test drive knoppix without burning CD?

[tealeaf]

Let's say you run out of blank CDs after downloading a new iso and you have knoppix hd installed.
You can mount -t iso9660 and insmod cloop the new file.
But where do you go from there to trying it out???

[spurious]

This is called a "poor man's install". See: http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdBasedHowTo

Practically: after you mount your Knoppix ISO image copy the contents of to a partition (eg. hda2) that is around 800 MB in size.

Create a boot floppy from the KNOPPIX/boot.img (dd if=/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0). When you boot, use boot option fromhd=/dev/hda2

[Superstoned]

does anyone know wheter it is possible to upgrade/install software on a poorman's install?

tnx!

[tealeaf]

Can one avoid the tedium of copying 700MB?

[oscar]

does anyone know wheter it is possible to upgrade/install software on a poorman's install?

tnx!

no. it is much like running knoppix from cd.

[oscar]

Can one avoid the tedium of copying 700MB?

yes...why not? :roll:


There is something named wmware and virtualpc. They both are virtual computers capable of loading ISO images as they were real CDs

[tealeaf]

uh.. they don't come with the knoppix CD.
Anyway, surely would it be labour saving on the long run if one was to use a script perhaps to pivot_root from the present rootfs to the new /dev/cloop?

[tealeaf]

just got a new idea. How about a boot floppy that uses the iso straight as is? think about it, put the floppy in, a couple of lines of scripting to download the iso and restart the PC... :twisted: :D

[garyng]

Can one avoid the tedium of copying 700MB?

yes...why not? :roll:


There is something named wmware and virtualpc. They both are virtual computers capable of loading ISO images as they were real CDs

I have tried a 'poorman's HD install' without peeking into the ISO and grab the clooped file, sort of 'poorman's vmware'. The idea is to instead of the following sequence(which is what KNOPPIX used) :

mount /dev/cdrom or /dev/hd?? then search for the clooped file

do the following :

mount /dev/hd?? and search for the ISO image, once found loop mount that through /dev/loop? and search again for the clooped image under the loopmounted directory and the rest is the same as KNOPPIX.

To do this, one obviously needs to change the linuxrc as well as the miniroot(need loop.o there).

[tealeaf]

Thanks garyng

Your suggestion sounds quite logical and straightforward. I'll give it a go it this weekend.

[tealeaf]

I run into a little trouble:

DEVICE="/dev/hda2"
mountit ... o rw... /cdrom
# mkdir isn't available at this level, so create /cdrom/loop0 on /dev/hda2 beforehand
mount -t iso9660 -o loop /cdrom/KNOPPIX_V3.30-2003-11-02-EN.iso /cdrom/loop0

returns:

Mount unknown option loop ignored

how do you add -o loop support to mount at this level?

[garyng]

the mount(which is compiled into ash) comes with knoppix is quite limited.

you have to do the manual losetup but then there is no losetup in knoppix's miniroot.

I have grabbed busybox and compiled in all the necessary initial commands like mount, losetup, insmod etc and replace the ash used(and thankfully still keep the size comparable with it, so no grow in the floppy image size).

A few weeks ago, someone is so kind to host my version of miniroot but I believe it has gone now. If you have a place which allows me to upload, I can give you my modified version and hopefully all you need to do is to replace the modules(I have my own compiled kernel and drivers like cloop.o and loop.o is very picky, one cannot mix) in it. It also has booting multiple ISO/clooped scripts modifications done.

I have also made some modifications of how to handle the kernel modules in the linuxrc such that I can use one set of kernel(vmlinuz + modules) and still testing out different versions of KNOPPIX, kind of KNOPPIX with my own kernel build. In this way, I only need to rely on KNOPPIX for the package update. So every time a new version of KNOPPIX is out, I just download the ISO image and put it on my harddisk and boot straightly with a new GRUB entry.