Am I using home and myconfig wrong?

This hasn't been a hassle at all for me. I'm learning more about the persistent home and KDE as I go along as well. As you will see below, I've applied some of my unix knowledge (mostly command-line stuff) to this situation.

I get some errors on boot-up as well, right after my persistent home dir is detected, Some inode errors - I'll have to figure out what those mean. The next time I boot, I should print them out, and then google on the error message.

As for the problem with office and space, I guess it would depend on how much you've added to your persistent home and config. I believe I know how to determine how much space you are using! There is a command-line command called
du for disk usage.

Click the K icon, System -> Shells -> Bash. This will start up a terminal screen using Bash (Bourne Again SHell). Enter the following command.
du -bc /home/knoppix

The last line gives the number of bytes your home directory uses. Mine is currently ~ 70M, giving me about 30M left to play with.

If you pipe the above through a pipe, as below:
du -bc /home/knoppix | less

the (massive) output will pause at each screenful, so you can actually see what your disk hogs are.

cheers!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ndb

This hasn't been a hassle at all for me. I'm learning more about the persistent home and KDE as I go along as well. As you will see below, I've applied some of my unix knowledge (mostly command-line stuff) to this situation.

---

I'm actually using Knoppix to install Gentoo at the moment. ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ndb

I get some errors on boot-up as well, right after my persistent home dir is detected, Some inode errors - I'll have to figure out what those mean. The next time I boot, I should print them out, and then google on the error message.

---

If you figure out where these are logged, please lemme know...

In the next two quotes, I rearranged some of your stuff:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ndb

There is a command-line command called
du for disk usage.

du -bc /home/knoppix

The last line gives the number of bytes your home directory uses.

If you pipe the above through a pipe, as below:
du -bc /home/knoppix | less

the (massive) output will pause at each screenful, so you can actually see what your disk hogs are.

---

Have you tried either of:

Code:

---

du -s ~/*    # or
du ~ | sort -n

---

:D
Also, in this case, you might be better of using

Code:

---

df -h

---

and look for the size of KNOPPIX.IMG.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ndb

As for the problem with office and space, I guess it would depend on how much you've added to your persistent home and config.

Mine is currently ~ 70M, giving me about 30M left to play with.

---

I naively :roll: thought that 50MB would have been enough for the whole home. I do not keep any data files in the home, and I do not intend to install any additional software. I guess I was wrong ...
I'll increase the size of the home, and see how that turns out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SiKing

I'm actually using Knoppix to install Gentoo at the moment. ;)

Have you tried either of:

Code:

---

du -s ~/*    # or
du ~ | sort -n

---

:D
Also, in this case, you might be better of using

Code:

---

df -h

---

and look for the size of KNOPPIX.IMG.

.

---

I tried this:

Code:

---

du -bs ~/* ~/.[a-z]* | sort -rn

---

This shows the hidden directories (beginning with . ) as well.
I am so far solidly stumped on the inode errors. The USB drive was not cleanly unmounted previously, supposedly. I tried syncing and then unmounting, as root. The device is busy, so I couldn't do that. I also tried dosfsck, for FAT partitions. I'm half-tempted to blow my persistent home away and start over, just to see what happens, but I still won't know what caused the problem in the first place.

I will be googling on persistent and dosfsck now. I can be rather stubborn :lol:

I have found one trick that may work to resize a persistent home directory, while keeping the contents. IF you have a large enough knoppix-writeable partition, you can copy your home to there. Then, reboot, without the home cheat, and recreate your partition at the desired size. For some reason, knoppix didn't recognize my second USB drive, so I copied a few things to a diskette. Recreating the partition, I got rid of the inode errors, although they popped up again, a couple of boots later. The documentation page also has a set of articles on bugs for each version of knoppix. I didn't see anything that helps me though.

Just in case anyone is still reading this, I have an update. :roll:

The size of the home directory was in fact the root of all my problems. I resized it today, and all the problems went away. The only question, which I will probably never be able to answer, is: if I was not keeping anything in my home, what the hell was taking up more than 50MB of space? :?

I have also had some time today to play around with the home= and myconfig= cheatcodes. I still do not understand exactly how these two cheatcodes work and how they interact, but here are my observations:
- There seems to be a lot of overlap in what is stored by both, including most (but not all) system settings, most KDE settings (I have customized the look extensively), most (but not all) things stored on the Desktop, application settings that are stored in your home that are not dot-files (OOo is in ~/office for example, and it is stored in both)
- home does not store the screen settings (cheatcodes screen, *sync, probably others?)
- home does not store the timezone settings (cheatcode tz)
- myconfig does not store links on the desktop (maybe others?)
- myconfig does not store "Set date time automatically" checkbox in the Adjust Date & Time configuration

Actually, the "Set date time automatically" checkbox and a link on the desktop I was able to get only by having both home=scan and myconfig=scan cheatcodes and when the screen comes up asking you if you really want to use the persistent home, there is an option "Overwrite / Update stored system configuration" that is not selected by default - you must turn this option on in order to get these two things.

I have not played with installing any additional software. Other than that, I see only one benefit to having a persistent home over the configuration file, and that is that it is self-updating - anything that I change in any of the documents on my desktop, I have to remember to re-save the configuration before exiting. If I keep all my documents on one of the hard disk partitions, which I do, then the extra overhead of the gigantic home image is probably no longer worth this minor convenience of not having to remember to save things before exiting. Using removable media (such as USB stick) is a completely different story! Am I wrong?

If I eve get the time, I would like to explore exactly what the differences are between what is stored by the two. Unfortunately I do not have the time right now. Or is there such a document already?

I have similar problems and questions after moving from Knoppix 3.4 to 5.1.1 (just found this thread)

Someone suggested:

Code:

---

dmesg

---

when I asked about logging the boot process. I got lots of boot related stuff, but not the text that scrolls by while booting happens.

I'm curious about the overwrite/update option, too. Overwrite seems scary compared to update. Did you loose anything?

The group of messages after the multiple choice window said:
' .../knoppix.img is probably an old version of "Knoppix persistent home directory." You should create a new one soon.'

I tried that from the Knoppix toolbar menu and got a message about finding no suitable partitions, although there are two vfat partitions with lots of space and it seems to read configuration information from saving configs and home. Does overwrite/update "create a new one?"

I could create a new persistent home when I let the multiple choice window run out, though (Knoppix without persistent files).

TIA[/code]

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

I'm curious about the overwrite/update option, too. Overwrite seems scary compared to update. Did you loose anything?

---

I have not investigated this yet, but I plan to. It's on my to-do list. :wink:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

The group of messages after the multiple choice window said:
' .../knoppix.img is probably an old version of "Knoppix persistent home directory." You should create a new one soon.'

---

Yes, I have seen this as well. I personally suspect this to be a bug. :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

I tried that from the Knoppix toolbar menu and got a message about finding no suitable partitions, although there are two vfat partitions with lots of space and it seems to read configuration information from saving configs and home. Does overwrite/update "create a new one?"

---

Not sure what you're asking. Either creating a configuration or creating a persistent home, should never touch your partitioning. Both of these options create new files on an existing partition of your choice.

I am still investigating (perhaps too much?) what the myconfig a persistent home cheats do exactly. If / when I get the time, I was going to write like a wiki page about it or sumtin'. If anyone is interested in contributing, I could start something now ...

Siking,

Thanks for getting back.

The error message said that no "suitable" partitions were found, without saying what was unsuitable about those it did find.

I suppose suitability depends no format and empty space, but there are two vfat partions with way more than enough space for the configuration files I was trying to save. That's the only reason I mentioned partitions; my main concern was the opaque error message.

As to figuring out what was going on, I'd be glad to help but I'm a Linux/Knoppix newbie. Can you lay out the outline of a research program?

Thanks again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

The error message said that no "suitable" partitions were found, without saying what was unsuitable about those it did find.

---

Have a look at "cat /etc/fstab" and "mount -l". See if those look right. Both of these have extensive man and info pages.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

I suppose suitability depends no format and empty space, but there are two vfat partions with way more than enough space for the configuration files I was trying to save.

---

I just tried to save a persistent home to an NTFS partition. It did warn me like three times that it might not be a good idea, but it did work. I am almost certain that plain vfat is perfectly fine! The problem will certainly not be with space, that check comes after you tell it where to create the persistent home. The problem must be somewhere else..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

That's the only reason I mentioned partitions; my main concern was the opaque error message.

---

Welcome to UNIX, let me introduce you to Google. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

As to figuring out what was going on, I'd be glad to help but I'm a Linux/Knoppix newbie. Can you lay out the outline of a research program?

---

Lots of trial-and-error, searching with Google, and asking "stupid" questions. It would also help if you were familiar with some of the UNIX-standard tools: start with some bash book from your local library (Learning the bash shell is a good one), which will lead you to other stuff. Then move on to some of the UNIX internals: no better training that I know of then trying to manually install Gentoo! :twisted:

After a bracing visit to the shores of Lake Ontario...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SiKing

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

The error message said that no "suitable" partitions were found, without saying what was unsuitable about those it did find.

---

Have a look at "cat /etc/fstab" and "mount -l". See if those look right. Both of these have extensive man and info pages.

Thanks, I will ... tomorrow!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

I suppose suitability depends no format and empty space, but there are two vfat partions with way more than enough space for the configuration files I was trying to save.

---

I just tried to save a persistent home to an NTFS partition. It did warn me like three times that it might not be a good idea, but it did work. I am almost certain that plain vfat is perfectly fine! The problem will certainly not be with space, that check comes after you tell it where to create the persistent home. The problem must be somewhere else..

I didn't even TRY to save to the NFS partitions! The warnings about trying to do something like that are way to strong.

I figured that part out, though. Turns out, the change from 3.4 to 5.1.1 made the image, etc. files incompatible. The saves went fine after I moved the old 3.4 images to the other vfat partition. No problem with that (at least) since then. The error message was way unhelpful, but that seems par for the course, regardless of hardware (CDC and IBM big iron, lots of pcs, os, ap, etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

That's the only reason I mentioned partitions; my main concern was the opaque error message.

---

Welcome to UNIX, let me introduce you to Google. :D

Oh, yeah -- nothing like similar sounding questions that dribble off to nothing or get solved off line. That's why I try to say "Thanks!" two or three times when someone replies. I did say "Thanks," didn't I?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HatGuy

As to figuring out what was going on, I'd be glad to help but I'm a Linux/Knoppix newbie. Can you lay out the outline of a research program?

---

Lots of trial-and-error, searching with Google, and asking "stupid" questions. It would also help if you were familiar with some of the UNIX-standard tools: start with some bash book from your local library (Learning the bash shell is a good one), which will lead you to other stuff. Then move on to some of the UNIX internals: no better training that I know of then trying to manually install Gentoo! :twisted:

---

Linux is new, but not my first os transition, so I'm pretty good pals with ol' trialnerror. That started for real when I got to "see what I could do" with a Tektronix graphics terminal (no manual) in the fall of '75, severely aggravated by several years of FORTRAN punch cards after that:

Me: "It says here," pointing to the man page, "that this statement does that. I did it, see, and look what I got!"

Back hall tech (the help desk undergrads waved my buddies and me off by then): "Oh, yeah. That doesn't work."

I didn't even say "But, but, ..." after the first time!

I even did about 15 weeks of (shudder) cobol.

I'm keeping better notes this time, so maybe I won't get into this mess again, and maybe I'll be able to contribute something to a HOWTO.

Thanks again!

HatGuy

PS: I see I wrote inside your quotes; oops. I've never had much luck with non-text email. More trialnerror, I guess! HG