continuing boot problem with USBflash SD, microSD, and (sort of) LiveDVD

[otropogo]

I spent several hours today trying to fix the sudden boot failure of my two day old microSD installation of 7.2. By trying different screen settings I was able to get a display a few times, but never one that fitted the desktop to the screen. Strangely, the monitor app in preferences would not allow me to adjust either screen dimensions or refresh rate, which Win8 tells me are 1920x1050 (among others) and 60Hz (65 at 1280x1024, IIRC). After a while, I couldn't get a readable display at all, but 8 overlapping desktops. Eventually it just refused to boot at all with a repetitive list of error messages.

I then tried an earlier SD install, and with that I got the steady display, as at the beginning with the microSD, but was just as unable to adjust it to fit the screen. The desktop was split so that the right side was showing on the left of the screen. Both installations showed the same error message, but the SD kept going a bit longer and so sometimes loaded.

I finally loaded the LiveDVD from which the two flash installs had been made. It displayed the same error message, but just kept going, and, unlike the two flash installs, it finally presented a desktop that fit the screen perfectly.

However, when I checked the monitor app in preferences, it presented the same options as with the other two, including the 77Hz refresh rate, with no alternate option other than "auto" (which had no effect).

I should add that both of these flash installs worked fine when first created. Unfortunately, this gave me no occasion to check the monitor adjustment app.

One other very strange development is that in both Windows and Knoppix, the 16GB microSD card shows only 3.8GB available. In fact, it looks like an 8GB card, and I had trouble distinguishing it from the 8GB SD card when both where mounted.

I can't recall how I installed the 8GB SD, but I'm quite clear that I used the P option for the 16GB card, although I confess I don't fully understand the pros and cons of the two approaches. In the installation size option, I chose to split it half and half, and it looks as though one of the halves has just disappeared. Unfortunately, I didn't pay any attention to this until after the crash described in an earlier post of today. So I don't know whether the 8GB were lost during installation (ie. Knoppix 7.2 can't handle a 16GB microSD card, and treats it as an 8GB card) or just a result of the system crash the followed my insertion of the SD card into the same card reader.

My big dilemma now is, whether I makes sense to continue using Knoppix, as it appears I'm apt to lose all of my settings and installations, as well as any logs saved within the Knoppix file.

Is there any way to save configuration and logs (such as the virus scan and quarantine logs and scan histories) to a hdd so that one can recover fully if one has to do a reinstall to flash?

[otropogo]

After posting the above, I took both the 16GB microSD and the 8GB SD flash installs over to my P4 desktop and booted with them on it. Both automatically (without cheatcodes) produced a proper desktop display, but with a difference. The 16GB microSD had no error messages in three reboots, and produced a Fusion display. The SD install had several input/output errors, ending with an i/o error popup, and no fusion display. When I checked the monitor app in "preferences" it offered six display size options for both, and two refresh rates, 60 and 75 for both. I tried setting refresh to 75, but it had no visible effect. The SD card still didn't produce a Fusion display.

It was only at this point, BTW, that i realized that the Asus, with much more available RAM, and presumably a newer, more powerful Intel video chip (an HD4600) than that on the old Intel desktop, never offered a Fusion display from either card.

I had the idea of using the apparent functionality of the monitor app on the desktop to set and save a setting on the microSD that might work on the Asus laptop. I chose 60Hz and 1280x1050 (the highest setting), since 75Hz wasn't available according to Win8. I took it back and booted successfully with it.

The initial segmentation error 11 still appears, and stops everything for a minute or two (a royal PIA), and then the longer error messages flash by twice, too quickly to recognize, let alone read. But then the desktop displays properly on both the internal and the external LCD monitors. Since both are quite elongated, I doubt they're displaying in the 1280x1050 mode I saved on the desktop. And the monitor app, as always, says the display is 1920x1050 at 77Hz, with no other options available.

If there's another monitor application available, it would be most welcome news.

BTW - I was mistaken about the missing 8GB. When I viewed the 16GB microSD in Puppy, it became apparent that it's in a Reiser.fs, so naturally Windows didn't see it. In Knoppix the problem was probably that there are just too many folders called "Knoppix", and it's very hard to distinguish them. There seems to be no easy way to see that one of them is a partition, let alone what type or what size.

I still have no idea what happened or why, by my suspicion falls on the knoppix64 side of things. Since I had never had such problems on the 32bit intel, nor with the LiveDVD, I tried to find a way to force the flash installs to boot in 32-bit mode on the 64-bit Asus. But couldn't find any way to do it.

Just hitting CR at the boot prompt automatically generates a knoppix64 entry, and then its off to the German menus with a US keyboard. Entering knoppix32 doesn't work, and entering "knoppix" just kicks you back to the boot prompt. Very frustrating.

I did learn that I could access both the logs of clamtk and the quarantined files in Puppy on the Reiser.fs partition, so that's good news, as I was able to save them to the hard drive with Puppy. And that should make reinstallation a bit less painful. But I note that that partition also contains the Knoppix OS. leaving only 3.8GB accessible. So I wonder what is going into the inaccessible 8GB?

Throughtout this software train wreck I sorely missed the xorgwizard of Puppy Linux, wich, with all its warts, might have allowed me to fix the problem in a half hour instead of a whole evening.