Knoppix VS MkLiveCD

I think that Knoppix is a top notch distro, Klaus has done the Linux community a wonderful favor by making it possible. I have DL'd most every Knoppix edition since I don't know when.

I have been messing around with the idea of moving my small home server to knoppix for a while now - just never had the where-with-all to do the remaster. I wanted a pretty basic system, IMAP, web server (for internal pages), DNS relay, DHCP and a proxy server. I wanted it on a CDROM so it couldn't get hosed. Too many times a crappy IDE HD has corrupted my system after running for a few months straight. With a CD based OS I could make multiple copies for safety and only worry about backing up the data.

I had a bit of a struggle with the concepts of the Knoppix remaster. I fought with getting X to start in the chroot'd environment using xnest. I hacked away to get services and packages straightened out. After a few false starts I was making good headway on it when I read a blurb about mklivecd [ http://www.linuxminicd.org/mklivecd/ ] here on the Knoppix board. Hmmm, I wanted to give this a try.

Using Vmware I installed the distro that I wanted to be my base (Mandrake 9.2) and then installed it again on a second (in the case of vmware - virtual) drive so that I had a base system with everything and a very limited "test" system with just the basics. I tweaked and removed as much as possible from the 'test" system then added what I wanted. In just a few days of picking around at it in my spare time I had exactly what I wanted. I rebooted to the "base" Mandrake and ran mklivecd - telling it the root was the second disk with the "test" system on it. I did it this way with the "base" system so that I could add a few apps from source on the base system (with stuff like kernel sources installed) using checkinstall and install the resultant RPM on the "test" system.

It ran. It ran well and had everything I wanted on it. It was so much easier to do it this way; build a disk based distro the way I wanted and then mklivecd it then remastering Knoppix.

Again, I love Knoppix. The way it performs and what it does is abolutely astounding.

Has anyone else played with mklivecd yet?

Have I tried the mkcd.... No not yet becuase Im still telling myself I can do it in knoppix :D

What I got so far is the installed version with....
2x10/100 internal/external and 1x54g (internal)
IPTABLES with nat masq on the internals

DHCP server/bind ... (almost qmail and IMP)
etc....
(oh and VPN tunneling but thats not for the Cd)

What im looking at is a server edition knoppix, designed to be run and installed to Hdd of course but for instance letting you set up anopther server with all the packages you need and preconfigured as far as possible.

Xinstalled But not started by default ....


Could also be used as a liveCD for those zero downtime operations....

IMHO and experience Mandrake is too quirky on hardware...
(and I know a lot about Mandrake) ....
Another reason not to use mandy is it is so non standard on the config tools now... since 9.2 linuxconf is 'banned' - No RPM's becuase it interferes with Mandy's own wizards...

The 3NIC setup I have now is impossible with the wizards and worse once you try it its a sod to get rid of....
Basically i think theyve played with the noobie usability to the point where server tasks are just too much work...

Just my 2c....
If your interested, its meant to be kinda like the SME server (now esmith) except with NFS and Webmin....