V7.4.0/ failure with flash disk install

Hi

You had a good luck! It seems,like for me (knoppx7 AND 6) the thumdrives boot but stops immediately with a message like this one:

"No directives or UI in configuration file".

This message appears on the web for other users and refers to "syslinux modifications" which do not work for me also.

I think, like Werner P Schulz, that there is a severe bug in the script included on theses versions.

Very curiously, installing on pendrives seems to depend on the KIND of Pendrive:

it works for some ones and not for others !!!!.

It seems that the script has been better "worked" for "SD-Cards" (essentially?)

Also (even though this point has nothing to do with the post) there are some other bugs in my version of 7.4.

For exemple,at the boot, when using some cheatcodes

"=" is obtained by "Shift + @"

"/" is obtained by "shift + 7" etc.. etc...

Bye

knp

Quote:

It is sized appropriately at 1GB and Persistence works fine. This is probably too big (1GB), but I don't know what a reasonable size for it is yet.

Hello Mike!
The size of the overlay (file or partition) depends on what you want to store of personal Linux stuff - configuration files, additional installed tools and so on. The remainig part within the FAT32 partition you can also use under Windows. I recommend to create a new folder in the directory 'mnt-system' and call it for example "privat_Windows".

The problem of flash disk install and option "overlay file" is also in Knoppix V7.4.2 if I try it in a HD install within VirtualBox. Therefore I burned a DVD and booted with it. This time my trial has been successful. I suppose it's a udev and/or timing problem because Knoppix from my VirtualBox installation reacts faster than from CD. Perhaps one or two "sleep 10" within the flash-knoppix script may solve the problem for any case.

Hello Werner,

These are some more Caveats, Observations and Questions of mine, I hope they can help you or anyone having USB stick issues. As background, I had also burned Knoppix 7.4.1 to a DVD and used it to make the USB installs in my previous post. For everyone; Please use Mr. Knopper's advice on burning slower than "max" speed. My first DVD failed post burning verification so I limited burn speed to 6x on the second and had success. Since I don't like wasting DVD's, and the only reason to burn 7.4.2 was to boot Knoppix long enough to create a USB MicroDrive SDHC card install (using a USB adapter as above) I liked your idea of using Virtualbox to load Knoppix as a VM (guest). Especially since 7.4.2 followed so quickly in response to the Shellshock bug. We should all thank Mr. Knopper for a very quick reaction and fix to plug that hole.

Observations:
1) I have had success in creating the exact same bootable USB drive (MicroDrive SDHC) with a persistence image FILE of whatever size I choose several times now (as above) from within a Virtualbox guest running Knoppix 7.4.2 booted directly from the .ISO image. This may still be the goal for you as well.

2) Both my Vbox VM install and the USB install run Knoppix significantly faster than from CD. It seems that Mr. Knopple says something like 5 or 6 times faster. I think that is to be expected because both the flash memory and hard drive (from the VM) have significantly faster read (and write) throughput than the fastest CD/DVD drive. It seems to me that udev or a timing issue are not where to look but I don't have the expertise to help there yet.

Caveats:
I am running Win 7 Ultimate x64 as the host. The current situation (as of this date and time) with Virtualbox 4.3.16, which is the current release, appears to be the same as 4.3.14. They don't want to start guest VM's when Win 7 x64 is the host, even when the guest works fine under 4.3.12 on the same host. It seems to be related to security software (antivirus in particular) and many Virtualbox users are rolling back to v4.3.12 which does work. The other alternative is to use 4.3.17-96342 which I am using successfully. It is a Beta and uses the same Extension Pack as 4.3.16. This seems to work fine on Win 7 x64 at least for the purpose of creating a USB bootable Knoppix. It's a known issue and the Virtualbox developers appear to be working hard to solve it.

I have a couple of issues that I could use some help with concerning Knoppix on Virtualbox.
1) I can't load the Vbox Guest Extensions ISO file using the Vbox manager. Linux requires the Knoppix ISO to be "ejected" (unmounted) from the CD/DVD virtual drive in order to load the Guest Extensions ISO in the CD drive just like real hardware would. As soon as you do that, the Knoppix VM that needs its own ISO locks up. The Guest ISO "NAME" (the label on a CD) is mounted (inserted) fine in the virtual CD/DVD drive, but it can't mount the host's C: drive that the ISO resides on in the real world. It freezes Knoppix until you reinsert the Knoppix ISO via the Vbox manager. I have created a second virtual CD/DVD drive as a Secondary Master (and Slave etc.) and it behaves the same (whether I set it to Slave or Master). The Primary Master must point to the Knoppix ISO to boot the VM and run and it pulls the Knoppix ISO from that same physical drive just fine so I know that Knoppix in conjunction with the VM can see it at boot time. It would seem that installing Knoppix to the 8GB fixed Virtual HDD (vdi) I created for the VM would make it possible to mount the Guest ISO to the CD/DVD drive. Which leads to the second problem:

2) I can't mount the host machine's drive. The drive isn't enumerated when Knoppix is loaded as the OS in the VM. Knoppix reports /dev/sda (cloop0) and /dev/sr0 (the virtual CD/DVD drive). I'm guessing that this is likely Operator Error (me) or the Vbox release has issues passing virtualized hardware pointers to Knoppix. When booting from the USB stick it seems to know about all drives and partitions on the machine (booting to the actual machine and NOT within a VM) and they are just sitting there waiting to be mounted so I don't know how the VM is behaving.

3) I see the boot menu cheatcode for installing to a hard drive at boot is "Knoppix tohd=/dev/sda1" but I have no point of reference to determine what "sda1" is pointing to. I am thus a little hesitant to hit Enter. :-) I can see my host drive being partitioned and formatted in my nightmares. Gparted sees the 8GB fixed virtual drive when in the Knoppix VM, and the .vdi file is where it's supposed to be on the host drive, but the virtual drive is unpartitioned and unformatted and I'm unwilling to create an MBR or partition to format it using gparted without some sound advice and documentation. Perhaps the reason that "sda1" is chosen in the cheatcode above is that it creates partition 1 if installed to sda using that boot menu cheatcode at boot time? I don't know and I can't seem to find reliable documentation.

I realize that some of this may be related to Virtualbox and I'm scouring their forums looking for answers as well. I'm really pointing out these seeming anomolies here to see if there are known Knoppix limitations or incompatibilities or even undocumented settings when using Vbox. If you have any insights I'd appreciate it.
Mike

Why not study the very good "help" o VirtualBox?