You "make" the Knoppix CD by following all of the instructions in answer #1 (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/User:Harry_Kuhman). Knoppix is a Linux distro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution), so it normally is intended to be booted from CD, not run "under" windows. There are ways to run Linux, including Knoppix, in a virtual machine under Windows with VMplayer or other virtual machine tools, but that rather defeats the purpose of what you say you want to do.

[xBdTartarus]

Ok, so I have to boot the CD from power up. And then I just follow the instructions for getting and running the virus software?

Thanks so far,
Tartarus

[Harry Kuhman]

I don't use Knoppix for virus software. I personally don't know the issues of running up-to-date virus software from Knoppix, although there have been other discussions in these forum about it. I would suggest using the forum search feature to try to find those rather than waiting for someone to come along who does it and is willing to write the information again.

[knoppu]

xBdTartarus, you're in luck, this is my primary interest in knoppix at this time.

Bitdefender did release a Knoppix liveCd with their v7 scanner on it but it did not seem very well put together and it is no longer linked from their site.

here's a link and a comment from their site where you can get v7.5.4:

http://download.bitdefender.com/unices/bdscan/final/en/Linux/

The INSTALL file tells me :


Free disk space:
The minimum free disk space to install and run BitDefender Antivirus
Scanner for Unices is 4MB. But the log and the quarantine directory
could require more space.

BTW the dl is about 9M with some not so current virus data.

There are 3 ways use this.

1. use a std Knoppix CD boot it and run the downloadable installer, above, each time (put it on a USB key for ex.) You need to work out where you can install it since knoppix is never sure what is rw and what is ro . The default install in /opt fails. Read the faq etc. I dont have a short answer but it's possible. (Beware USB2 is broken on Knoppix, see below, and 9MB on USB1.1 will take a while!)

2. Add the installer to the live CD iso without bothering to remaster KNOPPIX itself. You then have a bootable with the AV (all the files are available from the running system under /cdrom) . You need to configure the network and run the installer then bdscan --update before scanning NTFS. I have done such CD and it went well. See the remastering guide for details , you can skip most of the tricky stuff. The main bit you need is here http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Remastering_Howto#Remastering_the_ISO

3. Go the whole hog , full remaster, install bdscan on running system save the machine state and burn the custom Knoppix-AV. You can then just boot it and run the AV. To be thorough you will need to setup internet connection and run the update as well.

4. Use std Knoppix , install AV in your $HOME and use saveconfig to a usb device.


It took me several days souring the forums to get upto speed on this so hopefully that can save you some of the time I spent.

Final tip I would stay with 4.0.2 until 5.0 gets some more bug fixing. Both have bugs but 4.0.2 seems to have less. Some things that used to work are broken in 5 ( like entire print system)

One of the drawbacks with 1/ and 4/ above is that there is a trivial but important bug that prevents USB2 from working. Incredibly it seems that this not been fixed in any release to date.

see bug 10 here http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Bugs/4.0.2CD

This is "relatively" easy to fix if you are familiar with linux. But I get the impression that may not be your case. It requires deleting three letters but you have peel the onion first and then wrap it back up after.

Maybe that will get fixed in 5.0.2 along with starting xfce4 [HINT HINT]


There may be other/better methods but that's an overview to give the you big picture. Each method has it's pros and cons. See the info elsewhere on this site for details on each method.

HTH 8)