When boot procedure stops-ways to solve the problem

Hallo experts here in knoppix.net! The boot procedure is certainly not a trivial matter even in normal HDD-Installations either we use Windows or Linux and a detailed knowledge will only be found when meeting IT-specialists.

Nevertheless.In May 2011 I started my first HDD-Installation with Knoppix 6.4.3 .Unfortunately this Installation only worked in a correct way for a limited number of PC-starts and then began to stop booting after hardware recignition and started shutdown. Klaus 2008 in the German knoppixforum gave me the advice to watch the meniu.lst in /grub and even more important the Xorg.0.log in /var/log.

The activated driver "nouveau" reported no screens found and so to me it was clear,that the problem was the failing cooperation of graphiccard and knoppix driver. I started a complete new Installation with changed cheat codes at the start of the Live-DVD (xmodule=nv, nomodeset) and this improved HDD-Installation works stable till the present day.

But i still had a HDD-clone from the unstable HDD-Installation with unsuitable cheat codes. No one will wonder that this clone crashed some weeks ago, when the harddisk came into action. Of course one could secure the data from /home of this crash candidate and start a time consuming new HDD-Installation with the new proper set of cheat codes.

Now both HDDs were were installed with Knoppix 6.4.3 on the same PC with the same Live- DVD. I started reasoning that it might be possible to consider the well working HDD as a "data collection" and to copy a number of relevant data for booting into the crash candidate- I copied the menu.lst from HDD-well to HDD-bad with a Live-DVD.This can easuly be done but was not sufficient to make the HDD-bad work well again.

Even the complete exchange of /boot brought no successs.. Now my question:

1)Makes the whole procedure sense at all?

2)Which further data, like config-lsts and so on .are relevant in this case and are to be ex- changed.?

I remember that there are similar ways with repairing CDs or DVDs to repair lost system data or damaged system .dlls in the Windows-world. Now here with Knoppix ,experimental software as Klaus Knopper says , I thought it might by wortwhile to make some experimental effort to get more experience with troubleshooting in the always new and surprising Knoppix-world!

Grateful for hints of any kind or reports to solve similar problems

radioamateur69

Nobody has answered you so far, it might be worthwhile to think about why..

Zeroth, if problems are only with graphics, you could try to run Knoppix without graphics. Check out the init runlevel stuff. You can do all necessary administrative tasks from the command line.

First, I think you illustrate why I personally try to avoid ordinary HDD installs of Knoppix as much as possible. Running it the ordinary way and making regular backups of the persistent storage (knoppix-data.img) is IMHO far easier and safer. Accessing knoppix-data.img outside of Knoppix is mostly a matter of simple loop-mounting (ignoring the unionfs markup).

Second, if you have booting problems with a PC (trouble getting anything to run) and want to access the hard disk, the Safe And Simple Way is to take the HDD out and mount it in an external (USB2 will usually work just fine) cabinet.

Third, driver problems are, generally, an upgrade indication. Not always, some times we have to downgrade, but my advice is that you try to attack this problem with 7.0.4. The nouveau stuff may have developed a lot since 6.4.3, I guess.