Super N00b

[The Conman]

Allright, i am new to linux, like Knoppix-is-my-first-ever-distro new. And because of this, i cant figure out what to put on the Live CD, as there is no ISO that comes with it (ISO, BIN, NRG, you get the idea).


P.S. please dont laugh

[Markus]

Have a look here: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Downloading_FAQ
What software do you have to burn with?
And yes, it should be an iso. If it's a .rar rename to iso and burn as an image.

[Harry Kuhman]

And yes, it should be an iso. If it's a .rar rename to iso and burn as an image.

NO NO, NO!

DO NOT RENAME A RAR AND BURN IT AS AN ISO!

If you downloaded from a mirror then you likely got an ISO. You should have also downloaded the md5 file and checked that the ISO was not corrupted. If you can't be bothered to do that then you should not be thinking about using Knoppix, stick to windows.

If you downloaded with Bittorrent then you got a RAR file. THIS is a compressed archive with several files in it, including the ISO and the md5 file, as wel as a few other files (at least one for an alternative type of check of the ISO file, although MD5 is sufficent to be completely sure the file is not corrupt). Markus gave you completely bad advice, you do not just rename this file, that would be worthless. You need to extract the ISO and other files from the RAR. There are many programs for windows that will do this. WnRAR is the most popular. There is also a free DOS command lime program called unrar that will extract RAR files. There is a well regarded free open source program that deals with many forms of compression called 7-zip that will read RAR files. Pick a tool and use it to extract the ISO and the other files. Check the file against the md5 checksum (problems are much less likely when the file has been downloaded with Bittorrent, but it's still a good habit to get into).

If you got the file some way other than the above then check with your source, but it is still most likely that the RAR file you have really is a RAR file, not an ISO with a wrong extension.

And be sure that you know how to burn an ISO file. See the "how to Download" section in the documentation. The on-line documentation here is shaping up nicely. I expect soon to add more detailed burning instructions, for now if you need more details you can search these forums and you should find a lot of instructions for burning ISO files (and many of them will be right). My thouht would be to read more than one response before you burn. If you have never burned an ISO before you need to look this information up, many burning packages give you a lot of choices that look obvious but are wrong.

[Markus]

Hmm, sorry if my info was bad, but where do you get a rar on bittorrent?
This page: http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/ mentioned here: http://www.knoppix.net/get.php gets me these files:
markus@fujibox:~$ ll KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN
total 5136
-rw------- 1 markus markus 31723 Jan 24 23:25 KNOPPIX-CHANGELOG.txt
-rw------- 1 markus markus 5211157 Jan 24 23:25 KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso
-rw------- 1 markus markus 0 Jan 24 23:24 KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso.md5
-rw------- 1 markus markus 0 Jan 24 23:24 KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso.md5.asc
-rw------- 1 markus markus 0 Jan 24 23:24 KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso.sha1
-rw------- 1 markus markus 0 Jan 24 23:24 KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso.sha1.asc
-rw------- 1 markus markus 0 Jan 24 23:24 README
-rw------- 1 markus markus 0 Jan 24 23:24 packages.txt
with this torrent file: KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.torrent

[Harry Kuhman]

Hmm, sorry if my info was bad, but where do you get a rar on bittorrent?

In the past I know that I have downloaded a RAR of Knoppix with Bittorrent. Not sure if it was 3.7 or something previous. I just checked the current torrnet and yes, it does download in individual files un-rared. I'm not sure why, but my first guess is that too many people didn't know what to do with a RAR file when they got it. Still, there is no reason to assume that a rar file is an ISO file and rename it. If the file really is a RAR, then it likely contains may files, including the ISO. Still, since the mirrors do not give a RAR file and the current torrent does not either, that leads to my third choice of checking with his source.

Unfortunately, more than one person has posted in these forums that he has a rar file when he really has an ISO! This happens when users don't turn off that annoying habit of windows to hide extensions for known file types and then think they have a RAR file because WINRAR has hijacked a number of extensions including ISO. If this is the case then trying to rename the supposed rar fill will only cause more confusion. That extension hiding "feature" should always be turned off in windows.

[Markus]

Ok, got it. So basically when windows users download an iso and look for it in file manager with "icon view" they see a nice winrar archive icon for the iso file.
Might also be worth mentioning that when you download a file in windows you should always right-click and choose "Save as"... as it seems windows can be a bit confusing with isos, this way you know what you're downloading and saving.

[Harry Kuhman]

Might also be worth mentioning that when you download a file in windows you should always right-click and choose "Save as"...

No, I would advise against doing that. If someone were to download a RAR file (or any other type of file) to change an exension, they will further confuse things. In general you should never change an extension when you download a file (there are a few exceptions here, such as for test files with "strange" extensions, but there are much more the exception than the rule). And it's almost always better to leave the file come down with the original extension, then rename it after you are sure that you know what you have and that you really really want to change the extension. I do use "save as" on occasion (although at least as frequently I just download a file and then rename it), but I only ever use "save as" to change the name of a file to something more meaningful, never the extension. For example, I downloaded a file over the weekend that was called "66.94_win9x_english.exe". It is an updated video driver, but unfortunately the name gives me no idea what the file is, and in a few days I could look in my download directory and have no idea what it was. Nor could I search my system and ever hope to find it in the future with a name like that. So I did a "save as" and called the file nvidia_66.94_win9x_english.exe when it downloaded., which will be enough for me to know what it is. If I were downloading it for others I would have likely named it something like nvidia_video_drivers_66.94_win9x_english.exe, although I hate such long file names.

[The Conman]

Ok im not a complete noob, i don't have a Terrabyte uploaded to Boxtorrents for no reason, I know how to use WINRar, but the issue is that I am using Alcohol 120%, and the FILE that should be an ISO, is a FILE, and the program cant recognize it. (I use alcohol for CD emulation all the time, and burned DSL to a disk no problem) And i diddent BT the file because A: the link wouldent work, and B: nobody is uploading probably anyways and 700 megs would take for ever because everbody is probably leaching.

[The Conman]

o and one more thing

the files in the RAR file are as follows:
Boot
Knoppix
Linux Tag
Talks
Autorun.bat
Autorun.inf
Autorun.pif
Cdrom.ico<<<if this is supposed to be an ISO then WTF
index.html

[Rumo]

The files in the RAR file are as follows:
Cdrom.ico<<<if this is supposed to be an ISO then WTF

No, definitly not. I don't know, which RAR-file you have. But if there is an iso-file in it then it is the biggest file of the archive.

By the way, bittorrent is by far the fastest filesharing app I know (and faster than mosts ftp-servers). Everybody already shares a file in the moment he starts to download it. You should have no problems at all with .torrents like http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/sta...0f2108aec2233a (at the moment 231 seeders and 87 leechers).