Thread: Installing 6.2.1 Knoppix on SCSI system

I have the instructions I just printed on Friday and the LiveCD 6.2.1 I downloaded on Friday also. I booted up, waiting for the GUI start page. All I see is a text menu. I pressed <CTRL><ALT><F2> and nothing happened. I had a working Debian system, so I know there is no problem and the machine is barely a year old.
I looked around the menus and found a disk formatter/installer choice, it sat for about 15 seconds and came back with "NO USABLE DRIVES FOUND". Now the odd thing is I found was an item on a menu about "Devices on your system". I selected that and everything USB, SCSI came up on the screen.
I believe there is a problem. I keep looking through the install manual and the program and it is looking for all hard drives as /dev/hdx, not /dev/sdx. I have no way of changing that and it's not an option in the BIOS.
I did find a SHELL option and tried with cfdisk to delete and existing disk and lay it out exactly as the instructions. I then went back to installation and "NO USABLE DRIVES FOUND". I gave up.

If there is a text menu only instead of a graphical desktop environment, I think, you booted ADRIANE. What is the name of your iso file? Even if you downloaded ADRIANE, it should be possible to start KNOPPIX if you enter knoppix at the boot prompt of the Knoppix splash screen.

How large did you create the partition on the hard disk? The type of the filesystem has to be reiserfs. After formatting the partition you should mount it, I think. There must be a swap partition > 1 GB, too.

I hope this helps.

Yes, it is Adrianne. Very annoying voice version, but I seemed to be able to use the various tools. I made a 4GB swap area and the rest (34GB) as root. I tried it mounted and unmounted and everytime the partitioner started up, is said "NO USABLE DRIVES FOUND." Again, I looked with the viewing too and all of my drives and partitions are there.

Again, why on earth did you attempt a HD install? When you didn't even learn the simple distinction between Adriane and plain Knoppix on beforehand?
Ordinary Knoppix HD installs are for special purposes, for experienced users who know Linux and Knoppix and don't need the installation help built into distros made for ordinary installation.
Set it up on a USB stick the way you want it, and do a poor man's install from that instead.

Well, Capricorny, you are making the assumption that I am a Newbie. New to Knoppix, yes, but, I started with "IX" back in 1975, in it's infancy as Unix. I've also been through HP-Ux, SCO, Xandros and Ubundtu. I was Director of IT for 14 years. My system is a 4 CPU 1.6G backbone SuperMicro Server with 8GB of RAM and 2 TB of SCSI disk. I think I have the right to play in Knoppix, although, just to check it out first, I did try Adrianne. Annoying little system.
I didn't think I was out of the realm of looking for a heafty system similar to Debian to replace my existing Debian system (getting out of date). Do you have any USEFUL information to add to my questions and comments? I appreciate all from people who are serious about getting the job done and right.
As a follow up, I did get Adrianne to install, again annoying. I got the full Knoppix to finally install, but I keep getting the drive letters changing on me. My hardware and current OS say first drive is /dev/sdax, Knoppix says /dev/sdkx, etc. Doesn't make any difference, After it installs completely, all I get from Grub is "Stage 1.5, Error 17, but have no idea what file is missing or what drive /dev/xxx it's looking at?

Originally Posted by pebl

Well, Capricorny, you are making the assumption that I am a Newbie. New to Knoppix, yes, but, I started with "IX" back in 1975, in it's infancy as Unix. I've also been through HP-Ux, SCO, Xandros and Ubundtu. I was Director of IT for 14 years. My system is a 4 CPU 1.6G backbone SuperMicro Server with 8GB of RAM and 2 TB of SCSI disk. I think I have the right to play in Knoppix, although, just to check it out first, I did try Adrianne. Annoying little system.
I didn't think I was out of the realm of looking for a heafty system similar to Debian to replace my existing Debian system (getting out of date). Do you have any USEFUL information to add to my questions and comments? I appreciate all from people who are serious about getting the job done and right.
As a follow up, I did get Adrianne to install, again annoying. I got the full Knoppix to finally install, but I keep getting the drive letters changing on me. My hardware and current OS say first drive is /dev/sdax, Knoppix says /dev/sdkx, etc. Doesn't make any difference, After it installs completely, all I get from Grub is "Stage 1.5, Error 17, but have no idea what file is missing or what drive /dev/xxx it's looking at?

Check out the info from Ubuntu regarding the same symptoms.

Hope that helps!
Krishna

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've also tried to install Ubuntu lite and full and have the same problem. I've also searched blog after blog for the general problem and many people have a similar problem, just no answers.
There are several suggestions I tried, but they didn't change anything.
I'm running out of OS's to try running.

Originally Posted by pebl

Well, Capricorny, you are making the assumption that I am a Newbie. New to Knoppix, yes, but, I started with "IX" back in 1975, in it's infancy as Unix. I've also been through HP-Ux, SCO, Xandros and Ubundtu. I was Director of IT for 14 years. My system is a 4 CPU 1.6G backbone SuperMicro Server with 8GB of RAM and 2 TB of SCSI disk. I think I have the right to play in Knoppix, although, just to check it out first, I did try Adrianne. Annoying little system.
I didn't think I was out of the realm of looking for a heafty system similar to Debian to replace my existing Debian system (getting out of date). Do you have any USEFUL information to add to my questions and comments? I appreciate all from people who are serious about getting the job done and right.
As a follow up, I did get Adrianne to install, again annoying. I got the full Knoppix to finally install, but I keep getting the drive letters changing on me. My hardware and current OS say first drive is /dev/sdax, Knoppix says /dev/sdkx, etc. Doesn't make any difference, After it installs completely, all I get from Grub is "Stage 1.5, Error 17, but have no idea what file is missing or what drive /dev/xxx it's looking at?

All the worse, I would say. I think you have just provided another demonstration of the futility of ordinary HD installs of Knoppix.
In a sense, there is NO way of being "serious about getting the job done and right" when the distro is simply not made for ordinary HD install. And of course, having only been running Linux since 1994 myself, in something like 12 different distros, diverse versions, I should not have tried to tell you anything. But with so many hours working around all sorts of distro problems and bugs, I have developed something of an aversion against actively seeking problem situations, like you are clearly doing. Otherwise, you wouldn't have posted what you do.

And you have not told us why the preferred way to go beyond Knoppix, doing an ordinary Debian install, is not a better solution for you. If your Debian is "getting out of date", I think there should be several alternatives to get a more updated system.

But to me, the most important question is why you did not try out what in fact does work very well if some simple principles are followed, the "poor man's install". If you had tried to give a good answer to that, I don't think you would have expressed yourself the very negative way you do "annoying little system" etc.

First of all, thanks to Krishna.murphy for the guidance of someone with a similar problem and a potential fix. I am going to try a reinstall, then check the files.
As to needing to get out of the Debian area, I have run into an annoying problem, that many of you won't care. Most distro's do not allow you to login as "root" in an X window. You may open a root terminal window or sudo to do something, but many of the heavyduty programs (gparted, for instance), are in X, not in text format. I have talked with Debian designers and they say it is not the kernel, but the application designers version (Ubuntu, Xandros, etc), that are choosing to write their front end code to prevent logging in.
Since, I have 1 main machine I do my work on, it has the main console and that is all. I need to log in as root. My current Debian (old Xandros), does allow it. New installs of http://www.debian.org are not letting me do it, under any circumstances. Well, so much for my changing versions.
The other problem still lurks of the SCSI BIOS boots first, assigns /dev/sda, sdb, etc, then the OS, comes in and uses whatever it was installed and setup as. Fortunately, Xandros, did not change anything, so no problems. Every other distro I have tried, changes to my USB being assigned first as /dev/sdx or changing the HD's to /dev/hdx.

Originally Posted by pebl

First of all, thanks to Krishna.murphy for the guidance of someone with a similar problem and a potential fix. I am going to try a reinstall, then check the files.

You're welcome - hope all goes well. Do let us know if you need further assistance.

As to needing to get out of the Debian area, I have run into an annoying problem, that many of you won't care. Most distro's do not allow you to login as "root" in an X window. You may open a root terminal window or sudo to do something, but many of the heavyduty programs (gparted, for instance), are in X, not in text format. I have talked with Debian designers and they say it is not the kernel, but the application designers version (Ubuntu, Xandros, etc), that are choosing to write their front end code to prevent logging in.

I was playing with a Debian install recently, and I don't recall having that trouble. However, I was unhappy with the default desktop and switched to LXDE almost immediately. Also, it seems like I recall the KDE terminal window having a root terminal option, which should work regardless of which distro it's used with, I think.

Since, I have 1 main machine I do my work on, it has the main console and that is all. I need to log in as root. My current Debian (old Xandros), does allow it. New installs of http://www.debian.org are not letting me do it, under any circumstances. Well, so much for my changing versions.

Have you tried sudo su - ? That should get you to where you can then start something in X as root, i.e.

Code:

gparted &

- that will start gparted (assuming it's in the default path or your current directory) with a warning at the top about being the superuser, I think. I seem to recall having to do just that when I was working on the Debian system, in fact.

The other problem still lurks of the SCSI BIOS boots first, assigns /dev/sda, sdb, etc, then the OS, comes in and uses whatever it was installed and setup as. Fortunately, Xandros, did not change anything, so no problems. Every other distro I have tried, changes to my USB being assigned first as /dev/sdx or changing the HD's to /dev/hdx.

Yeah, BIOS trouble can be VERY annoying; however, I'm not clear exactly how this is inconveniencing you. If you can figure out what the designation WILL be, you can go ahead and specify it as you need it, i.e. /dev/hdx instead of the other one.

Cheers!
Krishna