Knoppix 3.3 HDbased install problem.

Hello all,

I'm new to linux, and I like knoppix a lot! I am trying to do a hdbased install of knoppix to my hd so I can use the cd to boot and then have the hd install take over. Or have the xp boot.ini boot to the hd based install. I have a limited amount of space on my hard drive so can't do a full install yet until I get a new (larger) hd. Here's what I have and did. My config as follows on my laptop: 6 partitions- c:=FAT (200mb), d: thru g:=NTFS(4.5gb), j:=FAT32 (1.5gb) *note*:had to resize G: to 3 gb to make the J: partition for the hdbased install of Knoppix. I used qtparted to do this, and was successful. Booted cd and then copied the cd to J: using the instructions from the hdbased howto. Everything went ok, till I had problems with the lilo part. I don't want to install Lilo to be the boot manager on C:, but wouldn't mind if I could somehow get lilo written into boot.ini or use the cd to boot and then turn over to the hd. The kernel panics when I attempted the fromhd=/mnt/hda9 cheatcode when booting from the cd. It attempts to look for it from /mnt/hda1 instead and crashes. Is there a way to do this? If so, how?

Yes, there are several ways...
Here's (the) one to get the NT-Bootloader boot linux as well...
First, you need to boot up into linux.
(Knoppix works well for this.)
once running, issue these commands (as root):
# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 -o rw
# dd if=/dev/null of=/mnt/hda1/bootsect.lin count=1 bs=512

when you have already installed lilo into the partition-bootrecord
(/dev/hda9) you can now run:
# dd if=/dev/hda9 of=/mnt/hda1/bootsect.lin count=1 bs=512

now you can configure lilo to write it's bootblock to this file...
# boot=/dev/hda1/bootsect.lin
# root=/dev/hda9

All you need to do is now set up C:\boot.ini to include a line like:
C:\bootsect.lin="Linux"
# echo C:\bootsect.lin=Linux >> /mnt/hda1/boot.ini

You're done.

Hope this helps!

Well, I gave it a shot and it failed. Re-ran the hdbased steps again and when I got to the "lilo -C /mnt/hda9/boot/lilo.conf", it returned the following error: "Warning: partition type 0x0B on device 0x0309 is a dangerous place for a boot sector. A DOS/Windows/OS2 system may be rendered unbootable. The backup copy of this boot sector should be retained.
Proceed? [N/y]y
Fatal: Filesystem would be destroyed by LILO boot sector: /dev/hda9".

Still, I went ahead and used your commands, edited the boot.ini file and rebooted. That came up with a black screen with a blinking cursor in the left hand window. So, basically I think it's unable to create a lilo boot sector in /dev/hda9 so that I can boot into that. Any other ideas or clues to sort this out?

If this would help some more, here is what I have modified my lilo.conf file from /mnt/hda9/boot/:

lba32
boot=/dev/hda1/bootsect.lin
root=/dev/hda9
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
backup=/dev/null
map=/boot.map
timeout=100
vga=normal

default=Knoppix

image=/boot/vmlinuz
append="lang=us myconf=/mnt/hda9 home=/mnt/hda9 dma ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsci hdc=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsci hdg=scsi hdh=scsi vga=791 initrd=/boot/miniroot.gz quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix"
root=/dev/hda9
label=Knoppix
read-only

That's what I have it set to now. I hope that's correct as far as I can tell.

Simon,

Your tip helped a lot, but left out one thing I needed to do to get this working: I needed to chroot to /mnt/hda9 where knoppix was copied to and run lilo from there to get the bootloader installed in the partition and then run your commands. Too bad I figured this all out after finally giving up and resorting to a full hd install instead of a hdbased install. But that's ok, I'm learning and believe it or not, this is only my 7th day of working with Linux. :) :D I'm so used to working with MS, and if I didn't take to the command line like a duck to water, I would have just used the cd forever.

Sorted this out with a full install of the Knoppix distro. Thanks to all who helped out.