How shall I migrate to the DVD version?
The DVD version of Knoppix is fast approaching and I just realized that I'm likely to have a problem. How am I going to download and make that new DVD?
I do have a DVD burner, that's not the problem. But it's on my Win98 system. The one with all FAT partitions on the hard disk. The one that can't have files larger than 4 gig. If The Knoppix DVD iso is larger than 4 gig, how am I going to burn it?
I do have XP, but it's on my notebook, with a combo CDRW writer and DVD reader there. Can't make my DVD there. Of course, I can boot Knoppix on the desktop with the DVD writer, but I'll still have the FAT file sizes to deal with.
What should I do? Can I pull off downloading the ISO into XP (unfortunately, I shrunk my NTFS partition to make space for a Linux campatable FAT partition on the small notebook hard disk and don't have enough space for a >4 gig download there now) and somehow burn a DVD with Knoppix from a shared file across the network? That seems like an invitation to buffer underruns, even with burn-proof technology. Or is there an obvious solution I'm missing? I sure don't want to get XP for this old desktop just to burn a Knoppix DVD.
Of course, the first Knoppix DVD iso might be less than 4 gig, but I don't expect it, unless it were done that way exactly because of the problem I've stated. I rather expect though that the focus will be on packing every application they can onto that DVD. I just hope it includes all of the great games that have vanished from the ISO since I saw my first 3.1 version.
Maybe I can figure out a way to shrink a partition on the desktop system and then make a Linux partition that will not have the 4 gig limit. Use Knoppix to download the ISO to it and hope that Knoppix supports my Dual Layer Benq DVD burner. Sure wish that Knoppix contained one of the newer versions of Bittorrent though, the new versions download cleanly for me, the old versions overwhelm my upload capacity and as a result the download grinds to a halt (that will sure be an issue getting a popular DVD size download).
Re: DVD-burning under W98
Quote:
Originally Posted by dakota
Why not download it on your Laptop, and burn it over the network? Don't know wheather your burningsoftware can do it,....
Yup, I don't know either. It's another option to consider, if it works. I'm using Nero 6 as the burning tool (own a copy of NTI as well, and did get an update from their website that provided drivers for my DVD drive, so that will be another thing to try if Nero has issues). One issue about the burning will be that I'll likely have to have the ISO on a firewire box on the notebook, I shrunk the NTFS primary partition down to just what was needed for XP and the clutter that came on the notebook to make space for a Knoppix friendly FAT. So the burn will have to happen both across firewire and the network. In transfering files back and forth this way I can tell you it's not particularly fast. I guess I'll know in a few weeks if it's fast enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dakota
Like you already guessed right, the iso won't be too small, since there are over 9 gig software from the debian-pool in the next Knoppix release.
Yea, but there are said to be about 2 gigs of files on the 700 meg Knoppix CD. So 9 gig is cutting it close to the 4 gig FAT file size limit. Still, I betting thet they will not waste that extra space and the ISO will exceed the FAT limit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dakota
Unfortunately, I don't remember package names. Not sure I even ever knew the package names. I do remember there was a nice Pool game that vanished after the first Knoppix CD I saw. And a lot of arcade type games seemed to vanish shortly after that. Maybe I'll have to dust off an old 3.1 CD and take a look. Is there a way I can determine the package name from looking at the CD and the game itself?
... is enough for everyone :-)
And nobody will ever need more than 640 kByte RAM. Ask Bill Gates. :D
Quote:
... Reverse the compression & it is roughly 5.5GB uncompressed.
As already mentioned, it is over 9 gig out of debian.
Re: ... is enough for everyone :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by dakota
As already mentioned, it is over 9 gig out of debian.
Ouch thats big!
Probably a bad suggestion...
Well you could try downloading it to the external drive, remastering it (I assume if there's that much space then alot of those programs can be done without) and trying to transfer to the FAT drive and burn it that way. I dunno if I'm describing it right, I've never done a remaster myself but if it has KDE AND Gnome is it possible to get rid of one? Getting rid of 700 megabytes of compressed space is probably quite a challenge but possible.
Other than that, there are some things you can buy which house an external drive in a case that makes it internal. If knoppix didn't recognize it externally, maybe it'll recognize it internally.
Re: How shall I migrate to the DVD version?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
The DVD version of Knoppix is fast approaching and I just realized that I'm likely to have a problem. How am I going to download and make that new DVD?
I do have a DVD burner, that's not the problem. But it's on my Win98 system. The one with all FAT partitions on the hard disk. The one that can't have files larger than 4 gig. If The Knoppix DVD iso is larger than 4 gig, how am I going to burn it?
.
I think I have a solution for you, if your linux cd/dvd recorder setup is functional (i.e. cdrecord/2.6 kernel complications haven't been causing CD burning headaches for you).
It uses an lvm2/dmsetup approach: from your debian installation, create two loop devices on your FAT drive and join the two loop devices using dmsetup. I am attaching a sample script for doing this, please adopt it to suit your needs, and use judiciously.
After you set the variables and run the script, you can download the massive DVD iso on to the $MTPT directory (as you define in the script), and then burn it from linux using k3b or some other program.
I only recently learned of this rather well kept-secret of lvm2. It gives powerful ways to create volumes. Very nice!
Hope it works for you, and please post your adventures here.
Code:
#!/bin/sh -x
#
# How to create an LVM2 volume
# using two loop devices
# (can be easily extended to more than 2 loop devices)
# Ideas from:
# http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LGNET/114/kapil.html
# https://wiki.ubuntu.com//LiveCDPersistence
#
# This script creates two image files
# in the specified directory (KDIR variable)
# of specified size (LOOP_SIZE variable below),
# mounts them as loop devices, merges them using
# device mapper, creates an ext2 filesystem
# on the resulting volume, and finally mounts it
# on the mount point $KDIR/mnt
# setting LOOP_SIZE to 2560 gives a combined
# volume (with two images) of exactly 5GB, but the filesystem
# headers may eat up a sizeable chunk of it
# so, adjust it as necessary
KDIR=/C/knx40 # directory where the image files are to be created
MTPT=$KDIR/mnt # mount point for the logical volume
# set the size of each loop device image in MB
LOOP_SIZE=2560
# other variables
IM1=$KDIR/part1.img
IM2=$KDIR/part2.img
LP1=/dev/loop1
LP2=/dev/loop2
DVOL=snap
TBLFL=/tmp/dmsetup_table1
CHUNK_SIZE=8 # sectors
# the programs and modules
apt-get install dmsetup
modprobe dm_mod
modprobe dm_snapshot
[ ! -d $KDIR ] && mkdir $KDIR
[ ! -d $MTPT ] && mkdir $MTPT
dd if=/dev/zero of=$IM1 bs=1M count=$LOOP_SIZE
dd if=/dev/zero of=$IM2 bs=1M count=$LOOP_SIZE
losetup $LP1 $IM1
losetup $LP2 $IM2
SZ1=$(blockdev --getsize $LP1)
SZ2=$(blockdev --getsize $LP2) # redundant in this case, but just in case
# SZ1plus2=$(expr $SZ1 + $SZ2)
echo 0 $SZ1 linear $LP1 0 > $TBLFL
echo $SZ1 $SZ2 linear $LP2 0 >> $TBLFL
# echo $SZ1plus2 $SZ3 linear $LP3 0 >> $TBLFL
dmsetup create $DVOL $TBLFL
#echo "0 $SZ1 snapshot $LP1 $LP2 p $CHUNK_SIZE" | dmsetup create $DVOL
mke2fs /dev/mapper/$DVOL
mount /dev/mapper/$DVOL $MTPT
df $KDIR/mnt
exit 0
# device deletion script
# cut and save as a separate script
# and then run it when the volume is no longer needed
# running it
#!/bin/sh -x
KDIR=/C/knx40
MTPT=$KDIR/mnt
IM1=$KDIR/part1.img
IM2=$KDIR/part2.img
LP1=/dev/loop1
LP2=/dev/loop2
DVOL=snap
TBLFL=/tmp/dmsetup_table1
umount $MTPT
dmsetup remove $DVOL
losetup -d $LP1
losetup -d $LP2
# uncomment as needed
# be careful!
# rm -f $IM1
# rm -f $IM2
# rm -rf $MTPT $KDIR
Re: How shall I migrate to the DVD version?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tablet_guy
Hope it works for you, and please post your adventures here.
Well, any effort is going to wait until an Official release of the DVD ISO. I'm not going for the current ISOs popping up. But you completely lost me at from your debian installation, create two loop devices on your FAT drive and join the two loop devices using dmsetup. I have no idea what that even means in English. It's not likely to happen for another reason too, my Debain install is not on the system that has the DVD burner. So if I burn the ISO it will have to be from Win98 or from a live CD (likely Knoppix). There are both a CDRW and a DVD burner on this system, so I hope I can boot Knoppix from the CD and then burn on the DVD.
Fabianx gives us a reason to expect that this will not be a problem and we'll be able to do it all from Win98 and a FAT partition. But the proof is yet to be seen.
I will post back my results at burning, but many people may be too busy playing with their new Knoppix systems to read them by then.
Re: How shall I migrate to the DVD version?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
The DVD version of Knoppix is fast approaching and I just realized that I'm likely to have a problem. How am I going to download and make that new DVD?
I do have a DVD burner, that's not the problem. But it's on my Win98 system. The one with all FAT partitions on the hard disk. The one that can't have files larger than 4 gig. If The Knoppix DVD iso is larger than 4 gig, how am I going to burn it?
I do have XP, but it's on my notebook, with a combo CDRW writer and DVD reader there. Can't make my DVD there. Of course, I can boot Knoppix on the desktop with the DVD writer, but I'll still have the FAT file sizes to deal with.
What should I do? Can I pull off downloading the ISO into XP (unfortunately, I shrunk my NTFS partition to make space for a Linux campatable FAT partition on the small notebook hard disk and don't have enough space for a >4 gig download there now) and somehow burn a DVD with Knoppix from a shared file across the network? That seems like an invitation to buffer underruns, even with burn-proof technology. Or is there an obvious solution I'm missing? I sure don't want to get XP for this old desktop just to burn a Knoppix DVD.
Of course, the first Knoppix DVD iso might be less than 4 gig, but I don't expect it, unless it were done that way exactly because of the problem I've stated. I rather expect though that the focus will be on packing every application they can onto that DVD. I just hope it includes all of the great games that have vanished from the ISO since I saw my first 3.1 version.
Maybe I can figure out a way to shrink a partition on the desktop system and then make a Linux partition that will not have the 4 gig limit. Use Knoppix to download the ISO to it and hope that Knoppix supports my Dual Layer Benq DVD burner. Sure wish that Knoppix contained one of the newer versions of Bittorrent though, the new versions download cleanly for me, the old versions overwhelm my upload capacity and as a result the download grinds to a halt (that will sure be an issue getting a popular DVD size download).
You're hung up on the file size limitation in FAT. The file size limitation doesn't mean you can't store the entire image. Boot knoppix on your desktop, and do something like this:
wget -O - http://url/to/knoppix.iso | split -b 2147483648 - knoppix.iso-part
cat knoppix.iso-part* | md5sum
cat knoppix.iso-part* | cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdc speed=4 -
You are of course using bootfrom=... or toram or something like that to make the DVD-burner available.
Cheers,
Ketil Froyn
[email protected]
http://ketil.froyn.name/
