Getting Knoppix to boot off a USB Hard Disk

[rldleblanc]

Ok, lets start from the beginning. With you computer set to boot from USB devices before anything else, does your computer go through the BIOS and boot normally. My iPod prevents my computer from finishing the BIOS and so will not boot at all. After we have found out if the mp3 player will allow the Bios to boot, how exactly did you copy the CD over to your player? Do you have a place larger enough that can store an exact copy of your player on a place writeable by linux (ext2, ext3, etc?) I would suggest making an exact copy backup of your player incase something causes the device not to be able to boot itself. I will tell you how to do it if you have the space avaiable. If your player is 30 GB then we need 30GB of space to make the backup. Lets get that far and take it from there.

Robert

[watar]

I'd be careful with the fromhd option if you want your install to be very portable. Some computers like HP seem to always make the drive /dev/sdb. I think since you are using ext2 you can remove the KNOPPIX_IMAGE option and it looks for upper and lower case versions of the KNOPPIX image. As far as the home directory. I haven't looked into that yet, but you would have the same problem. I'm thinking of modifying the script that if it finds a particular file in the root of the filesystem it makes the entire filesystem to be your home directory. If all the computers that you use your USB drive treat it the same, I think youv'e got it nailed. As far as having Grub chain load Winodws, I woudn't worry about that, just disconnect your drive before reboot and when Windows starts booting, plug in your drive. I think your would need a configuration for every Windows computer/partition that you want to boot.

I hope it all helped!

Robert

Could you give me an example of your menu.lst ? I'm not sure I understand the KNOPPIX_IMAGE part above.

My menu.lst works on the two different computers I use on a daily basis (Shuttle XPC, Dell desktop...) but it would be fun to make it even more compatible with others.

/W

[Crenn]

Ok, lets start from the beginning. With you computer set to boot from USB devices before anything else, does your computer go through the BIOS and boot normally. My iPod prevents my computer from finishing the BIOS and so will not boot at all. After we have found out if the mp3 player will allow the Bios to boot, how exactly did you copy the CD over to your player? Do you have a place larger enough that can store an exact copy of your player on a place writeable by linux (ext2, ext3, etc?) I would suggest making an exact copy backup of your player incase something causes the device not to be able to boot itself. I will tell you how to do it if you have the space avaiable. If your player is 30 GB then we need 30GB of space to make the backup. Lets get that far and take it from there.

Robert

I can boot from my USB2.0 Hard disk and make it say rude messages. That's not a problem. I downloaded a copy of the ISO image of Knoppix 3.7(I think that's the version) and used DaemonTools(Windows CD Emulator) to emulate the disk. I copied the files from the ISO onto the Hard Disk. I don't want to partition my MP3 Player as I think this will affect the MP3 Player itself. I have currently no space on my hard disks on my desktop but I have enough for about 4GB(capicity taken of the total 18.6GB, even though it's a 20GB model) so I can do that, except I sync the hard drive with my laptop as I also use it to carry school work. I'll be trying to understand as much as possible but can you try to be extensive?

[rldleblanc]

I am trying to work with you here. I have said nothing about partitioning the mp3 device, I don't know where you keep getting that from. If you don't want to make a back-up of your device, that is your chioce.I will give you this disclaimer

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN AND CAN RENDER YOUR DEVICE USELESS FOR WHAT IT WAS INTENDED.

With the back-up copy (bit for bit duplicate) we have a better chance of recovering the device if something went wrong.

Give me the exact location where the root of the Knoppix CD is on your device. That way I can give you the cheatcodes to run the image off your device. Even though you are a noobie, you may have to change some of the settings to get it to work right. I can not expect all the issues you may have. What does Knoppix say your device is (/dev/sda1)? What "nasty messages" are you getting on boot. Please be specific so that it dosen't take forever to get information.

Robert

[Crenn]

As long as there is only 1 partition that is set to FAT32(I prefer NTFS but the damn thing won't accept it) then the MP3 Player will function normally. I got that partition "idea" from :

Crenn, I've been working on this for a week now and finally got it to work on a USB hard drive enclosure. I hope to have this work on my iPod when I get all the bugs worked out. I recommend that you make a full back-up of your mp3 device before doing what I have done. I'm not sure if the iPod or other mp3 players require a boot loader for its own OS, I guess I will find out when I get Knoppix remastered and moved to my iPod (work in progress). Here are the rough steps I took:

1. Find out what device the USB drive is in a standard Knoppix run and create a partition for the Knoppix install. (I am using FAT16 right now and it is 840 MB, just enough for the CD image and a few boot files, could be smaller). Any filesystem that GRUB can read is ok to use (not tested though).
2. Reboot the computer with the USB hard drive attached and the Knoppix CD (you may be able to just copy from the ISO file from Windows or Linux but not tested). Give the following command on the isolinux prompt

knoppix usb2 tohd=/dev/sda1

if your destination partition is not /sda1 then substitue with the actual one. I have not found the bug that prevents the 2.6 kernel from finding the USB drive yet so I've stuck with the 2.4 kernel (next project after the remaster)
3. Wait for the copy to happen then Knoppix will boot off the USB drive and use it as the base.
4. When Knoppix boots open a terminal and issue the following commands

su
mount -o remount,rw /cdrom
cd /cdrom
mkdir boot
grub-install /dev/sda
vi boot/grub/menu.lst
-- in vi add the following lines --
default 0
timeout 0

title knoppix
kernel /linux24 usb2 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix
initrd /minirt24.gz
--save and exit vi--
--if linux24 and minirt24.gz are not in /cdrom then--
cp /mnt/cdrom/linux24 /mnt/cdrom/minirt24.gz .

Reboot the system, take out the CD and it should work. Your milage may vary and will. I tried using syslinux, but DELL computers had problems reading the kernel and initrd image off the disk correctly. I hope this helps you. So far, I've booted my USB drive off four diffrent computers wilthout any problems (other then XFree resolutions not quite right) Be sure your USB boot device is before your internal hard drive.

Good Luck,
Robert

I'll start up knoppix up later on in the day as I'm currently working on something else. Since the device syncs with this computer, all data is already backed up. I don't know the location, but since I have 2 computers I'll try them on both to see what I get.

[rldleblanc]

As long as there is only 1 partition that is set to FAT32(I prefer NTFS but the damn thing won't accept it) then the MP3 Player will function normally. I got that partition "idea" from :

I'll start up knoppix up later on in the day as I'm currently working on something else. Since the device syncs with this computer, all data is already backed up. I don't know the location, but since I have 2 computers I'll try them on both to see what I get.

With keeping the everything on the same partition, you will need to skip some of that parts in the instructions that I gave. For instance you would not want to use the tohd cheat code, you would want to copy the entire CD using Windows and depending on where you put it you will need diffrent cheatcodes. You will have to boot into Knoppix to get the kernels and initrd images and put them on the device before you can boot from it. It is highly recommend that you don't use NTFS since Linux support is still not 100% (it requires a disk check after every Linux write to it). Stick with FAT. I don't think you understand what I mean by the back-up. What you are refering to is the files on the device that you can see when you mount it on Windows. What I am talking about is every bit on the drive (FAT, Boot sector, and even unsed bits) is copied into a single image file using the dd command in Linux. The reason I keep impressing this point is because I don't know if your mp3 player requires the boot sector of the hard drive to load it's own OS. The iPod has a small ~30MB partition that can only be read by the iPod. So if the device is rebooted, it reads from that partition to bring the system online. I don't what it uses to know to start reading there. The only reason your computer knows where to start reading is because a boot loader in the boot sector tells it. If we install Grub into the boot loader of the device and the device depended on it's boot loader to function, guess what, you have a portable hard drive that can no longer play music. If we make an exact copy using the dd command if Grub kills the boot sector, we can connect the device and basically undo the drive so that the prioporty boot loader will be put back in place along with any other files it needed. This is why I consider it very risky to not have that kind of back-up. I hope this clears it up for you.

I need to know the location of the data that you copied from the Knoppix CD to the device (F:\Knoppix cd\, \mnt\sda1\knoppix/ cd\, etc) That way I know the base of the CD data on the device. When open up the CD in Windows and the folder that looks the same on the device is what I need to know. If you copied the CD to the root of the device it would be \mnt\sda1\ or F:\ whatever OS and drive specification you are using.

Robert