for those without bootable cd

11-18-2002, 08:27 PM

For the people struggeling to get knoppix to boot, try: http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/
It's a bootmanager (bootloader?) that is capable of booting from most cd drives, independant from the bios.

(certain disk/drive combinations meight require giving the boot command twice)

Perhaps an option to include it on an easy-reachable directory on knoppix (arrive at non-cd-bootable windows machine, get the tool from knoppix-cd, install it on a floppy/hdd, boot knoppix)

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 11-19-2002, 04:56 AM

Originally Posted by Anonymous

For the people struggeling to get knoppix to boot, try: http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/
It's a bootmanager (bootloader?) that is capable of booting from most cd drives, independant from the bios.

So, are you talking about a bootloader which manages a dual boot? Or are you talking about a way to boot from the CDROM without a boot disk on machines that can't boot CDs? If its not the dual boot, you have just answered my prayers!

Thanx

**eadz** · 11-20-2002, 02:08 AM

That looks very interesting, esp as my laptop wont boot from cdrom anymore

of course you can always
dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0
to make a boot floppy that will then boot the Knoppix cd, but that boot manager will eliminate that step

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 11-20-2002, 03:43 AM

Originally Posted by eadz

of course you can always
dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0
to make a boot floppy that will then boot the Knoppix cd, but that boot manager will eliminate that step

Yes, but I thought this would give me a boot floppy with more space on it to save my work. I went to btmgr.sourceforge.net and it claimed to only use 30KB on the boot disk and to find just about any bootable device. Well it boted my cdrom drive where is wasn't bootable before, but it filled the boot disk with tons of gibberish leaving little room for data.

I want to be able to use KNOPPIX on some old machines where the harddisks are unreliable, so we boot from disk, run off cd and save to the same disk. I used rawrite to create a boot disk from boot-en.img, but this leaves only about 50KB on the disk for data!

Regards

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 11-20-2002, 03:54 AM

Originally Posted by eadz

of course you can always
dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0
to make a boot floppy that will then boot the Knoppix cd, but that boot manager will eliminate that step

Yes, but I thought this would give me a boot floppy with more space on it to save my work. I went to btmgr.sourceforge.net and it claimed to only use 30KB on the boot disk and to find just about any bootable device. Well it boted my cdrom drive where is wasn't bootable before, but it filled the boot disk with tons of gibberish leaving little room for data.

I want to be able to use KNOPPIX on some old machines where the harddisks are unreliable, so we boot from disk, run off cd and save to the same disk. I used rawrite to create a boot disk from boot-en.img, but this leaves only about 50KB on the disk for data!

Regards

**monkymind** · 11-20-2002, 04:38 AM

Yes, but I thought this would give me a boot floppy with more space on it to save my work. I went to btmgr.sourceforge.net and it claimed to only use 30KB on the boot disk and to find just about any bootable device. Well it boted my cdrom drive where is wasn't bootable before, but it filled the boot disk with tons of gibberish leaving little room for data.

I want to be able to use KNOPPIX on some old machines where the harddisks are unreliable, so we boot from disk, run off cd and save to the same disk. I used rawrite to create a boot disk from boot-en.img, but this leaves only about 50KB on the disk for data!

Regards

If you want more data on a floppy - why don't you just put in another blank floppy?? After all, the boot diskette is just to get the CD-Rom running after that you don't need it!

regards
rob

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 11-20-2002, 11:29 PM

Yes, but I thought this would give me a boot
If you want more data on a floppy - why don't you just put in another blank floppy?? After all, the boot diskette is just to get the CD-Rom running after that you don't need it!
regards
rob

OK, this is what my students are doing now. Its annoying with 11 students each juggling 3 disks (1 CD and 2 floppies). It's workable but what about next semester when I have a total of 53 kids in 3 classes?

I'd much rather have it down to 1 cd and 1 floppy per student!

Next year, with new machines finally, I'll just knx-hdinstall KNOPPIX on each machine thereby obviating all 3 disks. This will also allow me to install SDK for linux 1.4.1 (javac, et al) from www.sun.com for my new AP Computer Science class!

Regards

**Dave_Bechtel** · 11-23-2002, 02:33 PM

--Forgive me for saying this, but I find it hard to believe that you are actually a "Teacher and Professor [of] Applied Math and CompSci".

--You don't *have* to save to the boot floppy. Swap it out after the CD boots Ok.

--To initialize a floppy:
' dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k count=1 '
' mkdosfs /dev/fd0 '

' mkdir /mnt/floppy '
' mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy '
' cd /mnt/floppy '

--Then write your data files to /mnt/floppy.

Originally Posted by A. Jorge Garcia

Originally Posted by eadz

of course you can always
dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0
to make a boot floppy that will then boot the Knoppix cd, but that boot manager will eliminate that step

Yes, but I thought this would give me a boot floppy with more space on it to save my work. I went to btmgr.sourceforge.net and it claimed to only use 30KB on the boot disk and to find just about any bootable device. Well it boted my cdrom drive where is wasn't bootable before, but it filled the boot disk with tons of gibberish leaving little room for data.

I want to be able to use KNOPPIX on some old machines where the harddisks are unreliable, so we boot from disk, run off cd and save to the same disk. I used rawrite to create a boot disk from boot-en.img, but this leaves only about 50KB on the disk for data!

Regards

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 11-23-2002, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

--Forgive me for saying this, but I find it hard to believe that you are actually a "Teacher and Professor [of] Applied Math and CompSci"

Believe what you wish. Why don't you just check my website?

http://calcpage.tripod.com

If that doesn't convince you, please note that I only recently moved my email and website addresses from

calcpage@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/calcpage

because aol cannot filter out all the junk mail I was getting...

Anyway, go on yahoo and search those addresses and you will see that I've been actively supporting, on the web, the Advanced Placement Calculus and Computer Science programs of the College Board for at least a decade now!

As to the floppy problem, I have no problem using another floppy other than the boot disk to save my *.cc files. I just would like to have less disks to cart around from school to school, from class to class .....

Regards