Paul_E
08-05-2003, 06:48 PM
Hi All:
I thought it might me useful to share my experiences with
the latest version of Knoppix (2003-07-26). It took some
time and searching of the Knoppix forum to get it working
perfectly.
Through the magnanimity of my employer, I have a Gateway 700X
with a
3.06 GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threading,
a serial ATA hard disk (160 GB--what do you do with so much space?)
CD-R/W, CD-ROM, and a ZIP 750 MB drive,
Soundblaster Audigy
NIC card (integrated)
USB optical wheelmouse
flat panel display (Gateway FPD 1730)
I believe the chipset is Intel 875P.
After a bunch of tries, etc., to get the Knoppix CD to
work perfectly, at the boot prompt
knoppix idebus=66 dma wheelmouse alsa
is needed, and all the hardware gets detected, except,
possibly, the modem (I don't care about this, since I
am on a broadband connection). The P4 gets detected as
two processors (the screen displays two Tuxen !), sound
works, I can play CD-s, can connect to the internet. A
funny thing: the zip drive gets ``detected'' twice: first
as ``hda'', with lots of error messages about not being
able to read the partition table, etc., but also as a
regular zip drive. However, there is a slight mixup in the
/etc/fstab file, where the zip drive is associated with
/dev/sda. After changing this to /dev/sda4 it works. The
hard disk is detected as ``hde''.
At this point I had to install the system on the hard disk,
and of course, I wanted to use knoppix-installer. (This is
where the ``dma'' boot option is needed: with it, it takes
about 15 mins, without it more than an hour.) (Another funny
thing: why do people call it ``knoppix-install''?) So,
knoppix-installer works, except that when selecting to
install the boot loader to the MBR, it attempts to write
this to ``hda''. It should be ``hde''. After fixing the MBR
via the Knoppix CD, it boots up nicely. Sound was not
working, but following the advice in a KNOPPIX forum post,
running /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig does the trick.
UNFORTUNATELY, after this the computer fails to reboot. It
hangs at the point where the screen is about to report
cleaning /tmp /var/lock /var/run
The same thing happens with knx-hdinstall.
What appears to be happening is that the two processors
(due to the hyper-threading) are each loading part of the
system, but not in a safe way. The way around this is to
turn off hyper-threading in the BIOS (discovered after 3
days of frustration) So, there is some work to be done by
the developers of the hard disk install program. On the
KNOPPIX CD, apparently it is done correctly, either by
design or by luck.
Anyway, as I said, it now works and of course, it is FAST:
in octave, multiplying two 1000x1000 matrices takes a
whopping 1.05 seconds. (On a 700MHz P3 system, it takes
3.95 seconds)
Have fun!
Paul_E
PS: Oh yes, MY favorite program that is not on the CD but
used to be is Ktuberling--my 3 year old grandson thinks it
is hilarious!)
I thought it might me useful to share my experiences with
the latest version of Knoppix (2003-07-26). It took some
time and searching of the Knoppix forum to get it working
perfectly.
Through the magnanimity of my employer, I have a Gateway 700X
with a
3.06 GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threading,
a serial ATA hard disk (160 GB--what do you do with so much space?)
CD-R/W, CD-ROM, and a ZIP 750 MB drive,
Soundblaster Audigy
NIC card (integrated)
USB optical wheelmouse
flat panel display (Gateway FPD 1730)
I believe the chipset is Intel 875P.
After a bunch of tries, etc., to get the Knoppix CD to
work perfectly, at the boot prompt
knoppix idebus=66 dma wheelmouse alsa
is needed, and all the hardware gets detected, except,
possibly, the modem (I don't care about this, since I
am on a broadband connection). The P4 gets detected as
two processors (the screen displays two Tuxen !), sound
works, I can play CD-s, can connect to the internet. A
funny thing: the zip drive gets ``detected'' twice: first
as ``hda'', with lots of error messages about not being
able to read the partition table, etc., but also as a
regular zip drive. However, there is a slight mixup in the
/etc/fstab file, where the zip drive is associated with
/dev/sda. After changing this to /dev/sda4 it works. The
hard disk is detected as ``hde''.
At this point I had to install the system on the hard disk,
and of course, I wanted to use knoppix-installer. (This is
where the ``dma'' boot option is needed: with it, it takes
about 15 mins, without it more than an hour.) (Another funny
thing: why do people call it ``knoppix-install''?) So,
knoppix-installer works, except that when selecting to
install the boot loader to the MBR, it attempts to write
this to ``hda''. It should be ``hde''. After fixing the MBR
via the Knoppix CD, it boots up nicely. Sound was not
working, but following the advice in a KNOPPIX forum post,
running /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig does the trick.
UNFORTUNATELY, after this the computer fails to reboot. It
hangs at the point where the screen is about to report
cleaning /tmp /var/lock /var/run
The same thing happens with knx-hdinstall.
What appears to be happening is that the two processors
(due to the hyper-threading) are each loading part of the
system, but not in a safe way. The way around this is to
turn off hyper-threading in the BIOS (discovered after 3
days of frustration) So, there is some work to be done by
the developers of the hard disk install program. On the
KNOPPIX CD, apparently it is done correctly, either by
design or by luck.
Anyway, as I said, it now works and of course, it is FAST:
in octave, multiplying two 1000x1000 matrices takes a
whopping 1.05 seconds. (On a 700MHz P3 system, it takes
3.95 seconds)
Have fun!
Paul_E
PS: Oh yes, MY favorite program that is not on the CD but
used to be is Ktuberling--my 3 year old grandson thinks it
is hilarious!)