Knoppix_V6.2.1, First impressions

[Capricorny]

Very good overall, some bugs have been fixed, like
- Compiz now seems to work with all screen resolutions
- VMware products seem to run without recompilation of kernel, as was necessary for me in 6.2

Some persist, like
- External screen resolution is still not detected properly, same shit as in 6.2, it was correct in 6.0.1.
- Same package conflicts, or worse. (Of course depending on package.) Now I can't even install K3b when running from the CD version, in order to burn the DVD! Must use another tool for that.

Some possible new, but may depend on errors in my unverified install. (Slow burning and right md5sums though)
- Screensaver locked up, asking for password, without being set up for that. Had to turn machine off.
- Didn't create persistent image after asking for size and getting correct parameter. Manual setup of image worked, though.

Update:
I could not make the DVD created from the ISO image boot, but used the CD, creating a first USB stick. Booting from that, transfering the system to a new stick. Loop-mounted the ISO image, and copied the KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX image to the new stick. (Plus the manually set up persistent image.)
Eliminating stable(!) from the repositories seemed to reduce the package conflict level somewhat, and i could get my R-2.10.X.
KDE users may have hard times getting everything to work with new installations - I stick with LXDE for the moment, and use a few KDE tools like Konqueror and Kaffeine. Works OK for me.

I think it's time for Ryumbeke's tricks getting more widely used, avoid working with the CD/DVD altogether.

Conclusion so far:
With the known kernel header bugs in 6.2, everyone with a need for compiling modules etc should rather start off with 6.2.1 than go by the kernel recompile route.
Graphics is improved a bit, everything just feels more tidy. But don't expect to find your old favorites all gathered on the DVD. I would not recommend using 6.2.1 with much less than 3GB persistent image, even starting from the DVD, if you are going to install/upgrade some packages. And you probably are.

That people stay with 5.X has its natural reasons, but I think 6.2.1 has removed most (but not all) of the reasons for using 6.0.1 instead of 6.2.X. I think we should direct all newbies to 6.2.1, unless some really, really grave problems show up. (In which case I think Klaus will be quick to release a bugfix.) Another piece of solid work by Klaus, thank you!

[Capricorny]

I think there is need for a bugfix release: The ordinary way to do /dev/loop* devices is to create /dev/loop0 .. /dev/loop7. And so it is done in 6.2.1 init.
BUT - mount no longer uses those, and if you issue losetup -a to list the loop devices set up, you only get an entry for dev/loop/0.
losetup -f should give you the first free loop device on a newly booted system, but there is none. Only /dev/loop/0 is created at boot time, and that is occupied by knoppix-data.img when you have a persistent image.

If you, for example, need to loop-mount an ISO-image, you are stuck. I ran into the problem when my extra persistent images knoppix-data2.img and knoppix-data3.img did not show up as mounted, even if they should have been by /etc/rc.local.

I fixed it by issuing

mknod -m660 /dev/loop/1 b 7 1
mknod -m660 /dev/loop/2 b 7 2
...etc..

and mounting by hand. Copying the commands into /etc/rc.local worked well.

We can't expect people to get around this bug, maybe they won't even understand why things don't work. So this should be cared for in a bugfix release og 6.2.1, I think.

[stevesr0]

I am blown away - that is really impressed by the 6.2.1 version of Knoppix in the few days that I have been using it (as a Live CD). .

The things that impress me are the ease of wifi login (so far), the ability to download and install the programs I want for basic user tasks and the stability of mouse use, compared to the distro I have been using for the past year.

I look forward to switching to a "poor man's type of install", adding it to my existing hd multiboot config with grub4dos.

The annoying lock up when the machine is allowed to go into screensaver mode - asking for a password - is easily gotten around by using Control-Alt-Backspace to get to a shell which then launches a new X display. The keyring password isn't accepted, but by hitting deny a couple of times, you get a screen which asks for the security code (WEP in my case) and then you are good to go. (I suspect, I have generated three extra x windows and I would like to know how to check and close the extra ones.)

Overall, so far delightful. I noted that even Harry Kuhman said nice things about this version!!

Steve

[Capricorny]

The annoying lock up when the machine is allowed to go into screensaver mode - asking for a password - is easily gotten around by using Control-Alt-Backspace to get to a shell which then launches a new X display. The keyring password isn't accepted, but by hitting deny a couple of times, you get a screen which asks for the security code (WEP in my case) and then you are good to go. (I suspect, I have generated three extra x windows and I would like to know how to check and close the extra ones.)

I would call that method 0 for dealing with the xscreensaver problem. You don't kill the screensaver, you kill X, and get the offender up and running again together with X. Here are a few other ways to get rid of it:


1. Under main menu, preferences, click Screensaver. You get setup window. Open the file menu, click Kill daemon.
2. You can kill it directly from the command line, by issuing the command xscreensaver-command -exit
3. You can get the process number (pid) by issuing ps ax | grep 'xscreen' and run the command kill -9 <pid>
4. You could try to modify knoppix-startx to kill the xscreensaver daemon.
5. You can comment out the important line in /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart: #@xscreensaver -no-splash -no-capture-stderr

#5 is the permanent solution. Possibly we could start xscreensaver from our own X startup scripts, and get more sensible behavior, but I haven't found a safe way to do that yet. The old, tried and true ways of starting things in X don't seem to work the way they did.

As for poor man's HD installs, it is as easy as copying the whole KNOPPIX directory (it includes persistent images and everything) to a FAT32 partition on the harddisk, and start from USB with knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda2 (If KNOPPIX is found on the second partition on the hard disk.) I'm a bit usure about booting mechanisms, so I personally prefer to leave the booting setup on the hard disk untouched until the technical issues are more sorted out.

[stevesr0]

Since disabling the screensaver and leaving the computer on with the lid up (this is a laptop), it hasn't gone into any password protected mode.

On this laptop, I have only NTFS and ext2 (or is it 3?) partitions. I set up a multiboot with Win XP, and three varieties of Puppy Linux following instructions of the Lin N Win project (run by ICPUG, who is a member of the Knoppix fora).

I am interested in adding Knoppix to my multiboot, following the Lin N Win project instructions (or the ones posted on this forum by Gilles Ruymbeke).
This is as I understand it, basically substitutes a hard drive for a CD. I prefer not to have a FAT32 partition on my hard drive, if I don't need one. As long as I can read and writer to an NTFS partition (without compression) using NTFS 3G, I am happy using only NTFS (for a windows OS) and ext3 or ext4 for linux (plus a swap partition).

Steve

[Capricorny]

Since disabling the screensaver and leaving the computer on with the lid up (this is a laptop), it hasn't gone into any password protected mode.

On this laptop, I have only NTFS and ext2 (or is it 3?) partitions. I set up a multiboot with Win XP, and three varieties of Puppy Linux following instructions of the Lin N Win project (run by ICPUG, who is a member of the Knoppix fora).

I am interested in adding Knoppix to my multiboot, following the Lin N Win project instructions (or the ones posted on this forum by Gilles Ruymbeke).
This is as I understand it, basically substitutes a hard drive for a CD. I prefer not to have a FAT32 partition on my hard drive, if I don't need one. As long as I can read and writer to an NTFS partition (without compression) using NTFS 3G, I am happy using only NTFS (for a windows OS) and ext3 or ext4 for linux (plus a swap partition).

Steve

Yes, whatever way you disable xscreensaver, you avoid the password problem. Whether or not you shut the lid - if no new bugs have been introduced in 6.2.1

The "common wisdom" still strongly advises against writing to NTFS partitions from Linux. One of the reasons seems to be that NTFS is a moving target, so you have no guarantee against subtle errors introduced, for example with new Service Packs. I just follow that advice, and always use FAT32 as common ground for Windows and Linux. That is guaranteed to work without much problems, but if mounting NTFS rw works for you, that's of course simpler.

I have always the computer set up for multiboot, with GRUB, but so far, I have not felt any need to integrate Knoppix in that. One important reason is that I have been running several Knoppix versions in parallel, because of different problems with each release. In fact, 6.2.1 is the first candidate for a very long time to become the only Knoppix in use.

Edit 20100218:
Instead of writing another post, I put it here: Most of the version conflicts in 6.2.1 are eliminated by just dropping the 'stable' repositories: Basic as well as updates. That may seem counter-intuitive, but should not give much problems for Knoppix' intended use. 'Stable' in Debian is really stable.. So it's becoming an even stronger candidate for me.

[ICPUG]

stevesr0

I am currently running Knoppix 6.2 under the Lin'N'Win method on Windows XP.

As you have already set up Puppy this way it is easy to add Knoppix.

Create a directory for your Knoppix files

Copy the following two files from the Knoppix disk to the directory:
linux
KNOPPIX

get hold of rymbeke's minirt.gz by extracting it from the download from here and store in the same directory:
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/knx620k.zip

Note: Rymbeke has updated this to kn620m.zip but I have not tested that one. I am also assuming this will still be valid for Knoppix 6.2.1. I don't have 6.2.1 to test as yet.

Then add some lines to your menu.lst file similar to those listed here:
http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/lin...p4-knoppix.htm
changing the reference to the directory name and specific cheat codes for your equipment as required.

Then reboot.

[stevesr0]

Hi ICPUG,

Thanks for feedback.

I love your Lin N Win site; it is so clear and step-by-step.

I assume that this sort of imitation LIveCD on HD install is free from the problems generally mentioned for a "true" HD install.

Steve

[Capricorny]

I just tried to add booting of a harddisk copy of 6.2.1 KNOPPIX structure to the GRUB menu of an ordinary Linux install, and it seems to work quite OK.
GRUB lives in the /boot directory of the Linux root partition, so modifications must be done there. In my case, I have a Win XP partition as /dev/sda1, and a Linux (Mandriva) install on /dev/sda2.
I did the whole modification, copying and all, from Knoppix 6.2.1

1. Mount the root partition, in this case /dev/sda2, rw. (In this case as /media/sda2)
2. Enter /media/sda2/boot, create a new directory knoppix.621.
3. Copy /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/linux and /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/minirt.gz to knoppix.621.
4. Edit GRUB's menu file, /media/sda2/boot/grub/menu.lst, adding one or more entries for Knoppix. Use the output from the command cat /proc/cmdline as the command line for Knoppix. It won't be done interactively anymore, but you can create several entries with different options instead. My first entry looks like this:

title Knoppix-6.2.1 on /dev/sda5
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/knx.621/linux ramdisk_size=100000 lang=en vt.default_utf8=0 apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce quiet loglevel=0 tz=localtime BOOT_IMAGE=linux fromhd=/dev/sda5
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/knx.621/minirt.gz

5. Copy the whole /mnt-system/KNOPPIX directory to a FAT32 formatted hard disk partition, in this case /dev/sda5. You may have different boot menu entries with KNOPPIX images in different partitions, specify with fromhd=.
6. Reboot and enjoy!

The screen resolution will often be wrong with this setup, the tedious and obvious fix is to give screen explicitly in the boot entry. Screen resizing almost works by choosing Monitor Settings from the Preferences menu.
I have two persistent images set up in addition to the basic one, all inside of KNOPPIX, and everything just got copied with no problems. It is a structure with about 16GB altogether, the DVD image + 3 persistent 4GB each.

Beware that the "Install Knoppix to flash" menu option may no longer work well. But if you want to copy/backup the system, it's simply to copy the KNOPPIX directory to the backup/install media.

Edit 20100219:
Two problems with screen resolution from Monitor Settings is that the region outside the original resolution may not be updated properly when resolution is increased, and that the mouse pointer may vanish. Both can be simply "fixed" by rotating the Compiz cube a bit, it seems.

[garaden]

I'm curious about your setup here; that seems like an awful lot of cheatcodes, but since I've only been using Knoppix for a few days I expect a little shell shock Do you mind explaining what each of them do?