How to make HD install behave like Knoppix

With the latest 2-16 version out my laptops wireless card is working!.... Can't tell you how tickled I am now that I can use my laptop over my wireless home network. Everything seems to be working the external 40 GB harddrive with all its partitions is recognized even with my memory stick plugged in. Getting very excited now. Finally did a harddrive install to really get my hands dirty. After a bit of playing I got a nice clean install to the HD but its not quite as nice as the live CD. The network card isn't loaded and I can't see my external usb drive. Any hints\tips for this noobie? I'd really like to get the wireless working first so I don't have to keep rebooting to live cd look for help on the web. :wink:

Run 'netcardconfig' and 'wlcardconfig'(IIRC as root).

I always have to run 'netcardconfig' (refusing DHCP, then accepting all defaults) before I can run 'wlcardconfig'. I then run 'netcardconfig' again, this time saying yes to DHCP so all lan parameters are configured automatically.

HTH

edit - corrected 'wlanconfig' to 'wlcardconfig'

Yep,
What you need to do is edit the modules.conf (or more accurately the file that modules.conf is generated from) and then run update-modules

This loads the modules when you boot instead of having to keep running the netcardconfig.

Then you need to set the wlan stuff more permanently, I think this might be best achieved from the knoppix.sh !

@Gowator

Can you give a bit more detail - this (automatically configuring my wireless PCMCIA card at boot) is something I've wanted to fix for a while, but haven't had the time to look into...

The modules.conf stuff is if the modules needed for the card (orinoco_cs for me IIRC) don't load at boot, and is an alternative to doing 'modprobe'? This part is currently working for me :)) (although I'm interested in learning how modules are loaded at boot time, and how to get/stop a module from loading by editing modules.conf).

As for setting the parameters, are you saying that the best way to configure network and wireless parameters in using a script that I place in /etc/init.d/, creating a symbolic link to it in /etc/rc2.d/?

Hey,
I'm pretty new to knoppix and debian so whatever I tell you theirs likely to be a better way. (Dont want to be the blind leading the blind!)

Im at work and I don't have a knoppix Cd at the moment ...
(stephen actually answered this question for me which is why I know.)

If you "man update-modules" it tells you the name of the file that is used in deb to make the modules.conf.

(In RH based systems this doesn't exist)
the Deb way is way better...but its new to me.

What I did is do a lsmod BEFORE i got it working. (i.e. lsmod > modules.before)
Then use the netcardconfig - this is really smart and if it finds a wifi card it automatically starts wlcardconfig. (I was VERY IMPRESSED by this!)

Presuming it all works you can go ahead and do another lsmod (lsmod>modules.after) then find all the modules that were loaded.

Then work out and they go in the file which is refered to by man update-modules

Then you run update-modules and it rebuilds it and next time you start up you'll have the modules loaded.

If you wanna auto set the Wifi params then a simple shell script... (the exact commands escape me right now so this is just an example)
#!/usr/bin/bash
# set the wlan stuff for bootup
wlanconfig eth0 essid = "mywifi"
wlanconfig eth0 channel = "11"
wlanconfig eth0 ..... etc

stick this in /etc/init.d and call it something like setwlan
then in rc3.d (depending where you wanna start it) create a symlink
S80setwlan -> ../init.d/setwlan (use ln -s)
repeat in rc4.d and rc5.d

S80 is a guess, it needs to be AFTER networking....i.e a bigger number else eth0 won't exist!

If I remember you also need to create an alias in the modules
something like
alias eth0 <name of driver>

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gowator

stick this in /etc/init.d and call it something like setwlan
then in rc3.d (depending where you wanna start it) create a symlink
S80setwlan -> ../init.d/setwlan (use ln -s)
repeat in rc4.d and rc5.d

S80 is a guess, it needs to be AFTER networking....i.e a bigger number else eth0 won't exist!

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Easier method as root

Code:

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update-rc.d setwlan start 80 2 3 4 5 . stop 80 0 1 6 .

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This will set up the links for you automatically using the Debian way to do it, if you use -n (update-rc.d -n setwlan ....) in the line then you can simulate the action before doing it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NitroCrzy

With the latest 2-16 version out my laptops wireless card is working!.... Can't tell you how tickled I am now that I can use my laptop over my wireless home network. Everything seems to be working the external 40 GB harddrive with all its partitions is recognized even with my memory stick plugged in. Getting very excited now. Finally did a harddrive install to really get my hands dirty. After a bit of playing I got a nice clean install to the HD but its not quite as nice as the live CD. The network card isn't loaded and I can't see my external usb drive. Any hints\tips for this noobie? I'd really like to get the wireless working first so I don't have to keep rebooting to live cd look for help on the web. :wink:

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With knoppix-installer there are two ways to install in HD
The Knoppix mode
The "old" Debian mode

If you choose Knoppix mode it is much like running linux from live-cd
If you choose Debian mode, then your installation is a normal linux instalation.