Making Settings Permanent

[pelagic]

Hi Folks,

I tried to save my settings of lang/kb/network on one of the partitions of a laptop that I booted with a Knoppix CD. But it saved nothing of the network settings (fixed ip a.s.o.).
So every time I boot from CD I have to re-setup all these things.

Is there some special thing to do to save *all* settings to a disk?

Thanks for any hint!

pelagic

[sci_fi]

Hello Pelagic,

I am also new to Knoppix but will tell you what I know (or think I know):

Under the "KNOPPIX" section of the KDE menu there is a section to "make a persistent home directory". When you do this Knoppix will ask where to put the home directory, meaning a partition somewhere.

I use a small partition on my hd specially created for this purpose. Also, I sometimes use a special partition on a usb hd as a back-up.

As far as I can tell, cd based Knoppix will not let you directly write to any hd anywhere. I have tried as root and been told nfw by K. This is good as it probably means no hacker or virus can do so either. Knoppix will copy your ram disc home directory to the partition you specifed upon exit.

To get the home directory back when you reboot, use the cheatcode at boot

knoppix home= "the partition you saved to" for example mine is:

knoppix home=/dev/hda3 or knoppix home=/dev/sda2 for my backup.

f2 and f3 at boot wil get you more info on cheatcodes.

Here is a frustrating thing. This process saves your home directory and apparently your settings as well, but ....

Using the cheatcode on re-boot will not restore your settings (say wlan0 or printer), only the home directory.

Now, there is also a section in the KNOPPIX menu to save settings. Similiar to save home directory. It does save the settings and you can recover on reboot with the cheatcode
knoppix myconfig="device".

I have not been able to get both the settings and home directory to recover as I expected by using both cheatcodes. I can do one or the other, but not both, even though some comments in the save dialog indicate that this should work. No doubt, I am missing something here, but that is all I know.

You can also use the cheatcode knoppix home=scan or knoppix myconfig=scan.

Hope this is of some help.

sci_fi

[Cuddles]

Hmmm,

Thats interesting, this must have changed between v3.3 and later versions. I used to run the v3.2 and v3.3 by the use of the Live CD, and the myconfig=scan and the home=scan, worked together on my boot prompt. I just went for the hard drive install when I got v3.4, so, I cant be sure if this, might be, where it stopped working?

I would think, that the home, and possibly the myconfig, could be an issue between versions, say, your home and configs are from v3.3, and you try and use them with v3.4, kind of thing... But, I always thought they "maintained" within the "same" version? I could be wrong, possibly someone else can confirm this, maybe something has changed with some of the new versions, i.e. in v3.4 the introduction of "dual" kernels, possibly something got overlooked????

[sci_fi]

Some thoughts on my problems trying to restore both home directory and settings.

First, I started with 3.4. Recently moved to 3.6 and then to 3.7 to get the firewall. The save/restore home directory function seemed to work fine as I moved thru the releases.
It occurs to me that when I explicitly save my home directory (rather than just letting Knoppix do it on shutdown) I always choose the option to have the partition reformatted, rather than just copy to existing filesystem. I do this because the questions about size of the home directory confuse me, so I just take the "safe" path. Perhaps this is the source of my problem as I am wiping out some config information. Dunno. I have not conducted rigourous experiments along these lines. Too many other things need attention.

I must say I am totally impressed by Knoppix. It seems to me that with some marketing a special version, say containing a clean version of firefox and optimized to make wireless networking come up automatically, could be a great tool to spread linux. Wonder if Klaus would be interested?

Thanks for all your efforts, Cuddles. I have run across many of your posts in my searches.

sci_fi

[Cuddles]

Thanks for all your efforts, Cuddles. I have run across many of your posts in my searches.

Hopefully, helpful ones ? In my early days, most of my posts were "HELP - I just did 'this', now I have 'this', and how do I fix it!" ones, some were helping others out, from what I know, and from what I can "guess" at, but, I know most of my "post count" comes from asking for help, and not giving... I know most of my problems come from when I change my versions, usually, a rush of posts after I install a new version...

After getting my system happy, I then can concentrate on helping. I think I am still a "newbie" at all of this, and can usually "see" what someone else might be "coming from" -=- something I found to be very nice when I worked with M$ as a phone representative -=- Help, should never come with attituide, unless its a "genuine", "sincere", concern. I am "still" humbled by this OS, and thus, dont "get a big head" when helping people... I think this "community" is like that, lots of people "just" helping people. I sometimes look back at my old posts, and am even humbled at "them". I hope, in what you say, that these have helped, and weren't just "ramblings"

Now, getting back to your theory. Maybe a test is in order? Can you test saving one way, and see if those settings "stick", and then test the other way, and check the same thing? -=- When I ran the "persistant home", I let the OS handle it, once I told it to. I'd tell Knoppix, when I booted, the "home was over there" kind of thing, and let it do everything on its own, and it seemed to keep everything. Not sure, but I think thats what I did. I dont think I had to keep telling it to save, or to "be sure to save before you shutdown" thing?

You should be able to test these things out, making sure everything is working as you want, then, just make a "small" change, like, a background, and test with that [ ? ] -=- I know when I was running off the Live CD, I did a LOT of reboots, just to be sure I could retain some settings, other than the time to reboot issue, it really isnt that much "wear and tear" on your system hardware.

Hopefully this helps,

[CrashedAgain]

Check out this post: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10577 , long discussion of persistent home & saved config.

[Cuddles]

Check out this post: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10577 , long discussion of persistent home & saved config.

Very nice CrashedAgain, and very appropriate ( now why didnt I think of that? )

Reading through the above link, I think you will find lots of answers on your issue, some of the "best" brains here worked on that one... I am quite sure a resolve may be found within the information provided on that link

Thanks CrashedAgain