I'm really impressed with Knoppix, but would like to be able to use the CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive in my (work provided) laptop with Knoppix.

I've mastered using the bootfrom 'cheat' code, so I can remove the CD after booting, but it would be nice to dispense with the CD and boot from a USB thumbdrive/keychain flash disk. The laptop can boot from USB (its in the BIOS).

Luckily, my work has partitioned the laptop's hard-drive so that one NTFS partition holds the OS (XP) and one NTFS patition holds all the non-OS data, so I put the ISO onto the OS partition, as that partition is not accessible once I've used the bootfrom 'cheat' code to boot off an (Knoppix 3.4) ISO placed on that partition.

I'v successfully installed GRUB on the USB thumbdrive, and it boots to the GRUB menu, but being a relative noob, I'm a bit stuck after that. I moved /isolinux onto the USB thumb drive, but setting root & kernel then booting gets to a kernel panic after ?hardware detection?. I'm off the edge of my knowledge/capability now.

I think I'll need to partition the thumbdrive, so I boot off one partition, access the .ISO, then use the other thumbdrive partition as my permanent home. I'm not allowed to repartition my laptop's hard drive.

What I'm aiming for is to stick the thumbdrive in the USB port, and boot from a .ISO on the laptop hardrive, retaining access to the data in the second laptop hardrive partition (RO as I don't yet truct the NTFS RW drivers), using the other partition in the thumbdrive as a permanent home, and use it (or possibly a third partition) to data share with XP when I boot the laptop in XP.

I've spelunked around with Google, and got very confused with people talking about using SYSLINUX and Dam Small Linux etc etc. I think 'all' I need to do is modify the boot image under /isolinux to get it to read from the USB device rather than CDROM. I should then get to a point where I can 'bootfrom' the .ISO on the laptop hard drive - all without needing to have the CD.

Can anyone give me some pointers on (a) what changes need to me made and (b) how to do them? I think I need to grab a boot image off the CD, uncompress it, mount it, add some USB drivers and possibly edit a script, recompress and put onto the thumb drive, then write my own GRUB boot menu.

Many thanks,

semreh