HDD Install permission problems

[muhith]

Hello, I am new to Knoppix and got an external USB HDD to try and install Knoppix on for speed. Knoppix can see my HDD if I disconnect and reconnect my USB drive after reboot fine but cfdisk /media/sda1 keeps saying 'Opened for read-only - you have no permission to write'. So I try and change the permission on the properties of sda1 but it says it cannot write to RECYCLER (having deleted after booting system into XP) and now to SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION. Can somone tell me how to get started on this and partition my Drive. I also tried mount -o -rw, remount /media/sda1 and still cannot write.

[malaire]

Hello, I am new to Knoppix and got an external USB HDD to try and install Knoppix on for speed. Knoppix can see my HDD if I disconnect and reconnect my USB drive after reboot fine but cfdisk /media/sda1 keeps saying 'Opened for read-only - you have no permission to write'. So I try and change the permission on the properties of sda1 but it says it cannot write to RECYCLER (having deleted after booting system into XP) and now to SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION. Can somone tell me how to get started on this and partition my Drive. I also tried mount -o -rw, remount /media/sda1 and still cannot write.

To partition a drive, you don't try to mount it first.
And instead of cfdisk /media/sda1 use cfdisk /dev/sda (Note: use sda not sda1)

[muhith]

Mate, My Internal drive properties shows Device Node as /dev/hda2 and the external shows as /dev/sda1. Sorry can't understand why I need to use cfdisk /dev/sda? I don't want to mangle my internal drive. Thanks.

[malaire]

Mate, My Internal drive properties shows Device Node as /dev/hda2 and the external shows as /dev/sda1. Sorry can't understand why I need to use cfdisk /dev/sda? I don't want to mangle my internal drive. Thanks.

/dev/hda2 and /dev/sda1 are Device Nodes for those partitions.
/dev/hda is Device Node for the disk which contains /dev/hda2 partition.
/dev/sda is Device Node for the disk which contains /dev/sda1 partition.

I don't know about HDD install and can't help about that, but I do know that if you want to partition a disk, you need to use Device Node of the disk, not Device Node of the partition.

ps. There are also simpler partitioning-programs than cfdisk to use, such as GParted LiveCD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php. With that you don't need to fiddle with Device Nodes.

[muhith]

Thanks mate - that makes things a bit better. I am following some notes on 'Installing Linux on a USB External Drive'. All is going well except the part where I have to create a home directory via Configure-Create a persistent home directory. It prompts me for the size but the I never get a success prompt. I am guessing that this is not working and there is some permission problems since other commands via the Konsole using 'su' was working fine. Can anyone help here please? Anyway to create the home directory via the Konsole commands. Also using Konqueror I cannot seem to create a text file on /dev/sda1 for some permission drama. Thanks.

[muhith]

I have created 3 partitions on a 80GB USB HDD
sda1 (Primary Linux) 7Gb
sda2 (Primary w95 FAT32) 72Gb
sda3 (Primary Linux Swap) 1Gb

Formatted partitions
mke2fs -j /dev/sda1
mkdosfs -vF 32 /dev/sda2
mkswap /dev/sda3

Moved iso to USSB Drive
su
cp -av /media/sda2/Users/DL/Kanotix/KANOTIX-2006-Easter-RC4.ISO /media/sda1
sync

Tried creating persistent home dfirectory via Configure-Create a persistent directory but this did not work

Created unionrw.img
cd /media/sda1
dd if=/dev/zero of=unionrw.img bs=1M count=2000
make2fs -j unionrw.img

Made USB drive bootable
cp -av /cdrom/boot /media/sda1/
grub-install --root-directory=/media/sda1 /dev/sda

chmod 644 /media/sda1/boot/grub/menu.lst
mcedit /media/sda1/boot/grub/menu.lst

-- made some changes to grub menu
# my custom config for booting Kanotix from a USB external drive
title Boot Kanotix From USB External Drive
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off nomce quiet noprompt noeject bootusb2 fromiso=KANOTIX-2006-Easter-RC4.ISO unionrw=/dev/sda1/unionrw.img home=/dev/sda1/knoppix.img
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/miniroot.gz

Everything worked except the persistent home directory stuff. I cannot write to /dev/sda1 for some reason. When I boot enable USB and boot it sits with 'GRUB' in the corner of a black screen. When I boot with live CD and provide options 'bootusb2 fromiso=KANOTIX-2006-Easter-RC4.ISO' (hoping to read the ISO on USB HDD) it says 'Can't find KANOTIX filesystem, sorry Dropping to shell..'

Cannot understand what I am doing wrong also why the persistent home does not work- please help

[ockham23]

muhith,
you're spending a lot of time and effort on a project that doesn't make much sense to me. First of all, Kanotix is designed for hd install. This is the only way you can dist-upgrade and install the latest kernel. Secondly, it is much more convenient to put the iso file on the internal hard drive and use a separate partition or a thumb drive for your persistent home directory. You can either boot the computer off the LiveCD with cheat code "fromiso" or save grub to MBR. There's a section on this in the Kanotix FAQ, you can even put the unionrw directory inside your home directory so as to reduce the number of directories.
Finally, the partition on which the bootable iso file is located is mounted read only. So you need at least two partitions if you want to save data such as a persistent home directory.

[muhith]

I cannot get the "fromiso" to work or not having any luck putting Grup on the USB HDD. Also one partition of by USB drive was showing up as /media/sda1 before and now it shows up as /media/sdb1. Being a Windows person I cannot seem to understand this. Can someone please explain? THANKS.

[malaire]

I cannot get the "fromiso" to work or not having any luck putting Grup on the USB HDD.

I don't know about that.

Also one partition of by USB drive was showing up as /media/sda1 before and now it shows up as /media/sdb1. Being a Windows person I cannot seem to understand this. Can someone please explain? THANKS.

I've read about similar problem with 2 USB printers. Knoppix labels first printer it finds as "printer 1" and second one as "printer 2". But Knoppix doesn't allways find the printers in same order, so it's a bit random of which one is labeled "printer 1" and "printer 2".

So if you have something else in USB (like another USB drive, or USB stick or USB camera or something which can save data on it) you might have similar problem. Sometimes your USB HDD would be detected first, and it would get /dev/sda Device Node. Other times your something-else-on-USB would be detected first, and it would get /dev/sda Device Node, and your USB HDD would be detected second, and it would get /dev/sdb Device Node.

If this is your problem, then unfortunately I don't know how to "fix" this.

If you don't have anything else on the USB, then I can't explain this.

[rosen84]

under root acount
use command

remount /mnt/hda1 u=rwx