Can't find K3b in Knoppix 6.2 Live Cd

[dmiller2651]

I bought the Knoppix 6.2 Live CD this week from OSDisc.com and I am using it as a rescue disk to recover data from my hard drive that will not boot in normal or safe mode. I am following the advice from a forum I found on the social answers microsoft website. The moderator said to get Knoppix and use this to gain access to the data that needs to be saved before using the recovery disk that wipes out all the data and reinstalls windows xp. The Knoppix disk boots fine and I can see my hard drive with all the files that I need to copy. The problem is that the moderator said to use the K3b program to burn the data but I can't find this program on the Knoppix disk.

[Capricorny]

It's not there!
Probably an oversight, but there are several workarounds. The easiest way out for you, as I see it, is to install Knoppix to a USB stick, have a persistent image made, and install k3b from Debian repositories.
It surely sounds like a mouthful, but it's not hard at all.

1. Start Knoppix from CD
2. Insert a (preferably) blank USB stick 8+ GB for DVD, 2+ GB for CD.
3. Under main menu, preferences submenu, select Install to flash.
4. Be careful installing to the right place, whatever you choose stay away from PRIMARY HARD DISK (dev/sda). USB stick is often /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc. Size is reported, you can use that as a check.
5. After install is complete, set up pc bios to boot preferably from USB
6. Boot from USB
7. During the booting process, you will be asked if you want to create a persistent disk image. Say yes, give at least 1GB if you can. Max, 4GB is fine if you are going to use this a lot later.
8. After booting, make sure you have network connection up and running.
9. Under main menu, preferences, select Synaptic package manager, and click reload button to have package list updated.
10. Use the search function, search for k3b. Mark it for install, click the Apply button. k3b will then be installed, if nothing has gone wrong.
11. After complete installation, you can use k3b for CD/DVD burning etc. You will probably find it on the Audio&Video submenu.

Good luck!

[Harry Kuhman]

Or, if you have a USB memory device (not a NTFS formatted USB hard drive), it may be even simpler to just save the files that you want to that.

An alternative is to save the files to another computer on a network, if a network is available.

While things can (usually) be installed in Knoppix, recent trends are indeed unfortunate. Knoppix was originally a simple way to introduce new user to Linux, and it also served as a great recovery tool. Recent releases seem to have gone astray from that. Several key programs have been left out. And while installing software has become possible, requiring a large flash memory device, and even then still having Knoppix subject to the problems created by being a mix of several different and generally incompatible Debian releases, does not make for a user friendly experience for someone new to Linux.

[dmiller2651]

Thanks for the help Capri and Harry. I'll go grap a flash drive with at least 2GB of space. The one more question is do you know why the computer freezes when running Knoppix? It happens when I try to close a window and not everytime I close a window. Sometimes its the first time I close a window and sometimes it could be the 8th window. What I'm trying to say is that you never know when it will freeze Knoppix but it always does at some point.

[krishna.murphy]

Hey-

Two things-
1) More memory would likely help; If you're using a system with a drive that has Windows NTFS, Knoppix will use the Windows swap file which then uses a lot of processor power/system time to access the NTFS partition.
2) Brasero is included in Knoppix for burning ISOs, which all I ever used K3b for - seems fine.

Hope that helps! :wink:
-Krishna


Thanks for the help Capri and Harry. I'll go grap a flash drive with at least 2GB of space. The one more question is do you know why the computer freezes when running Knoppix? It happens when I try to close a window and not everytime I close a window. Sometimes its the first time I close a window and sometimes it could be the 8th window. What I'm trying to say is that you never know when it will freeze Knoppix but it always does at some point.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... If you're using a system with a drive that has Windows NTFS, Knoppix will use the Windows swap file which t...[/quote]
This is the first time that I have ever heard this claim. Can you give a reference to support it? If it turns out to be true then I'll completely stop using Knoppix, as writing to a NTFS disk partition with Knoppix is not safe and a good way to corrupt it.

If a Linux swap partition exists then Knoppix will use it. And I know that old 3.x versions would allow you to explicitly create a swap file on a FAT partition that could be used for swapping rather than a swap partition. I would not be surprised to find that this feature was still there, and I could even believe that if one was foolish enough to create the swap file on a NTFS partition that Knoppix might try to use it. But I certainly hope that using the Windows swap file for space is not being ayyempted by Knoppix.

[Capricorny]

.... If you're using a system with a drive that has Windows NTFS, Knoppix will use the Windows swap file which t...
This is the first time that I have ever heard this claim. Can you give a reference to support it? If it turns out to be true then I'll completely stop using Knoppix, as writing to a NTFS disk partition with Knoppix is not safe and a good way to corrupt it.

If a Linux swap partition exists then Knoppix will use it. And I know that old 3.x versions would allow you to explicitly create a swap file on a FAT partition that could be used for swapping rather than a swap partition. I would not be surprised to find that this feature was still there, and I could even believe that if one was foolish enough to create the swap file on a NTFS partition that Knoppix might try to use it. But I certainly hope that using the Windows swap file for space is not being ayyempted by Knoppix.

I have a 4GB Linux swap partition, and Knoppix uses that automatically, leaving the Windows partition with its swapfile alone. Even if that is installed on FAT32, making it safe to use it.

[Harry Kuhman]

I have a 4GB Linux swap partition, and Knoppix uses that automatically, leaving the Windows partition with its swapfile alone. Even if that is installed on FAT32, making it safe to use it.
I have enough memory, making a swap file unneeded. But my concern is with the claim that Knoppix would try to use a Windows file, even implicity one on a NTFS partition. Have you ever heard of that? My concern is that when I'm using Knoppix to try to help someone recover files I don't have a Linux swap file or swap partition out on their disk, and I don't want to further corrupt things. And even most of my systems no longer have FAT partitions, so it would not be safe for me to create a Linux swap file (and I don't want to repartition to free up space for a Linux swap file on my Windows systems).

[Capricorny]

I'm quite sure it doesn't happen, and of course it could be disastrous. The typical setup on a pc where I have run Knoppix, is a FAT32/NTFS partition with some Windows version first on disk (or second, if there is some hibernation or system partition first). And while I have occasionally (many years ago) had Windows and Linux share swapfile (no problem with that), I have never experienced or heard about any Knoppix version automounting Windows swapfiles like it does with Linux swap partitions. Quite sure it does not automount Linux non-partition swap files either, have to use the swapon command.

Maybe grep through the sources for Knoppix deb-packages? I have never looked into that.

[Capricorny]

Thanks for the help Capri and Harry. I'll go grap a flash drive with at least 2GB of space. The one more question is do you know why the computer freezes when running Knoppix? It happens when I try to close a window and not everytime I close a window. Sometimes its the first time I close a window and sometimes it could be the 8th window. What I'm trying to say is that you never know when it will freeze Knoppix but it always does at some point.

Install Knoppix on a flash drive. Having more than a couple of windows open when running from the CD/DVD is certainly a very bad idea. Much of working memory is then reserved for ramdisks, and Linux uses a relatively aggressive strategy for keeping memory busy, caching. For instance, right now on my 2GB system running from flash, with some 9 windows open, 1.16 GB of 1.61 GB total memory in use is used for caching. With less caching, performance drops.
And if you run a browser with scripts allowed globally, you may be on the edge of freezing regardless of configuration or system resources thrown at those scripts.

[dmiller2651]

Thanks for the help Capri and Harry. I'll go grap a flash drive with at least 2GB of space. The one more question is do you know why the computer freezes when running Knoppix? It happens when I try to close a window and not everytime I close a window. Sometimes its the first time I close a window and sometimes it could be the 8th window. What I'm trying to say is that you never know when it will freeze Knoppix but it always does at some point.

Install Knoppix on a flash drive. Having more than a couple of windows open when running from the CD/DVD is certainly a very bad idea. Much of working memory is then reserved for ramdisks, and Linux uses a relatively aggressive strategy for keeping memory busy, caching. For instance, right now on my 2GB system running from flash, with some 9 windows open, 1.16 GB of 1.61 GB total memory in use is used for caching. With less caching, performance drops.
And if you run a browser with scripts allowed globally, you may be on the edge of freezing regardless of configuration or system resources thrown at those scripts.

Thanks for all the help so far. I need to get back to the original solution of moving the Knoppix to a flash drive. I bought a 4GB flash drive and on the way home from Best Buy I remembered what you said about booting from the flash drive after installing Knoppix to it. I've been in the bios before and did not remember seeing the option to boot from that type of device so before I opened the package I went and looked and there are but 3 options and they are CD, Floppy, and HD. I've contacted Sony support about whether it's possible to boot from a flash drive and they've been absolutely no help. I told them what I'm trying to do and they thought I was trying to run 2 OS's and they would not support that. We've traded emails several times and I've told them I just want to get my data off the HD. So far they've been useless.
I think what I'll do is take the 4GB back and get a 8GB and try to get everything on that. I suppose I'll loose all my emails in Outlook right?
Again, thanks for the help.

David

[Harry Kuhman]

Unfortunately, not all BIOSes support booting from flash drive. I even have an HP notebook with an option in the BIOS to "boot from USB" that will not boot a flash drive, yet a newer HP notebook with a "boot from USB" BIOS option will boot the same flash drive.

This is another reason that I don't put much faith in the idea that one should have to convert a Knoppix CD to a flash drive and then install more stuff in order to do a simple file recovery.

If you have problems booting that flash drive, consider just reformatting it as a FT drive and copying the files that you want to it.

[dmiller2651]

Unfortunately, not all BIOSes support booting from flash drive. I even have an HP notebook with an option in the BIOS to "boot from USB" that will not boot a flash drive, yet a newer HP notebook with a "boot from USB" BIOS option will boot the same flash drive.

This is another reason that I don't put much faith in the idea that one should have to convert a Knoppix CD to a flash drive and then install more stuff in order to do a simple file recovery.

If you have problems booting that flash drive, consider just reformatting it as a FT drive and copying the files that you want to it.

I did not convert the Knoppix CD to the flash drive yet because I thought I might want to take it back and swap it for a larger size in case the only option would be to copy my files to it.
When I plug it in just to copy files from my HD, do I have to format it first?

[Harry Kuhman]

When I plug it in just to copy files from my HD, do I have to format it first?
No, it will come pre-formatted with a FAT format.

[dmiller2651]

When I plug it in just to copy files from my HD, do I have to format it first?
No, it will come pre-formatted with a FAT format.

I looked at the Sandisk web site of the flash drive brand I bought (Cruzer model) and it does not support Linux. Does that mean I will not be able to copy my windows file to the flash drive?