Is Knoppix What I Am Looking For?

I have an 80 Gig external USB drive and want to set up a full guest OS on it so I can utilize my drive elsewhere without actually intruding on someone else's machine except for utilizing their hardware. I run into difficulty with a regular install of any OS because it sets up according to the hardware I initially installed the OS on. Naturally, elsewhere, hardware will be different. I need a situation where I have a full OS install to the USB drive, such as Debian, but it also needs to detect and utilize whatever hardware I am hooked up to, in the manner the Knoppix Live CD does.

Basically, I guess what I am saying is that I need something to run like a normal install of Debian or Fedora does but with the ability to detect and configure hardware at boot up like a Live CD does. Is it possible?

After more search, investigating and reading I sense Knoppix is what I am looking for. I am going to test drive the HD Knoppix and Beginner installs and see which one best suits my needs. After doing some reading I am of the assumption that the HD Debian install doesn't fit my requirements.

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Originally Posted by Trapper

After more search, investigating and reading I sense Knoppix is what I am looking for. I am going to test drive the HD Knoppix and Beginner installs and see which one best suits my needs. After doing some reading I am of the assumption that the HD Debian install doesn't fit my requirements.

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If you want a portable OS to test on different machines and hardware, then you just carry the knoppix cd around with you.
If you need to copy files from the host system then you also need a usb memory stick or take your external hard drive with you. If you use a usb caddy for your hard drive
then the drive will be available to read and write from just like a memory stick.

Many machines have problems booting from a USB flash drive (even when the BIOS does have a boot from UBS option, which many older systems lack). So Hal's advice to carry the CD is likely the best advice. If you do insist on trying to use a flash drive to boot, it can be done with Knoppix on computers that properly support it. Puppy Linux and DSL are also good candidates, and one of these has utilities that configure the flash drive very cleanly (ok, I forget which one of these it is, but both are worth a look).

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If you do insist on trying to use a flash drive to boot, it can be done with Knoppix on computers that properly support it. Puppy Linux and DSL are also good candidates, and one of these has utilities that configure the flash drive very cleanly

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I already have DSL booting on a usb drive. I am using it right now. I agree with both of you concerning usb boot difficulties. My external usb drive is actually a laptop drive in a usb case. At bootup its registeration is slow and the boot process just passes it by and doesn't consider it to be a bootable option even though the bios supports it, because of the registeration lag. The work-around with DSL is quite simple. Just make a boot floppy and boot from it. When the prompt comes up just type in "dsl fromusb". The same goes if using the DSL CD. Both will wait extra time until the usb drive is active and then boot from it.

I "assumed" I'd be able to accomplish the same with Knoppix. I could not get a boot in either the Beginner or Knoppix hard drive installs. In the beginner, if I tried to boot the usb via the cdrom it simply failed to find the drive. In the Knoppix install it failed and indicated it could not find /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX. To boot I used the lines "knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda1" "knoppix bootfrom=/dev/sda1" "knoppix fromhd" and "knoppix fromusb" Couldn't get anything to boot the usb drive and haven't been able to determine any line to get it to boot.

Uniquely, when knoppix fails to boot off the usb drive and continues on with a cd boot, if I reboot the box while it's in the process of that the usb drive boots on restart. Then I run into a huge problem. I've run into it 3 times now. If I try to do anything as root it fails because the root password is rejected. Trust me, I did not give the incorrect password on 3 different hard drive installs.

If I am not mistaken, booting from USB is *not* supported by stock knoppix. You need Gilles' alternate initrd for that. Since knoppix is starting to feel a little long in the tooth wrt current debian/sid, you might want to give sidux a look.

Also when you want your linux to be able to boot on most machines, you want HW detection on every boot, hence a so-called "poor man installation" makes sense (either directly from ISO or a KNOPPIX directory). I'd advise a partition to hold that (1G should be enough, unless you want to keep several releases around or play with the DVD version), then another to hold your persistent data...