Idiot's guide to HDD install

[bogl]

I gather that there is a way of putting knoppix onto the hard drive. As this is the third attempt at doing anything with Linux on my machine, and the only one that has worked in any measure, I am quite keen.

I read in the FAQ that it was tricky if you were a newbie but not impossible, I then failed to understand the method. Is there an idiot's guide to doing this?

I already have suitable partitions from trying to install Red Hat 9, which keeps burbling on about magic number problems. Knoppix worked first time!

Thanks for any help!

bogl

[pnti]

Copy entire knoppix catalogue from cd rom to any drive or free partition.

Start knoppix from cd, and then prepare the boot floppy disk (boot.img on the cdrom).

dd if=/mnt/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot-en.img of=/dev/fd0

Reboot computer and start the system from floppy disk.

It will take you 1o minutes.

[rickenbacherus]

You can find a how-to here.

Don't be afraid to try it- it certainly isn't complicated. BTW- are you aware that you can still surf the web while you install? If you have any questions you can easily get the answers. Keep in mind that you can always abort the install process as well. If it doesn't work out for you it doesn't take long to do it again either.

In the above post pnti is referring to booting the compressed .iso directly from your hard drive which certainly does work but it isn't the same as installing it.

Just curious....where did you read that the install was complicated?

[markleong]

I have just install knoppix and am very happy with it.

Just a question. Does knoppix has an upgrade option durint installation (like RH)?

[biehl]

No, but right after you reboot (or chroot) - type

> apt-get update
> apt-get upgrade

Unless you want to waste badwidht you might want to

> apt-get remove kde-i18-useless_language

first (remove the _very_ large kde language-packs you dont need - find the exact names by typing )

> dpkg -l | grep kde

or something.

HTH
Anders

[rickenbacherus]

No, but right after you reboot (or chroot) - type

> apt-get update
> apt-get upgrade

Definitely do the update but the upgrade is optional.

[Stephen]

And I might add apt-get -s upgrade to simulate the action of apt to check for problems before doing the upgrade.

[zzyzx]

I made a larger quide, everytime I ran into a problem, I would also try to write about it in the guide.

www.phpcad.com/knoppix-install.html , it is based on the one above.

[bogl]

It works! Can't get printer or CD going, not sure how to mount disks...but this is beyond this forum anyway, that's a Debian issue, right?

It was v easy - thanks. Now to configure...

[rickenbacherus]

Nice work on the how-to. It has needed cleaning up for some time now. I'd personally like to see more in the "how to make it a Debian installation" area. There has already been some documentation written for just this i.e. "How to move your /home directory to another partition". This method also works for other directories.
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Also a "How to recompile your Knoppix kernel the Debian way" would be a plus- it seems to be a common stumbling block as it's not exactly the same as usual.
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A few things that might be appended to your how-to:

Partition resizing:Knoppix has qtparted which is a great partition program (except that it doesn't yet handle reiserfs -grrrrr).
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Set passwords: Maybe a link to Stephens script hack to change install with your username instead of the Knoppix username.
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Select Servers to Install and Run on Boot -How about a link to the Quick Samba how-to or even another one perhaps.
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Set up bootloader: I think it should be clarified that if you choose "no" on installing LILO to the MBR it will instead install to the /root directory. This is very handy as it makes setting up a boot manager very easy. Really there could be a small how-to on boot loaders in general. Many people coming from windows are inexperienced in that area because wimpdoze only installs to one partition and it always decides which disc it's going to be installed on (the first one). This would require a fair amount of work to explain it all. Maybe someone knows of a good how-to already that we could link to or copy over.

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How about adding a basic networking troubleshooting section. Example:

ifgconfig -a
(maybe w/ a little explaination about lo(cal) and eth0)
ifdown -a
ifup -a
ping by i.p. first
ping by domain name second
adding domain name servers

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To Change the Fonts Size at Once. How about a link to Xfree86.org's "Font deuglification"
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Defrag or Repair Note that fsck is automatically ran if you shutdown uncleanly w/ ext2 file systems. ext3 is checked every 30 (or so ) mounts. In fact the rate at which it is checked is user definable (I forget where).
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Perhaps a mention of the sudoers file and /etc/group would solve alot of problems as well.
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I have started a list of Linux commands in the General forum. I could see it getting quite out of hand very quickly however- where do you stop? I think one of our major focuses should be at least an attempt at definig where Knoppix ends and Debian begins. Of course perhaps Klaus never imagined that Knoppix would take off in the installed OS category the way it has. I for one am ecstatic to finally see a way to install Debian that doesn't make you want to choke someone. :P

Knoppix has turned the Linux world down a new avenue and not once has it failed to impress anyone and everyone I've showed it to. I'm very impressed by all of the documentation already here on the site (none of which was written by me :P ).

It seems that Knoppix is the new "place for Linux noobs" and I certainly won't do anything to discourge that image.

Great work on the how-to and thanks so much for your time. It's efforts just like this that make the open source community so great.