Got Knoppix 5.0.1 successfully booting from USB key

Hi,

I mean you have to change read/write mode on mounted device [you know right click icon on desktop]

used

Code:

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mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 255 63

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so as you say its just under 8gb [fat16]

Code:

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sdd4        Boot        Primary  FAT16                            7994.98

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Was not my intension to put knoppix on it was more for backup for my laptop ... but as your how to states you need a 1gb or more

Knoppix dvd emmm it would take forever to copy over to key ;-)

Have ordered a 1gb drive so may put 5.1.1 [cd] on that

One thing that I could not get on there was persistent home it ran up to 96% then stopped maybe I could do it from cd & put it on usbdrive

Think lang=<foo> has to go on end of line but I'll check that not sure if its gb or uk lol anyway not a problem

As you say usb booting is hit and miss some machines it works other well nothing I know my old system never worked at all, been running usb knoppix on my laptop no problem ... not tried my desktop yet

Something others may like to try [if not already been said!] is stick a hard drive in an external enclosure small old drives are cheap and easy to pick up, enclosures are not that expensive. Always handy to have for backup ;-)

If you need any testing, output or just a beer let me know

MrG

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrGreen

Hi,

I mean you have to change read/write mode on mounted device [you know right click icon on desktop]

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Ah. Is that just after you finish installing Knoppix to your USB key, and then boot up into Knoppix, but before you create your persistent home dir? If so, then that's what the bind mount commands are doing, in the guide, under the "Make the USB key writeable" section.

I didn't know there was also a way to do it from the desktop :)

Quote:

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so as you say its just under 8gb [fat16]

Code:

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sdd4        Boot        Primary  FAT16                            7994.98

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Wow, I'd be careful with that.

FAT16 maxes out at 2GB, normally.

Windows NT has a variant of FAT16 that uses 64K clusters, so FAT16 created under Windows NT maxes out at 4GB. This variant is unreadable on DOS and Windows 9X (95, 98, ME), though, so it is not recommended.

I don't know anything at all that would work with FAT16 at 8GB. Maybe Linux could do it, but it wouldn't be compatible with Windows at all. If you don't mind losing Windows compatibility, you'd be better off with a native Linux filesystem such as EXT3FS.

I'd try FAT32 instead. Add the -F option to your mkdiskimage command.

Quote:

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One thing that I could not get on there was persistent home it ran up to 96% then stopped maybe I could do it from cd & put it on usbdrive

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That may be an indication of something going wrong with FAT16 being used on a disk that is way too large for it.

Quote:

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Something others may like to try [if not already been said!] is stick a hard drive in an external enclosure small old drives are cheap and easy to pick up, enclosures are not that expensive. Always handy to have for backup ;-)

If you need any testing output or just a beer let me know

MrG

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Thanks! I could use a beer :)

I have a USB hard drive enclosure myself, 320GB. I'm just using it for data files now, but am thinking about throwing Knoppix on it :)

Its more when you transfer files to usb_drive you cannot copy to device unless you change read/write mode [right click icon on desktop]

Yeah I think now that you have explained it FAT16 on my drive is not a good idea but I was too eager to try it out [my excuse!] I do not use windows here so for me ext3 would be more than good enough

No problem I will try the -F option [fat32] now that I know it works ;-)

Wondering if copying iso image to [normal linux system] then copying over to usb_drive would be much quicker [mount -o loop knoppix.iso /mnt/<point>] ?

Come to think of it I added dma but its not that much quicker so maybe the file system is slowing it done [cannot be sure!]

Would explain persistent home problem [largest I got was a couple of hundred mbs]

I will retry with fat32 [cd] if that feels or runs better than maybe I will try dvd version thats crazy lol

Thanks again for your help

MrG

Hi there,
I luv the idea of having a portable operating system.
Followed the instruction and have my 1Gb USB drive booting up.
My PC requires I physically remove and reinsert the card each time between boots for some reason but no problem.

I do have one question......
I can not seem to make the sda4 writable, I tried the instructions from the tutorial (mount -o remount,rw /cdrom : mount --bind /cdrom media/sda4)
and also tried the right click and change permissions.
It appears the drive needs to be unmounted and remounted......of course the OS will not unmount while its running from the USB key.

Any suggestions?? Did I miss something???

I would like to install programs ect and have them there next time I boot........

Thanks

Assume you ran commands as root ... ?

Yes seems to be the case, I ran the Create a persistant disk image util but still seems to be using ram..........
everything is running well but I need to save changes ect

Setting up persistant home did take quite a long time but it worked... I will check sda4 myself [just to be sure it works!]

ok went through the steps againthe mount -o remount,rw /cdrom ect andsetting up the persistant home. only (20M hope thats enough)
Everything appeared the same, when I boot now I get some options and I change the setting from Cancel to Ok and I now seem to have a constant home directory.
Maybe it loaded past this and I was not watching before???

Maybe a stupid question but what is the best option to select just the default?? any way to make this automatic??
Will try and save some favorites, install some apps and see what happens on a reboot............

Just checked and commands worked ... persistent home is there and loaded [home=scan]

Ok, I have got a 1gb pendrive loaded with Knoppix 5.1.1 usb booting persistent home [256mb] ;-)

I have been following your very clear instructions but I've got stuck at

syslinux -s /dev/sda4


I get the following response

/dev/sda4: No such file or directory

Even though when I look at it in fdisk I get the following:

Disk /dev/sda: 1023 MB, 1023672320 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 976 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda4 * 1 976 999408 6 FAT16


Any ideas where I could have gone wrong? I am using Knoppix 5.1.1 on an IBM T40 Thinkpad

you checked in /dev that sda4 is there? although its odd that fdisk would pick it up

check the next steps to see if ldlinux.sys is there....

presume device is writeable

HTH

Thanks for the reply. That's interesting - I'm quite new to Linux and didn't think of checking there, and I found that there was an sda and an sda1 but no sda4! If I put /dev/sda4 I get the message that the folder doesn't exist.

How come fdisk and cfdisk come to that both list sda4 and fdisk labels it /dev/sda4 ? Seems a bit of a contradiction. Any idea how this could come about? Could there be a bug in Knoppix 5.1.1?

So I used the instructions in http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/08...-memory-stick/ to put knoppix onto the partition previously created (using windows), however it would be helpful if you could include the procedure for running in root ie setting the knoppix root password and then opening a root shell in order to make the usb writeable - and be able to make the changes to the syslinux.cfg file you suggest.

So I used the instructions in http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2006/08...-memory-stick/ to put knoppix onto the partition previously created (using windows), however it would be helpful if you could include the procedure for running in root ie setting the knoppix root password and then opening a root shell in order to make the usb writeable - and be able to make the changes to the syslinux.cfg file you suggest.

Quick question I would like to update usb drive to 5.1.1 [Beryl!] do I just need the Knoppix dir ?

Hello,

I am trying to get knoppix 5 on my mini-cruzer 1Gb Usb flash drive.

I followed the steps precisely. The drive now boots, it gets passed the boot screen, and the minirt loads. When the screen clears it then hangs on the line

Looking for CD in /dev/sda1

I believe all the files are in sda4. I tried a couple of the cheat codes like boot, bootfrom hd and hdfrom and had them all point to /dev/sda4/. Unfortunately none of these options worked.

Does anyone have any idea what I can do?

Thanks.

Cannot be certain but I think you may have missed a step or used sda1 by mistake...

Please try it again see what happens ....


HTH

What is the advantage to doing all steps mentioned in previous posts compared to just running this command?

Code:

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mkbootdev

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I clicked through a couple screens and then I had a bootable thumb drive.

Hi, I got Kaella 3.1 beta1 (french translation of knoppix 5.1.1) booting on a usb key using the brilliant howto mentioned in this topic. I got the portable home directory as well. The only thing is, Kaella would'nt detect my hard drives correctly now. The symptoms are similar, if not identical, to this post (cdrom mounted twice, in particular).

Any idea, somebody ?

Thanks

Philippe

FYI for large thumb drive users.

I used mkbootdev on a 16GB Corsair Voyager flash drive with FAT32. It booted fine on a Dell Latitude D620. I then tried it on a Dell Inspiron 9100, but it didn't work. The first screen came up where you can do boot options, but it would not take any keyboard input; appeared to be locked up.

Hello Everyone,
I just thought I would update everyone on my findings just in case any others could benefit. I posted a few months ago trying to get my 1GB flash drive to boot Knoppix 5.0 on my computer, but to no avail. I recently bought a new laptop, and was going to see if I would get any different results with Knoppix USB booting, but didn't get the chance for quite sometime. I actually was using the USB stick in Windows for a while and had to reboot, and was SHOCKED when suddenly Knoppix popped up onto my screen. This new computer has a USB setting called "Usb HDD" or something like that, and it worked perfectly. The only hitch I've had in the "Usb Knoppix booting" scene is making the USB flash drive writeable. I've followed the directions, but they didn't seem to help. I'd be glad to hear some advice about this subject. Also, is it possible to Update to Knoppix 5.1 rather than re-installing? Thanks for the help everyone!

Yes, you can use Knoppix 5.1. I just set uip a 1Gb drive with mkdiskimage -F -4 /dev/sdz and it worked fine.

Tested on a Dell Gx850 (sata only) no problems. :D

Hi again. I have done some experimentation with large USB key, and found a sequence of commands that seems to work for USB devices bigger than 8GB (such as hard disks).

I updated the article with various mkdiskimage command lines to try, depending on the size of your USB key.

Code:

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mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 64 32

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This is the "easy" one, fully USB-ZIP compliant, for 1GB.
FAT16, fourth partition, 64 heads, 32 sectors.

Code:

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mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 128 32

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This is for between 1GB and 2GB. It's the same thing, except the number of heads has been bumped up to 128, to double it. Still nice even numbers, though. Not USB-ZIP compliant, but I'm hoping that this is still close enough to work.

Code:

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mkdiskimage -F -4 /dev/sdz 0 255 63

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This is for between 2GB and 8GB. FAT16 maxes out at 2GB, so we must now use FAT32. Also setting heads and sectors to the maximum allowed values, which seems to be good enough for USB-HDD. I could squeeze in a little bit more by using 256 heads, but it seems that 255 heads is better preferred (old DOS and BIOS versions had problems "rolling over" at 256 heads).

Code:

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mkdiskimage -F -4 /dev/sdz 1 255 63
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdz bs=1 seek=446 count=64
echo -e ',0\n,0\n,0\n,,C,*' | sfdisk /dev/sdz
mkdosfs /dev/sdz4

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Here's the fun one! This is for bigger than 8GB. The mkdiskimage script crashes out when the number of cylinders goes beyond what could possibly fit, but I still wanted to use mkdiskimage to lay down the MBR and partition table on the disk. So, mkdiskimage is used here to make a dummy small 1MB partition. Then, the partition table is manually blanked, so that sfdisk has a clean slate to work with. The sfdisk program can correctly see the entire disk and it sizes the partition correctly. It then needs to be formatted, which mkdiskimage automatically does but sfdisk doesn't, so finally, the mkdosfs program is used to do the FAT32 format.

I tested this and it worked on a 320GB USB hard disk, which was big enough for me. This technique should be good for all devices up to 2TB in size, at which point the partition table overflows yet again (the LBA sector count is only 32 bits). Anyone tried a disk (RAID array, for now) larger than 2TB?

Which version of Knoppix did you put on 320gb drive ?..... thinking there is plenty of room for dvd version ;-) with a couple of gig to spare lol

Got an old 80gb drive here may be able to test your huge version out ....

MrG

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrGreen

Which version of Knoppix did you put on 320gb drive ?..... thinking there is plenty of room for dvd version ;-) with a couple of gig to spare lol

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I used the DVD of Knoppix 5.1.0. Had some kind of weird problem with 5.1.1 so downgraded to 5.1.0.

D/l 5.1.1 now ... will test it out see what happens

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 330toSRT8

What is the advantage to doing all steps mentioned in previous posts compared to just running this command?

Code:

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mkbootdev

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I clicked through a couple screens and then I had a bootable thumb drive.

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No advantage, really. Use whatever works best for you.

The instructions here work on a few more BIOS's than mkbootdev does, since here we use FAT16 instead of FAT32 for small drives, and FAT16 is better liked by some weird BIOS's.

Also, the instructions here predate mkbootdev, which didn't exist at the time they were first made.

are you going to update your guide to include above for larger [huge!] usb drives ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrGreen

are you going to update your guide to include above for larger [huge!] usb drives ?

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Already been done.

Check the new code boxes near the mkdiskimage section.

There's now 4 boxes, each with the correct commands to use for the 4 "sizes" of drives that need to be dealt with differently:

<= 1GB (max of USB-ZIP "standard", easiest, uses FAT16)
<= 2GB (max of FAT16 filesystem, yes I know that certain versions of WinNT had a nonstandard FAT16 variation that could go up to 4GB but that is getting pedantic)
<= 8GB (max of old-style CHS addressing)
>8GB (LBA, should be good up to 2TB, uses FAT32, requires some manual fudging to get working)

I'm hoping the reader is quick enough to catch that they should use only one of the 4 boxes, based on the size of their drive, and not try all 4 commands at once :)

Please advise the USB mode usually encountered in mobos with USB boot capability.....is it USB1.1 or USB 2.0 ???

I would guess that it's 2, a lot of the bioses when 1.1 was still the default hardware couldn't properly boot from usb, even if they had an option that claimed they could. But that's purely a guess.

Kuhman; FWIW

Running an .iso of 700MB into a folder on desktop with USB 2.0 secure digital card interface provides 10MB/sec transfer rate on my computer.

Well, that's well under the 2.0 spec, but the supposed 480 number for usb 2 is pretty bogus. For example. almost everyone knows that a 400 frewire disk interface is much faster than a 480 usb2. UBS just wastes too much with overhead. So overall I would think your number is about where I would expect it to be. But this is getting away for the subject of the original post. I'm not sure why you asked it in the first place, my thinking would be use a 2.0 device if you hope to boot from UBS at all, and if you happen across an older system that can boot from usb and has a 1.1 interface it should degrade gracefully (but painfully slowly). But I tried a number of older systems that claimed they could boot from USB in the BIOSes without luck, the same device finally booted in a new notebook.

My experience with firewire is it is similar to USB in speed, no great difference. It is primarily the interface device performance first and overhead second.

I was hoping you might try your .iso from USB stick to desktop folder to see your transfer speed. That should determine the USB mode of your mobo for comparison.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lilsirecho

I was hoping you might try your .iso from USB stick to desktop folder to see your transfer speed. That should determine the USB mode of your mobo for comparison.

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Sorry, my largest flash usb device isn't large enough for Knoppix, the tests I did were with DSL. But as long as I couldn't get DSL to boot (on my HP with 1.1, an IBM (not sure but I think it had 2.0) and a Gateway with 2.0), I saw no reason to buy a larger one to see Knoppin not boot either. Now have a newer HP notebook that boots the same DSL configured flash device just fine. I have not bought a larger flash device yet, and honestly I don't really care about doing it any longer (can use the DSL one if I think booting from flash is a good idea, but it really doesn't seem to be, at least for me). So I really don't care about the transfer rate issues, but I'm sure it wasn't usb 2 on my old Hp, it only has 1.1, and the new HP notebook is usb 2, as is the flash drive, and it booted faster than I would expect from usb 1.1. Too many other projects at the moment to worry about actual transfer speeds.

Got dvd version of knoppix on external usb hard drive [80gb] no problem had to change mkdiskimage to 0 255 63 would not work with 1 [32!]

boots fine .... ;-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lilsirecho

Please advise the USB mode usually encountered in mobos with USB boot capability.....is it USB1.1 or USB 2.0 ???

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I'm not sure. In most cases, you're lucky just to be able to boot USB at all, let alone get any good speed out of it.

On my motherboards I have tested, I've found that it is very slow trying to get past the first screen of Knoppix, the cheatcode screen. I'm guessing, but am not sure, that it's USB 1.1 or even 1.0. This is when Knoppix is trying to load the Linux kernel and initramfs from the BIOS.

However, after Linux gets started and Knoppix autodetects all of the USB devices, then it all-of-a-sudden gets much faster! I think this is because Linux can properly set up the USB ports in USB 2.0 mode, unlike the BIOS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrGreen

Got dvd version of knoppix on external usb hard drive [80gb] no problem had to change mkdiskimage to 0 255 63 would not work with 1 [32!]

boots fine .... ;-)

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Wow, that's interesting. Was mkdiskimage 0 255 63 able to see and format up your entire 80GB drive? I had failures when trying to go beyond just 8GB.

The idea behind doing mkdiskimage 1 255 63 first, was to give you a small throwaway partition, that you could then clear away and then make it again manually, in case mkdiskimage couldn't automatically deal with the full size of your drive. You wouldn't keep the small partition at all for any length of time, you'd be deleting it immediately, so it's laughably small size (8MB or so) wouldn't matter.

Well I kept getting errors when using 1 ... so tried 0 and it worked had to reboot to make sure partition was seen [sda4!] but after that I created mkdosfs then went and ahead with syslinux -s

Code:

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/dev/sdc4    vfat    77G  4.1G  73G  6% /mnt

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