Installation on windows box

[Fortran]

Hi guys,
Been using knoppix cd for a few days and am now convinced as to the power of linux and the joys of knoppix :D. I have been reading around here and the faq's, but unfortunatly most of the installation stuff i see on the forums is for installing on a linux box and the faq guide to installing knoppix is a dead link at the moment :(. I basically need a little assistance on a couple of things if somebody would be kind enough to help. I have 2 "actual" hard drives in my pc at the moment, the first is partitioned in 2 and is running windoez 2000, the other is a 4gig drive which is empty but formatted as FAT32. I would really like, if possible, to install knoppix to that 4gig drive and then dual boot, so basically everything to do with knoppix is on a completley seperate drive. so the questions that I have are..

1: is this possible ?
2: If it is, how do I go about installing knoppix to the 4gig drive
3: do i need to prepare that drive in anyway before hand ?
4: Is 4gig enough for knoppix and any other files i create/add (baring in mind im still learning/experimenting with linux, so i wont be making alot of extra files)
5: is there anything else i need to know before embarking on this mission? :)

If somebody could help me out with this I would be really greatfull. Being a long term windoez user having a completley new OS is a little new to me...but i really want to dual boot for the moment and slowly decide if i can live without windoez on my box alltogether..eventually replacing it with knoppix totally.

Anyway, a big thanks to anybody that can help me out.

All the best

Fortran.

[fingers99]

1: is this possible ?

Absolutely. Just remember that your hard drives will be hda, hdb and so on. The hda will be the primary master. You'll just need to point the installation at that.


2: If it is, how do I go about installing knoppix to the 4gig drive

Depends on which installer you use. There's a link to at least the old install method here:

http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHowTo

Make something like 300Mb as a swap partition (linux swap) and the / partition ext3.


3: do i need to prepare that drive in anyway before hand ?

Nope. The install calls all the tools necessary.



4: Is 4gig enough for knoppix and any other files i create/add (baring in mind im still learning/experimenting with linux, so i wont be making alot of extra files)


It should be: you can remove substantial parts of the Knoppix install anyway to make more space.


5: is there anything else i need to know before embarking on this mission?

I'd advise that as soon as you get up and running you do (as root)

apt-get update

then

apt-get install synaptic

then (still as root) use synaptic to download the HOWTOs and maybe both the rutebook and linux cookbook.

Have fun! :wink:

[Fortran]

Thanks fingers :D seriously appreciated mate.

All the best

Fortran

[Fortran]

Just one other thing, this shouldnt screw my windows boot should it ? I presume once i have installed knoppix on the 4gig drive, that I will just get the normal MS dual boot option ?

[Ge0ph]

Correct me if I'm wrong but should he install on hdb instead of hda?
If he installs on hda he will wipe out his Windows install and I don't think that's what he wants.

[Fortran]

Yes! good point Ge0ph :D luckily I noticed this as well. However, I managed to get through the install with no problems....BUT i am having problems with the dual-boot with windows 2000. Basically, Im sure I have done something wrong, because now when I re-boot I get a screen full of "10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10". Basically, I will explain exactly what I did on install, and hopefully somebody can point out where I have gone wrong....as I stated before, I am installing to a secondary "seperate" hard drive (NOT a partition of my WIN2k drive)

ran sudo knx-hdinstall and in cfdisk
configured my 4gig drive like this...

hdb1 | boot | primary | linux ext3 | 3700MB
hbd2 | | primary | linux swap | 300MB

hope this is correct ?

I then did "write" on both hdb1 and hdb2

Said yes to use swap
said yes to make hdb2 swap
said yes to make hdb1 root

The installation then copied the files

Said no to Smail
Said no to SSH
Said yes to Samba (got other win boxes on the network)
Said yes to Cups
Said yes to KDE

Named my machine
Said yes to DHCP
Setup my passwords

NOW, this next bit with the LILO boot loader is what I wasnt sure about..I have actually installed 2 times now...on the first attempt I selected Yes to LILO on the MBR and the second time I re-installed I selected NO to LILO. However, both ways still produced a boot up with a screen full of "10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10"

The trouble is, as far as I can see, is that in my BIOS, I have to choose which IDE to boot up with. Now I added my second hard drive at a later date, and I can't remeber offhand if I have my 2 hard drives as master and slave on the same IDE bus, because I have 2 CD drives as well. If it is this problem, then I can easily fix it by re-wiring, however, I am not sure this is the fault. I don't know if anybody can see by reading through what I have done during the installation if I have made any mistakes ? I am still not sure as to how the dual-booting will work with my windows 2000 on one disk and my Knoppix on the other ? Would I normally get the WinNT boot loader letting me choose one or the other ? Or should LILO work and offer me the choice of what I want to boot ? This is the main bit that is confusing me. However, if nobody can see anything wrong, maybe It is the IDE wiring ?

Hope somebody can point out what I am doing wrong.

All the best guys

Fortran

[Fortran]

ok, just checked the IDE's everything is as it should be. So that isn't the problem.....have re-formatted the drive I was trying to install Knoppix on, but still getting loads of numbers...sometimes 01's sometimes 99's when I try to boot now? No windows...no knoppix....thank god for the fact i can boot in on the knoppix CD!

Fortran

[L2Cache]

If you have a linux boot disk and can get into linux on the HD, you could, as root, edit /etc/lilo.conf and then /sbin/lilo to fix lilo. Or, you may be able to edit it from Knoppix running from CD. Or:

Fix MBR
If your master boot record is broken, and you want to repair it with Knoppix, read the readme file in /knoppix/user/share/docs/mbr. It tells how to make an mbr boot floppy that I have used to boot win98se. You do it as root from a terminal. The command, after su to become root, is like these command examples:

install-mbr /dev/fd0 -T /dev/hda

Install the default MBR image on /dev/fd0, taking the partition table from /dev/hda.

install-mbr -kr /dev/hda

Reset the parameters on /dev/hda without installing any new code.