Dangerous Newbie

[Trevor]

Ack! I know just enough to be dangerous. This is my third time attempting linux in the past two years and the third time I have totally screwed up my Windows partition in the process.

That said, I have now finally gotten Knoppix to install on my hard-disc and dual boot! Unfortunatly, all those great things I loved about the CD edition are now gone :( No internet. No access to NTFS partition. No access to my Fat32 formatted USB2.0 exteral hard drive. The sad thing is that I know that Knoppix can do these things but I have no idea how to do it.

For example: I see on the site that someone has a technique for getting DHCP working
"There is a known problem installing Knoppix onto the hd and using dhcp. Go to /etc/network/interfaces and add the appropriate information by hand.

for those who want to know just added:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp"

But heck, I havn't used command line stuff since MSDOS and all the commands I am familier with work differently under Linux. Can anyone help me out. I really, REALLY want to get away from Windows and the power of the "apt-get" command convinced me to try a Debian dist over SUSE but I am really having a hard time of it.

Things were better when I had access to the LinuxTag forums but since they are down the english resources for Knoppix are pretty bare.

Trevor

[Trevor]

Ok, using KDE I found out how to get root access to the relevant files and edited as above to give me Internet access.

I then ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade

I then tried to install a couple programs such as synaptic but have been getting the following error for all of them:

debconf:unable to initialize frontend:Gnome
debconf:unable to load gnome - is libgnome-perl installed?
debconf: falling back to frontend:Dialog
Reading database ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libzvt2_1.4.2-8_i386.deb (--unpack(:
files list file for package 'icewm-common' is missing final newline
Errors were encountered while processing:
#same line as 3 above
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned and error code

Any tips?

Trevor

[Tech2k]

This is only a guess since I am on dialup and havent run apt-get upgrade but I am wondering it that command may have caused your problem by not upgrading some of the pkgs and leaving you broken?

I would try re-installing Knoppix to the hdd agian and just doing apt-get update and then apt-get install whatever.I have installed/remastered Knoppix many many times and never had a problem with apt-get install synaptic (after update) and then using synaptic to install almost anything from the 12,000+ pkgs in my default list.

I do know of some people that have upgraded things like gcc and broke their make tools.

[dphapsu]

This is slightly off topic but I suggest getting a large cup of coffee (or your favorite caffinated beverage) and going to http://rute.sourceforge.net.

dphapsu@bellsouth.net

Ack! I know just enough to be dangerous. This is my third time attempting linux in the past two years and the third time I have totally screwed up my Windows partition in the process.

That said, I have now finally gotten Knoppix to install on my hard-disc and dual boot! Unfortunatly, all those great things I loved about the CD edition are now gone No internet. No access to NTFS partition. No access to my Fat32 formatted USB2.0 exteral hard drive. The sad thing is that I know that Knoppix can do these things but I have no idea how to do it.

No more an idiot than a lot of people. I just did a hd install with the new english iso. Same results as you. I do know how to fix some of these, but, It's not critical enough to screw around with it. There is no reason why we should have to reinstall the NTFS or the network interface. These should transfer with the hd install.

For example: I see on the site that someone has a technique for getting DHCP working
"There is a known problem installing Knoppix onto the hd and using dhcp. Go to /etc/network/interfaces and add the appropriate information by hand.

for those who want to know just added:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp"

But heck, I havn't used command line stuff since MSDOS and all the commands I am familier with work differently under Linux. Can anyone help me out. I really, REALLY want to get away from Windows and the power of the "apt-get" command convinced me to try a Debian dist over SUSE but I am really having a hard time of it.

Things were better when I had access to the LinuxTag forums but since they are down the english resources for Knoppix are pretty bare.
Trevor

The "apt-get" command is supposed to be a better way of loading apps, but, neither it nor the rpm method really work as well as they need to. And, at least the command line in DOS, and, even OS/2 were familiar. I just gave up and reinstalled Mandrake. I keep trying to transition to a full time Linux desktop, Mandrake and Knoppix are great attempts at that, but, they all have 'fatal' flaws. Linux shows so much promise, but I'm beginning to believe that it's really smoke and mirrors as a desktop. Guess I'll just have to hope they continue to support W2K.