Knoppix boot from different partitions

[chah]

If you have copied Knoppix 6.2.1 files to a partition on your HDD and you try to boot from a 6.2.1 USB key, it will somehow switch over to loading and mounting everything from the HDD copy.

Is there any way to disable this, to force Knoppix to boot from a particular partition, or from a particular KNOPPIX/ directory, when there are multiple versions lying around?

Can we have a KNOPPIX6.2.1 and KNOPPIX6.4.3 directories each containing the relevant Knoppix files in different partitions and choose which one to boot from a Grub menu.lst? I'm trying this right now and at the moment, 6.4.3 strangely seems to boot the 6.2.1 partition (I put on 6.2.1 first). It also takes very much longer when it does this, sticking for a while at a "Probing EDD..." prompt.

[Werner P. Schulz]

If you have copied Knoppix 6.2.1 files to a partition on your HDD and you try to boot from a 6.2.1 USB key, it will somehow switch over to loading and mounting everything from the HDD copy.

... are you sure your BIOS can boot from USB-Stick? Otherwise BIOS will switch to second bootable device and boot from HD.

Can we have a KNOPPIX6.2.1 and KNOPPIX6.4.3 directories each containing the relevant Knoppix files in different partitions and choose which one to boot from a Grub menu.lst?

If different OS are on different partitions you can select which OS to start. Can you post '/boot/grub/menu.lst' and the output from "df -h"

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
"Build personal Recovery-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix remaster)"

[chah]

I'm fairly sure it is booting the isolinux on the USB drive (when the big penguin appears, that is the from the USB drive), and at some point after, it searches for appropriate files on the HDD and switches to them if it finds them. I remember I had problem booting 6.2.1 from the USB drive while I had the files for 6.0.1 on my HDD until I went in and disabled 6.0.1 by renaming KNOPPIX to KNOPPIX_disabled. (the version numbers may not be accurate, but the gist is correct). Then it boot properly from the USB key, and I wasn't playing around with the BIOS. Prior to that it was dropping me to limited shell from which I could see using df -h, that it had started mounting stuff from Knoppix 6.0.1.

In general, I thought this was a nice feature, because I could copy KNOPPIX/ from the iso image to a partition on my HDD, boot from the USB key, and pull the USB key out a few seconds later and the booting would continue and complete from the HDD partition. But in this case with multiple versions of Knoppix lying on different partitions, it is making it difficult.

The setup I am trying to bring about is Knoppix 6.2.1 on /dev/sda5, Knoppix 6.4.3 on /dev/sda6, Ubuntu 10.4 on /dev/sda7, all bootable from Grub. Here is menu.lst:

default 0
timeout 10

title Knoppix_6.2.1
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/syslinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 lang=en vt.default_utf8=0 apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce quiet loglevel=0 tz=localtime no3d noprompt screen=1920x1080
initrd /boot/syslinux/minirt.gz
boot

title Knoppix_6.2.1_noimage
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/syslinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 lang=en vt.default_utf8=0 apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce quiet loglevel=0 tz=localtime no3d noprompt noimage screen=1920x1080
initrd /boot/syslinux/minirt.gz
boot

title Knoppix_6.4.3
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 lang=en vt.default_utf8=0 apm=power-off video=vga16fb:off initrd=minirt.gz nomce loglevel=1 tz=localtime no3d noprompt
initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt.gz
boot

The ubuntu partition is not set up yet, as I am not getting 2 versions of Knoppix dual booting properly. At the moment I just want to keep 6.2.1 around for legacy reasons, I hope that I should be able to switch to 6.4.3. I need Ubuntu for the 64 bit OS from time to time, but prefer the Knoppix environment.

This is the output from df -Th

$ df -Th
Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6     ext3     37G  3.6G   32G  11% /mnt-system
tmpfs        tmpfs    2.0G   49M  2.0G   3% /ramdisk
/dev/cloop iso9660    8.1G  8.1G     0 100% /KNOPPIX
unionfs       aufs    2.0G   49M  2.0G   3% /UNIONFS
unionfs       aufs    2.0G   49M  2.0G   3% /home
tmpfs        tmpfs     10M   64K   10M   1% /UNIONFS/var/run
tmpfs        tmpfs     10M     0   10M   0% /UNIONFS/var/lock
tmpfs        tmpfs    100M   64K  100M   1% /UNIONFS/var/log
tmpfs        tmpfs    2.0G  228K  2.0G   1% /tmp
udev         tmpfs     20M  420K   20M   3% /dev
tmpfs        tmpfs    2.0G  4.0K  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6     ext3     37G  3.6G   32G  11% /media/sda6
/dev/sda5     ext3     37G  4.7G   31G  14% /media/sda5
/dev/sda7     ext3     37G  177M   35G   1% /media/sda7
/dev/sda8     ext3     37G  177M   35G   1% /media/sda8

When booting the 6.4.3 partition, it does something for a very long time while it is "Probing EDD..." after which it eventually boots 6.2.1. If I "disable" 6.2.1 by renaming KNOPPIX to KNOPPIX_disabled in that partition, then it boots to 6.4.3.

[kl522]

Is there any way to disable this, to force Knoppix to boot from a particular partition, or from a particular KNOPPIX/ directory, when there are multiple versions lying around?

You can try to use the knoppix cheatcode knoppix_dir=KNOPPIX.

Basically you copy the knoppix files to different directories, and then you specify the knoppix_dir=KNOPPIX inside your menu.lst entries.

[Werner P. Schulz]

If you have copied Knoppix 6.2.1 files to a partition on your HDD and you try to boot from a 6.2.1 USB key, it will somehow switch over to loading and mounting everything from the HDD copy.

If you build an USB-Stick using origninal Knoppix-CD with menu order 'Preferences/ Install KNOPPIX to flash disk' then Knoppix will only boot from USB-Stick. Be sure BIOS can boot from USB-Stick; if in doupt disable all options to boot from HD or CD.

In general, I thought this was a nice feature, because I could copy KNOPPIX/ from the iso image to a partition on my HDD, boot from the USB key, and pull the USB key out a few seconds later and the booting would continue and complete from the HDD partition.

Why that? You can not change device order while boot process is running! Either boot from USB-Stick or boot from USB-Drive.

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
"Build personal Recovery-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix remaster)"

[kl522]

If you build an USB-Stick using origninal Knoppix-CD with menu order 'Preferences/ Install KNOPPIX to flash disk' then Knoppix will only boot from USB-Stick. Be sure BIOS can boot from USB-Stick; if in doupt disable all options to boot from HD or CD.

Booting and running the system are two independent things for Knoppix, ie after knoppix is booted from a kernel and the kernel loaded the initrd/initramfs, it will begin searching for available Knoppix System from whatever available HD and USB devices present on the system. This is a (somewhat confusing) feature which can lead to someone possibly booting from USB, but yet using a Knoppix System loaded on the HD.

Sometimes the system present on the HD is an older version compared to the kernel on the USB, that will lead to a module loading problem with cloop.ko and aufs.ko.

Cheers.

[Werner P. Schulz]

Booting and running the system are two independent things for Knoppix, ie after knoppix is booted from a kernel and the kernel loaded the initrd/initramfs, it will begin searching for available Knoppix System from whatever available HD and USB devices present on the system.

I am in doubt this will be the behaviour of an USB-Stick which you build without any hacks and start without any cheatcodes.

[chah]

You can try to use the knoppix cheatcode knoppix_dir=KNOPPIX.

Basically you copy the knoppix files to different directories, and then you specify the knoppix_dir=KNOPPIX inside your menu.lst entries.

Is there anyway to specify which partition is boot from? But I can also choose a unique name for each directory on each partition which will allow a specific boot for each version of Knoppix. Thanks for the tip.

I am in doubt this will be the behaviour of an USB-Stick which you build without any hacks and start without any cheatcodes.

It does happen though. Give it a try, copy the KNOPPIX/ directory from the USB stick onto the root of a partition on your hard drive (maybe you need the boot/ directory too), boot from the USB without any cheat codes and when the system is running, take a look at df -h to see which partition is mounted on /mnt-system/. During the booting process, it will also tell you which partition it is using, just under the penguins indicating the number of cores your computer has. If it is using the one on the HDD, you can immediately pull the USB out and booting will continue to completion from the HDD.

This happens without flutzing around with the BIOS or the MBR, just so long as you can boot from the USB.

[kl522]

Try "fromhd=/dev....." cheatcode.

Actually what I am not so sure is whether we are using a feature of knoppix or we are exploiting a bug in knoppix. If it is a bug, the behaviour might not be the same in later versions.

[chah]

I used to think that when you boot from your own USB, you are assured of a working, uncorruptible KNOPPIX system. I found this is not necessarily true. If you have a copy of KNOPPIX on the HDD, it will switch over to that system, often unbeknownst to the user.

There are several places that Knoppix takes updates/modifications from while booting that will cause it to be different from the clean system that Klaus gives us. The first is obviously if you create a persistent knoppix.img in KNOPPIX/, modifications will be mounted from there. Secondly if you have a knoppix.sh in KNOPPIX/ subdirectory, it will be executed as root just before you get a working system, you can put whatever additional modifications you want to happen in that file (untar additional files, start daemons).

Thirdly, and in my opinion, most dangerously, if there is a copy of KNOPPIX/ on your HDD, Knoppix will switch over to that early on during the booting process. It will say it right below the penguins as mentioned, but if you don't read it, and you don't check with df -h, you may not know you are working on a possibly modified system.