KnoppixCD boot with 3GB of ram...toram..experiment(success)

With 3Gb physical ram installed, I installed the Knoppix CD with:

Knoppix26 toram myconfig=scan (previous install of config)

The result was an install of the CD toram in about 4 minutes. The " system guard" reported a total of 2.21GB of free ram.

A side issue in this experiment.

I had previously set up a USB HDD of 80GB with qtparted to have 4 primary partitions, 40MB ext2, 2GB linux swap, 2GB linux swap, 4GB ext2 and the remainder free.

The effect of this HDD was to supply a total of 4GB of swap to the knoppix CD install which was reported in " system guard" along with the memory figures.

I am booted in this mode at this time with the CD removed from the computer, the "C" drive powered down, the floppy drive powered down, and only one USB HDD powered up (external).

The 4GB partition contains a Knoppix DVD KNOPPIX file which permits the boot of the Knoppix 3.4 CeBit remaster ..toram... when the DVD is loaded in the CD/DVD reader. This provides 4GB of swap but only some 900MB of free memory. It loads in kernel 2.6.3 whereas the CD loads kernel 2.6.5. There are 4.9GB of program material provided in the DVD format (Limited by the legacy of inherent isolinux limits).

One experiment conducted with the system as loaded into ram involved transferring a 300MB file from desktop to a directory created called RAM1. The file transferred at 200MB/sec, thus confirming the true install ..toram..of all data.

My system is athlon1900+ having 3GB of 2100DDRAM.

Examining the characteristics of loading additional data into the memory via file transfer from external sources suggests that the new data drives the memory content already present in physical ram into the swap area (slower, due to USB interface in my system).
I invite comment on this apparent characteristic of memory management. Thus the new data appears in physical ram, and if enough is added, swap begins to build (slower).

I have just begun studying what might happen next, with Linux...anything!

Admittedly, using the "C" drive for swap and Knoppix loading would provide higher speed but this arrangement left my system in pristine condition while the experiment was performed.

I expect to try installing the USB HDD as "C" HDD and compare performance.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but it seems to me the "noswap" cheatcode seems to be appropriate when running Knoppix on a machine with 3Gigs of memory... :shock:
The fact that swapspace is *slower* to access than is real memory comes as no surprise, it's probably related to the fact that a storage device (hard disk) is being used to simulate the presence of more physical memory than is actually available. I think Linus has the inside scoop on this. :lol:

Seriously, the Linux kernel does indeed start to swap out data to available swap devices before physical memory is completely used up, but under normal conditions this results in better system performance. Copying large files around tends the system cache to be favored over other data in memory that gets flushed into the swap area(s). btw. Windows has this problem too, not a surprise considering both use some form of LRU algoritm for memory management as far as I know.
Concluding: If you have 3GB of RAM, combine "toram" with "noswap" when booting the CD. Really. ("Blazingly fast" ring a bell anyone?)
Have fun! 8)

(text deleted, previous message apparently got posted twice)

groenewe;

Your reply appreciated.

I mentioned the swap detail for completeness, not to leave out any detail, being fully aware that it would be slower from USB (or hard drive, for that matter).

In performing experiments, all observations are reported.

I loaded this post from the KnoppixDVD, HDD installed as HDB, loading same with:

knoppix26 fromhd toram ( no myconfig=scan)

For completeness, the "system monitor..resources" display states used memory 2.1GB (DVD size) and used swap "0 MB of 163MB" (swap file in hda2).

Entering in root: free -otm.....gives: total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3037 2135 901 0 72 1949
Swap: 4259 0 4259
Total: 7296 2135 5160

The experiment includes transferring large video files into memory to determine the response of the arrangement, assuming swap will be utilized during the procedure. The consequences of this procedure may indeed be surprising, especially since some of the transfer is at 45MB/sec and the remainder at one-half or less of that speed. What that does to the performance of the OS is at present unknown by this writer. The playback of such a transfer may also be impossible with present playback filters.

The observation I can make at present is that the KnoppixCD install provides greater memory access in the 3GB limits of X86 mobos (standard, single cpu) than the DVD install.

Further study of the application of swap as additional memory is my next objective. I suspect it will be a limited area of application, especially in using USB swap which probably inserts access delays intolerable for some applications.

I try to report all observations, trite or no!

Thanks for your comments and I invite more on the subject of swap use.

At present time, operating with DVD in 3gb RAM IN ..TORAM..MODE WITH ALL POWER REMOVED FROM ALL DRIVES.

System resource monitor says 2.1GB memory in use and 3.9GB of swap free.

Swap use is a complex issue not easily modified.

Would like to swapout much of the 2.1GB to free up memory.

Ideas?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lilsirecho

At present time, operating with DVD in 3gb RAM IN ..TORAM..MODE WITH ALL POWER REMOVED FROM ALL DRIVES.
System resource monitor says 2.1GB memory in use and 3.9GB of swap free.

---

I don't understand how you managed to boot the system up without having a functional swap area. If the swap space has 3.9GB free then it must be on a hard drive. But you say they are all powered down. Maybe linux doesn't make sure the swap drive is accessible when it comes up. If that's so, you'll probably end up with a panic (system crash) once you do something that requires that the system swap something out.

Quote:

---

Would like to swapout much of the 2.1GB to free up memory.
Ideas?

---

That 2.1GB is all one file - the large compressed KNOPPIX file from the DVD - and it won't be swapped out beccause you've told linux/knoppix to keep it in ram (with the TORAM option).

Best Wishes
Pete

Pete;

Right you are, the 4GB of swap is on a HDD. The HDD can be recalled in USB with hotplug.

I am running without the HDD at present, but am curious to see what can be done with that large a swap system.

True, the 2.1GB of data is compressed, and is decompressed on-the-fly in the ram cache of the system during use of applications.

The CD version of Knoppix permits the use of swap to meet the ram needs of the install. The actual arrangement of the swap to be provided is not detailed. When loading this DVD, the process displayed while booting indicates three sources of swap available (two from the one HDD and one from another HDD, should that one be installed). At present, only the 4GB swap is encountered because only one hdd was used to load the DVD toram.

Continuing my train of thought, where must the swap file be located to enable the use of swap to extend the ram install? If it is on usb, and the hdd used to load the DVD toram is the "C" drive, what happens?

Regardless of whether the program entered is fully in ram or mostly in ram and some in swap, the situation therein permits some of the DVD compressed data to be in a separate location. Logically, therefore "some of the compressed data" could end up being all of the compressed data without violating the principle of swap use.

I have seen, in my several weeks of playing with this ...toram.. mode . a time or two when the data entered included some of the swap file.

I have also seen cases wherein transferring data into the combination caused the ram use to reduce and the swap to increase. ( I monitor both in system resources)>

I would expect that the swap use would be under memory management control and that knowledge of that part of Linux would probably permit some intelligent swapping especially of large programs hardly ever used. Granted, the compression of the whole install presents a complication in trying to do particular swaps. Perhaps swaps of entire categories would be possible( logically, I am using program A, all others to swap..dependencies?)

So, the premise that Knoppix can use swap to make up a shortage of ram must not apply in the TORAM mode, only applies to the CD version in loading to ram deficient systems.

I attempted to load the DVD TORAM with the swap provided(4GB) while installing with less than 3GB of ram installed. It failed to load toram.

I tried the same exercise with 512MB of ram with a Knoppix CD and it failed to load toram.

This supports the premise I previously stated that swap is not used in TORAM loading but it does appear in the boot process and is identified in the system resources. Some indication exists that there can be interaction as previously stated.

At this time I am not convinced of the use of swap in loading TORAM but do see some evidence that it is available after loading.

Your comments are always welcome.

Ray

Pete;
I ran a bunch of tests since the last post and have confirmed that the memory used goes downward because swap is utilized.

I re-entered the DVD with : Knoppix26 fromhd toram myconfig=scan...
and the system loaded correctly. At that time I used a hdd in "C" for loading the system, CDrom/dvd to enter the boot and a USB hd to use to enter video files.

I used two measures for the performance of the system, the system monitor and the commandline: free -otm...

Initially. there was 9MB of free space in ram. There was zero use of swap.

I transferred 1GB of video into desktop and the memory use fell to 2370MB and the swap went up to 1568MB. Adding another file to desktop (some 380MB) increased the ram to
2670MB and the swap reached 1612.

After running the videos in Kaboodle (sweeping the search bar throughout the pix with no hdd activity indicated) I deleted the two video files from the desktop.

The result was, in free -otm, ram use 1277MB, swap use 1464MB.

I conclude that when memory is exceeded, the system swaps out so memory stays viable and the last entries are in ram. The memory thus transferred to swap stays in swap.

In this experiment the swap was supplied by USB hd for 168MB and the two"C"hd partitions of 2GB each. The readout of swap use in the system resource monitor was erroneous, probably due to the split nature of the swap sources. This encouraged me to use the command line instead (more accurately reported also).

The observations made in this experiment may not hold for all types of data transfers, perhaps.

This experience is the same as previously encountered as I mentioned in the earlier post. It confirms that I haven't lost my mind , completely..just working on it!!

I do not have any idea what will happen with other program selections under these conditions just this one video trial.

__________________________________________________ ___________________

Money talks
Wallet whispers

When is a zero always equal to a one?

What did God do when he made Yogi Bear? He made a boo-boo.

Lassie's favorite is ...cauliflower.

Glad to see someone else using the toram option! I've got this working with knoppix 3.6 on
a 4GB athlon 2.6 dual processor machine. I have a persistant home on a maxtor 80G drive
but otherwise everything runs in ram, and the machine is almost totally silent.
I have a temp-controlled low-noise psu (nexus) and I have stepped the cpu fans down
to the 5V system rail so they're almost silent. Get's a bit hot when I do some heavy
compilation but hey I don't care the machine is stable anyhow hasn't crashed yet,
although this is a software development box I'm not running games. Fanless matrox
video card. The only time it's noisy is during boot when it's copying the cd!

I've got this hooked up to a ups so I'm going to leave it on long-term; I'll post back in
here when I have 6 months uptime!

Here's my free output:
knoppix@ttyp0[KNOPPIX]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 4032832 1899360 2133472 0 67428 1486196
-/+ buffers/cache: 345736 3687096
Swap: 0 0 0

I really, really like the toram mode. I know it's profligate but I love the silence!

The only drawback is that apt-get doesn't work since it tries to write to the ramdisk
which is read-only, and remounting it r/w doesn't seem to work. Am I right in thinking
the image in ram is still compressed as on the cd? Is there anyway to get apt-get
to work when running under toram?

Oh yes, and I can only get it to work under 2.4 kernel not the 2.6, still I'm happy.

Anyway, whoever had the idea of putting the toram option into knoppix deserves
a medal, it's really great!

And someone might find this interesting:

knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ cat /proc/meminfo
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 4129619968 1950781440 2178838528 0 69046272 1521922048
Swap: 0 0 0
MemTotal: 4032832 kB
MemFree: 2127772 kB
MemShared: 0 kB
Buffers: 67428 kB
Cached: 1486252 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 518656 kB
Inactive: 1128320 kB
HighTotal: 3166208 kB
HighFree: 1588824 kB
LowTotal: 866624 kB
LowFree: 538948 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB

smorty;

Pleased to hear your story about TORAM success. Your use of ups is the last chink in the chain!.

I load my system from hd at a 35MB/sec rate and it loads the DVD of 2.1GB to desktop in 2min and 5 secs.

I am not aware of any possible apt-get with the compressed file system on the ram disk. It is compressed and is decompressed on-the-fly.

Perhaps your 2.6 will boot and load if you modify the boot parameters. I had to change the details to permit boot and load of the DVD remaster which I am using at present.

I note that Klaus"s script uses size values in kB but the DVD uses MB.

I have a combo of Klaus's script and the DVD remaster to enable the boot of the DVD with swap partitions totalling 4GB. I use USB for swaphd at present, probably will try that drive in "C" position today.

I partitioned a drive with no MBR using qtparted to generate a four partition hdd, 500mb ext2, 2GB swap, 2Gbswap ,4GB ext2 and rest of 80GB free. The swap files are recognized and the 4GB file holds the DVD KNOPPIX data for HDD boot.

I, too, enjoy the ram running system, I try to shut down all drives and call up USB units if storage or input is required.

The DVD uses all but 7MB of ram as presently loaded so I have run into x86 ram limits with my first shot.

Knoppix CD however has 2.2+gb of free ram when loaded so it is more capable of accepting input without requiring swap. It has fewer programs but certainly isn't short on performance.

To complete my system I need to install an LCD display to reduce the power waste of the CRT display.

One further possibility to reduce power drain, use modified ram modules from laptop sticks which I note at least one user has done. They run at lower voltages.

My system has 3GB 2100DDRAM in an athlon1900+ mobo a7v333.

Perhaps you will soon be able to run 2.6 in your computer, if I can help?

Best to you...

Ray

To try to get toram working with the 2.6 kernel I've tried lots of combinations of
boot options = acpi off and on, nomce/mce, noapic, pci=noapi, pci=off, etc etc.
With some combinations it just hangs dead at startup.
With other combinations it makes it through to the stage where it copies the cdrom
to ram. Now with kernel 2.4 this takes about 4 minutes from the samsung cd drive
I'm using and I get an average data transfer rate of about 4 MB/s. But with the
2.6 kernel I only get about 200kb/s transfer rate and the time value to the right says
45 minutes(!!). Since I don't want to wait 45 minutes I've never actually waited that
long so for all I know it might actually run - so maybe I should have said I can't install
it using the 2.6 kernel. I've tried using a promise tx2 ide card in case the ide on my
mobo was unsupported in 2.6 but got exactly the same results. It looks like it's
not using dma but is dropping down to some really slow PIO mode when it does
the copy (although the output on the screen says that dma has been enabled for
the cdrom drive).
I also tried kanotix and mepis which both have 2.6 kernels and can't boot either of
them - just hangs during boot. it's just occurred to me that maybe it's the cdrom drive
that the problem is with, so I'l get another drive next week and try that.

Still everything works just fine with the 2.4 kernel so I'm not too worried. None of
the software I use has any dependency on 2.6 so I'm quite happy to carry on using 2.4.

It's a bit of a shame I can't use apt-get though as that would really be nirvana,
still if the cd image were uncompressed it might not even fit in the 4G ram I've got
(and that maxes out my mobo's chipset, can't put any more in). Now I've got access
to some bigger Sun boxes at work with 64G ram but I'd need the sparc version...
and those machines don't get booted very often!!!

I'm using a samsung SM171 monitor with a matrox G450 graphics card, which gives
a very sharp well focused image. The ups I'm using is a little APC unit I got cheap off
a mate, only rated 500W but I'm only powering the mobo off it so should be OK for a few
minutes. It's already stopped it going down during a 2-3 sec power blip during a storm
last night (had to reset my video clock though!) Like I said this isn't a games machine
but it's great for writing software and web browsing because it's so quiet.
The hard drive is a seagate barracuda 7200.7 with the fluid bearing which is very quiet.
The cpu fans are bog-standard cooler-master cheapies, the secret is to make yourself a
power cable, wire a couple of fan sockets to a standard molex 4-pin socket but power the
fans from the 5V line instead of the 12V, that makes the fans run at less than half the
normal revs which makes them just about inaudible. But I wouldn't want to use this for gaming because it won't cool the cpu's enough. I think the athlons I'm using are borderline
in this configuration anyway as they seem to generate a lot of heat, my bios says the
chip temps are about 47 degrees. It's warm to touch but works fine for normal use,
been up for a few days now and I've compiled gallons of software since I've been building
the system and I wanted to stress it a bit anyway and it's held up fine.

Anyway I'll be interested to hear if you do more stuff to yours.

Cheers

And while I'm here I want to say a big THANKS to Herr Klaus Knopper for building
this great knoppix cd - cheers cool dude! javascript:emoticon(':D')javascript:emoticon(':D') javascript:emoticon(':D')

smorty;
Very fine system with dual cpu and all that memory!

Mine is limited to 3GB in x86 as I said before.

I understand that the cpu needed for dual cpu is many bux which leaves me out!!!

Nice to see another ram system up and running!!!

Having a good time playing with this experiement.

Best to you...

Ray

smorty;

Entered two .vob files of 1GB each into ram and played both of them simultaneously with two entries of kaboodle!!

One could develop binocular 3D with this setup!!!!

You asked me to keep you in touch!!!

Ray

Well, another thing I've got going this morning is wiring this thing up to the hifi to play
my mp3 collection. (I know, mp3 is hardly hifi but I've got plenty to listen to)
So I've got an old turtle-beach santa cruz (20-bit dacs) and got that hooked up to
my tannoys through a cyrus 2 amp. I was impressed that to get the santa cruz working
I just rebooted knoppix and the auto-detect fully configured the card without me having
to do anything! So now I'm playing some good Steve Hillage stuff, and the nice thing
is that there's no computer noise at all in the background :-) Not even the laptop
hard disk whirring that was there when I ran the stereo off laptop.

On cost, the ram was the expensive thing, I got the processors and motherboard off ebay
for about half price, all the other bits I had lying around so it hasn't actually cost me all
that much to set up.

So I'd like to make a plea to Klaus to keep the toram option in future versions of knoppix,
there are definately people using it and we really like it. Also please don't take the 2.4 kernel
away and ship a 2.6 only version.

quick hardware spec:-

mobo: MSI K7D (dual AMD athlon-MP processors)
memory: 4GB crucial DDR PC2700
cpus: 2 x AMD 2600 MP barton
cpu coolers: standard cooler-master under-voltaged to 5V for silent operation
psu: nexus 450W silent psu
video: matrox G450 AGP
hdd: seagate barracude 7200.7 80GB
soundcard: turtle beach santa cruz
monitor: samsung SM171 17" LCD
ms optical mouse
cherry 105-key keyboard
case: ebuyer super-cheapie!

OPERATING SYSTEM: KNOPPIX 3.6 loaded in RAM :-) :-) :-)

sound level in quiet room with PC about 2 meters away from chair: virtually inaudible

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/d...K7DmasterL.htm

And while I'm at it:

audio system spec:

soundcard from pc connected to amp using high-spec audio cable
amplifier: mission cyrus 2 with additional external power supply
speakers: Mercury mX4-M
tape deck: nakamichi LX-3
music: Steve Hillage Live Herald!

You can tell that I'm pleased with this system :-)
Thanks Klaus and everyone else who made knoppix!

Ray, is there any chance I could get that dvd image from you? Could post a
blank dvd or download it?

I see that you guys are having great fun and success with toram. I tried it a year ago when I got a new LAN where each PC had nearly 1 GB RAM! It didn't work great for me, however, as these Dells use shared RAM for the BIOS and the Video and God knows what else!

Anyway, its obvious that you can't use apt-get on a read-only fs. However, can you make use of KLIK?

Regards,
AJG

I'll give it a try if it's still in 3.6... I read somewhere klik had been taken out?

Basically I've just downloaded source for all the tools I need (eclipse (a 90MB download
for an editor!!!! - and I thought xemacs was big!), mono, cscope, jdk, ddd, dillo, mplayer
(hey I gotta watch something while I'm programming :-) ), ncftp, sylpheed, xscreensaver, xcdroast, etc) and built and installed them in my "persistant home" which gets round the
problem of getting stuff that's not on the cd. But for updating the cd s/w yes I know it's
obvious that apt-get ain't going to work although I think the issue is that the image is
compressed as it could always be remounted rw ;-). Yep I'd need to do a proper hd install
for the apt-get stuff to work. I'm not too worried about security fixes since I'm not
running any servers at all (not even sshd) and it's all behind other firewall boxes anyhow.

I think you'd be pushing it to get it to work with only 1G since the cd image in memory
is gong to be something like 700 or 800 MB, I suspect minimum spec for a decent
toram setup would be 2GB ram.

Hmm, just reading that last post... security fixes aren't limited to servers... mozilla springs to mind...

Smorty;

Lotsa good stuff you have tied together there fella!

Glad that someone else has appreciated Klaus's Live CD enough to use ram mode.

I have little trouble with the noise of my system which is true for all noise or sound...I am hard of hearing at age 79.

But with all the drives turned off (unless recording or retrieving via USB) I have a minimum power setup and in California power is expensive.

I just need an LCD display now to finish up. I mentioned the laptop ram sticks which save energy also but I haven't tried that.

It is disappointing to note that dual cpu permits only 4GB versus 3GB for the single cpu.

I have to note in passing that the CD or DVD that one uses for this toram Live disc load, cannot be copied because they have isolinux.gz elements within them. Mkisofs (growisofs perhaps for the DVD) sets up the program data for isolinux burn to disc so the process controls how one changes the installed programs.

The limits in isolinux prevent more than 4.9GB of data from being loaded in compressed format. Actual load limits in a DVD disc are not 4.7GB but really more like 4.4GB as the binary bird flies.

I have experimented with both of the Live discs, CD and DVD and have modified the minirt.gz file and the isolinux.cfg file in each of the disc formats.

Neither of the two permit 3GB of memory use without change to the linuxrc file(s). I was surprised to see that on the 2.1GB DVD file which was limited to 800MB!!!

The KnoppixCD v3.4 minirt26.gz has the limit set at "800000"kB which limits that disc as well.

I changed both of them to reflect 3GB.

The linuxrc file was changed to permit USB 2.0, ; ehci-hcd.o... was entered in the usb options on both discs.

I also added an option permitting a backslash (\) to initiate the install.... fromhd toram myconfig=scan. This was made the default as well.

I found it advantageous to utilize Klaus's linuxrc file to load the DVD ..fromhd toram myconfig=scan after having loaded the DVD tohd from its own disc. This permitted the loading at 35MB/sec on my system and the DVD to desktop in 2min 5secs. Thats with kde!!

After the load, the drive can be powered down. From USB loading of the DVD takes longer since it runs at 12MB/sec. After loading, USB runs at around 20MB/sec, not a great deal faster....

The DVD can be downloaded from chemnitz mirror..it took about 13 hours for my download. Then one needs a burner such as k3b with growisofs to burn the iso. However, the memory limit remains!!!

I burned the iso and later copied the disc to a directory in home. Then the operation on the boot section to correct the memory allocation can be performed..gunzip. minirt26.gz........mount -o loop
minirt26 /mnt/lp; edit linuxrc and replace the orig..umount /mnt/lp...gzip minirt26. Run mkisofs for 2.6 kernels and burn the resulting .iso in k3b.

Each Live disc was modified in the above manner with the exception that the DVD disc received the linuxrc file from the LiveCD.

The kernel in the CD is 2.6.5 and the DVD is 2.6.3 (an earlier release). Each of these operating Live discs has only been modified for kernel2.6.

I hesitate to send the DVD to you if your'e not able to boot kernel 2.6. The DVD cannot be copied but has to be run through the mkisofs process as a new disc.

If you get 2.6 booting, I will be happy to burn a DVD for you, with the memory value you specify. The media I use is 4X+RW and I have sony units for burn and playback (Dru530 burn, crx combo CDRW/DVDread). These are not high performance units (8 or 12 X). Not all readers read DVD +RW I have been told!

Some of the programs on the DVD do not perform on my machine but most do. I like xine for my video but it isn't on the DVD. It is on the KnoppixCD and with 3GB programmed in, plays a .vob file or two very nicely.

So the disc needs to be arranged for your memory requirements when you get kernel2.6 to load.

I tried loading the original DVD disc I burned ..toram... and it hangs reporting not enough space to load. This was corrected by changing the memory allocated.

I use the following to enter either disc;

knoppix26
This loads the disc operating system.

knoppix26 tohd
This enters the disc Knoppix file into hd and runs from there. The disc is needed to boot.

knoppix26 fromhd
Boots disc then runs program fromhd

knoppix fromhd toram
Boots disc, loads ram fromhd

In my system,: \ enter;
Disc boot then hd loads toram myconfig=scan

You are probably familiar with the above in using the 2.4 kernel.

I am hoping to get a download of the newer version of the Knoppix DVD because the program content is more to my liking.

When you get 2.6 going, let me know!!!

Ray

If Martha Stewart trades the stock market while in prison, is that "insider" trading?

smorty;

I just thought of a reason why your system may not boot in Knoppix26.

Only one KNOPPIX file can be present in the hdd system unless you identify both with ID's that control the one selected.

I find it easiest to have a single changeable USB arrangement and just use ...fromhd.

Otherwise, it should boot from the CD if the system will accept it. The kernel in my CD is 2.6..5 as I mentioned before and the Knoppix version is 3.4.

Good luck.

Cheers Ray, it sounds like a lot of work all round so I think I'll just stick with the cd for now,
just don't have that much time to play unfortunately. I've built this over a couple of
evenings, again knoppix was very useful in being nice and fast to install, much quicker
than a typical install used to take me. And if the dvd only has 2.6 then my box won't boot
it anyhow so better to wait until 2.6 supports my mobo or whatever part of my setup it
doesn't like.

Yeah I guess being hard of hearing could be an advantage if it means you don't hear
the disk whirring and all the fan noise! PC's seem to have got a lot noisier over the last
few years as power supplies have got bigger, chips got bigger and hotter and need bigger
fans, etc. Have you seen the size of some of the cpu cooler fans on sale nowadays?
Before I undervoltaged the ones on my amd box it sounded like there was a helicopter
in the room with me!

One thing I noticed once I got working on a silent system is how my perception
of how fast or rather how slow the machine changed; once you can't hear the disk
chattering away you realise that taking 7-8 seconds to startup mozilla is really pretty
slow, when you can hear all the noise it somehow has the psychological effect of
making the machine seem faster, I think the nosie distracts you from the time being taken.

Anyway all the best!

Actually I wasn't really being fair there, I've just timed it and it actually takes about 2-3 seconds
to start mozilla. Somehow it still seems slower when you can't hear it though!

And FWIW I'm glad to hear you're "still hacking" at 79! Makes me wonder what sort of machine
I'll be using when I'm your age. Of course if you believe Bill Joy's book I won't even have
a computer, I'll be verbally conversing with a "super-intelligent machine". Now that's
really scary! Maybe I'll still have a knoppix box and be a part of the "human resistance!"

smorty;
As to Klaus Knopper, I vote for him as Linux "Man Of The Year".

I think pov-ray enthusiasts might enjoy trying their hand at multiple pov-ray renderings via TORAM using holographic techniques on multiple display elements.

Maybe HDTV displays on the computer as well.

The present limits will undoubtedly be extended by breaking the shackles of conventional treatment.

Three cheers for TORAM !!!!

just to add my entry and join this thread,
my Via MII with 1G ram boots using usbhd

Code:

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knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda2 toram home=/dev/sda1

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but only with 3.4, with this machine and my 2 thinkpad600e's i still have problems with 3.6 regarding wifi and im not in a position to obtain 3.5 or dvds.
With the toram option, in 3.6, the system freezes at the kde startup, however with 3.4 it not only works fine, but is possibly the fastest most responsive computer i have ever used. I am attempting to utilise a 64M ide flash and a 1G cf card in conjunction with "toram" for non hd operation.
I agree that computing has been made much more interesting and fun with the invent of faster cd and dvd drives, and more powerful ram and cpu, and of course, Knoppix.

outanet;

Pleased to hear you have had success with toram!

I am addressing this post in Knoppix2.6 in TORAM with 3GB of ram. It shows 876,088KB in memory use and 2,234,112KB of free memory in system guard display.

I find that the toram option works well if the memory setting in the toram script of linuxrc is set to at least "1000000"KB. Mine is set to "3000000"KB in the script. This requires re-master of the minirt26gz.

I have not tried to load Knoppix26 version3.6 from USBHD. I have The DVD version installed therein. I find that myconfig option is OK in TORAM mode.

I did do a strange thing; I loaded the Knoppix version 3.7CD from USBHD (DVD version therein installed) using the TORAM option and myconfig option and the system loaded (with many error messages) using the Kernel from the CD and loading to KDE in the DVD boot-up. The DVD Kernel is 2.6.3. Kernel 2.6.7 was verified as installed in uname -a.
The internet was not accessible, an error message reported that the interface device was not recognized. Thought I would mention it as a sidelight.! The memory figures were all present in the system resources and all DVD programs listed.

Experiment it is!

Good luck in getting Knoppix 3.6 running. Mine runs great as you can see from this post!

outanet;
You may find that loading tohd to a FAT32 partition in the USBHD could permit Knoppix version 3.6 to load kernel2.6 in your machine.