How can I run well from the hard drive with persistence

[thriftee]

I have Knoppix 7.7.1. I really like the KDE games section, as it has some of my favorite games. I also hope to use the Wine, which I don't have working on any other distro. The distro looks nice and seems very stable.

I have a fast Dell Inspiron 15 7559 laptop which is UEFI and it has 2 GPT hard drives, /dev/sd5 is a fast SSD. It has an nVidia GTX 960 graphics card which most distros have problems with, but Knoppix works well with.

What I would like is a setup where I run from the hard drive, but run the original Knoppix, and save my changes to a persistence file, and would have the ability later to identify all my changes in case I want to implement them again in a newer version. I don't want to boot or run from USB flashdrive because its slow and requires me to hold down F12 during the boot to get it to boot from USB flashdrive.

I tried the "Poor man's install", but it only copied a small portion of Knoppix to the hard drive, and seemed to require me to have the USB flashdrive in to boot which I would like to avoid.

I found Werner P Schulz's wiki section "ISO Install to HD" http://knoppix.net/wiki/Category:Har...e_Installation which was certainly helpful getting it running, but I don't understand how to implement persistence with the ISO Install to HD method.

My attempt to install:
I created an EXT4 partition /dev/sda5 on the SSD. I created a folder ISO on the partition and downloaded the Knoppix to there via bittorrent. As instructed, I renamed the .iso file to KNX.iso

I edited /etc/grub.d/40_custom to add a menuentry for Knoppix and ran update-grup to put it into effect

menuentry "Knoppix64 7.7.1 fromISO (on /dev/sda5)" {
insmod part_gpt
insmod ext2
set root='hd0,gpt5'
loopback loop (hd0,gpt5)/ISO/KNX.iso
linux (loop)/boot/isolinux/linux64 bootfrom=/dev/sda5/ISO/KNX.iso mkimage screen=1440x900 desktop=icewm acpi_osi='!Windows 2015' i915.preliminary_hw_support=1
initrd (loop)/boot/isolinux/minirt.gz
}

1. This does boot, but it boots after a 5 or 10 second delay. What could I do to get it to boot faster? My guess is that what I need is a hybrid of the "Poor man's install" and the "ISO Install to HD"

2. I don't think the desktop=icewm option worked because the system looked to be running lxde. I would like to run Icewm if possible, but it's not critical.

3. The menus are all in German. I tried lang=us as suggested in the cheatcodes.txt but that was invalid. I didn't see lang=en as an option.

4. I used the mkimage option, but it doesn't ask about the persistence file. I would like to save any changes I make to a persistence file.

Can you help me resolve my 4 issues above, please

[fredvej]

AFAIK it is not possible to boot from ISO and have persistence, because the persistent image must reside in the Knoppix directory.

To make a bootable Knoppix do this:

1) boot from your ISO, adding the parameter
tohd=/dev/sda5
to the kernel parameters. This will copy the Knoppix files to /dev/sda5/KNOPPIX
I trust that you are familiar with booting GRUB and editing the boot commands with e and boot the edited command with F10
Is this what you call a poor man's install ?

While running Knoppix from the ISO:
2) mount the ISO file so that you can read from it:
sudo mount /mnt-iso/ISO/KNX.iso /mnt-user

3) copy the kernels and initrd to the Knoppix directory:
sudo cp -a /mnt-user/boot/isolinux/linux* /mnt-iso/KNOPPIX/
sudo cp -a /mnt-user/boot/isolinux/minirt.gz /mnt-iso/KNOPPIX/

Reboot to your normal linux distro

4) make an entry in your GRUB config:

menuentry "Knoppix64 7.7.1 from HD (on /dev/sda5)" {
insmod part_gpt
insmod ext2
set root='hd0,gpt5'
linux /KNOPPIX/linux64 knoppix_dir=/KNOPPIX lang=en screen=1440x900 desktop=icewm acpi_osi='!Windows 2015' i915.preliminary_hw_support=1
initrd /KNOPPIX/minirt.gz
}


5) boot Knoppix using GRUB entry, adding the parameter
mkimage
to the kernel parameters. This will activate the persistence image creation dialog during boot

Next time you boot Knoppix, the persistent image will contain your settings and alterations.

[thriftee]

AFAIK it is not possible to boot from ISO and have persistence, because the persistent image must reside in the Knoppix directory. To make a bootable Knoppix do this: 1) boot from your ISO, adding the parameter tohd=/dev/sda5 to the kernel parameters. This will copy the Knoppix files to /dev/sda5/KNOPPIX I trust that you are familiar with booting GRUB and editing the boot commands with e and boot the edited command with F10 Is this what you call a poor man's install ? While running Knoppix from the ISO: 2) mount the ISO file so that you can read from it: sudo mount /mnt-iso/ISO/KNX.iso /mnt-user 3) copy the kernels and initrd to the Knoppix directory: sudo cp -a /mnt-user/boot/isolinux/linux* /mnt-iso/KNOPPIX/ sudo cp -a /mnt-user/boot/isolinux/minirt.gz /mnt-iso/KNOPPIX/ Reboot to your normal linux distro 4) make an entry in your GRUB config: menuentry "Knoppix64 7.7.1 from HD (on /dev/sda5)" { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 set root='hd0,gpt5' linux /KNOPPIX/linux64 knoppix_dir=/KNOPPIX lang=en screen=1440x900 desktop=icewm acpi_osi='!Windows 2015' i915.preliminary_hw_support=1 initrd /KNOPPIX/minirt.gz } 5) boot Knoppix using GRUB entry, adding the parameter mkimage to the kernel parameters. This will activate the persistence image creation dialog during boot Next time you boot Knoppix, the persistent image will contain your settings and alterations.

Thanks, fredvej. That looks to have made progress. The only thing I never saw was any prompt for the persistence file. The 15 inch screen is almost impossible to read at 3840x2160, but it never paused that I could see. I tried a couple changes and reboot but they were lost. Any ideas how to run the mkimage and where to look for the persistence file?

[thriftee]

here is a video of it booting 4) make an entry in your GRUB config: menuentry "Knoppix64 7.7.1 from HD (on /dev/sda5)" { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 set root='hd0,gpt5' linux /KNOPPIX/linux64 knoppix_dir=/KNOPPIX lang=en screen=1440x900 desktop=icewm acpi_osi='!Windows 2015' i915.preliminary_hw_support=1 initrd /KNOPPIX/minirt.gz } 5) boot Knoppix using GRUB entry, adding the parameter mkimage to the kernel parameters. This will activate the persistence image creation dialog during boot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaWp...ature=youtu.be

[thriftee]

I got it fixed. I rebooted from the flashdrive with knoppix64 tohd=/dev/sda5 mkimage screen=1440x900 lang=en and that got it to prompt for the .img file size. I then changed a setting and rebooted without the flashdrive and it had saved the setting. Thanks for the help

[Capricorny]

If you want to track system changes for reproducing them, dpkg-query may be of help. Running it with the same parameters on fresh and completed install, saving the outputs, and taking the diff will give you a rather precise picture of what has happened. Because Debian package structure often changes between releases, you may not be able to do it exactly the same way next time, but you have good hints. If you use more than one persistent store, you can also obtain persistence between releases (Think for example Java/Tomcat or SQL Developer.)