Pivot Root Install


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Pivot Root Install

This is an alternative installation technique that overcomes limitations of the Poor Mans Install and a regular hard drive install. You can have a complete system on your drive (you can use apt-get to update it, etc.), plus it can be on a drive that is not bootable (such as an external drive connected via a usb2 or firewire card). You can swap your drive to any other computer and still boot to your system using the Knoppix CD.

What you basically do is boot up with the CD and then use pivot_root to load up your hard-drive based system.

The downsides are that you still need to use the Knoppix CD to boot up, and you have to type some commands by hand to start up your system. Hopefully we can create a script to automate this in the future.

Instructions are based on this forum thread

Post there if you have any problems or suggestions.

Step 1

Do a regular hard drive install (see Hd Install HowTo) wherever you want to install it.

Basically you just type "sudo knoppix-installer" from the terminal command line and follow the instructions.

Do not install a boot loader to your MBR if you installed to a non-bootable drive or partition.

Step 2

Start you computer with the Knoppix CD. Then type these commands: (replace "/dev/sda7" with the location of your installed system)

knoppix26 single (at boot prompt, or just "knoppix single" for 2.4 kernel)
sudo -s
mkdir /mnt/new_root
mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/new_root
mkdir /mnt/newroot/mnt/old_root (only necessary 1st time)
cd /mnt/new_root
pivot_root . /mnt/newroot/mnt/old_root
mount /proc /proc -t proc
init 5