knoppix as a server

[jpiranha]

hello, all. I recently had a bad experience trying to set up a BSD server (FreeBSD to be exact), and am hoping for a friendlier alternative in Knoppix (basically debian). I am more comfortable with DOS, but am reasonably competent in SH/BASH. I have one smallish disk with 3 paritions [one NTFS with win2k pro, one blank one, i think its NTFS (this is where koppix will go), and one smaller partition for swap], and a larger 40 gb disk for the server root (plus some swap). cPanel should work with knoppix, as its basically debian. Anyway, thats not my question(s). My question(s) are:

a) What is a good way to go about installing Knoppix to my hard drive, but retain the ability to boot in Win2k?

b) Knoppix does have a wget command, right?

c) is Knoppix/Debian a viable option for a webserver? If not, what other linux distros might be?

I am new to these forums, so if this is a duplicate thread, please direct me to it. Thanks in advance.

[jpiranha]

just thought i'd add that, the reason i was tending to not like my BSD install was that X11 (kde, gnome, etc.) would freeze the computer when trying to load... however, you can run knoppix on dead badger, so no worries there.

[shah]

If you can run knoppix cd, that you can run it from hdd.
a) I would go with Debian like installation:
open konsole:
su
knoppix-installer
I would choose lilo to install to mbr. If anything is wrong and you can't boot Win2K, you can repair it with fdisk /mbr. Ussually lilo will detect your Win2k.

b) Yes knoppix comes with wget

c) Knoppix can run as webserver or any server you want. For webserver, knoppix comes with apache, mysql and php.

Read more on how to create partition, especially the above Doc tab.

[jpiranha]

shah, what version of Knoppix are those intructions for? Does it matter? I have 3.4, but its really not a problem to get a different version.

[shah]

3.4 and above. I'm using kanotix, it less painfull. A new release of kanotix just out, equivalent to knoppix 3.6. You might want to check it out. The command for installing kanotix is: kanotix-installer.

[jpiranha]

what format should i use for the partition i am installing knoppix on? ext3? ext2?

[user unknown]

ext3 or reiserfs.
ext2 has no journaling function, which means risc of dataloss by accident (power-off) is greater, and integrety-checks take longer.
There are even more possibilities, but I didn't try them, and don't know much of them (xfs, ...)

[shah]

Agree with user unknown.
What I know, knoppix 3.4 will use ext3 eventhough when you select ext2, it will later format it ext3.
I used reiserfs because kanotix has that option. I had several power loss ( black out), accidental switch-off, and I don't have problem with data loss.

It's better for you to create partition first before start with installation. It's better for you to use partition manager that you familiar with exartition magic. You can do this from your W2K. Delete those two blank partition so you will have single blank partition. Then from there split it into ext3 and linux swap. This way you will avoid from using extended logical drive partition (dos) that might cause a problem later.

Knoppix do come with qtparted. Actually it wiil detect if you haven't create partition yet and will open qtparted.

My suggestion is to create linux swap partition: at least 250MB
The rest is for knoppix.

[shah]

Delete those two blank partition so you will have single blank partition

This single partition need to be deleted too ( or it will still hook to extended partition by dos ). Only leaving free space. Then create two partition (swap & ext3).

Sorry for the mistake above.

[jpiranha]

just an update: I performed a debian-like install of Knoppix to HD, and it works great. LILO even loaded win2k on the first try! I'm so proud. It's server config time.