setup lilo to boot from hd

[Jansi]

Why don't you want to do a full HD install?

I too am interested in doing the HD based CD-image installation, and my answer to your question: I have found that the CD-Image installation makes for a great public-use kiosk computer, as in a school setting or house with lots of users. Why? Because with this setup people are discouraged enerally can't mess with the OS, basically all garbage (cookies, cache, spyware, viruses, etc.) dissapear with every reboot, and even if users do figure out how to wreck it, it takes only about 30 minutes to set the whole thing up again!

The instructions here were *great* (thanks Markus!) for Knoppix 3.4 (I'd maybe only suggest chaning the 800MB min. to 900MB for the CD-image partition, since for some reason, more than once an 800MB partition in ext2 formatting proved not-enough):

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Hd_Based...4_version_only

BUT these instructions (as they correctly indicate) only work with 3.4. What is frustrating is that the only reason they don't seem to work with more recent Knoppix releases is the very last step: specfically, "sudo lilo -C /mnt/hda6/lilo.conf" fails with the here-familiar "/dev/mapper/controlpen failed: No such device\Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?" error.

After setting the whole thing up with Markus' instructions on a friend's family computer (they were tired of visitors -- kids primarily -- abusing it and making windows unbootable), but by using 3.7 because 3.4 wasn't available, I had to finally give-up after several hours because I couldn't get past the last step (lilo). So I gave up and just ran knoppix-installer. What interested me is that the knoppix-installer ran lilo just-fine. So what is going on? I've read this thread and a few others on this topic... and while for many I'm sure it is enough info to solve the problem, I still don't understand neither the problem nor how to get around it. And anyway, it seems like this is a bug that came up in 3.6.

My instinct is to set it up with 3.7 and then just do the final step while booted from a 3.4 CD... I may try this on that friend's computer if I can get a hold of a 3.4 CD...

[Jansi]

My instinct is to set it up with 3.7 and then just do the final step while booted from a 3.4 CD... I may try this on that friend's computer if I can get a hold of a 3.4 CD...

OK, tried that last night, just wanted to report that it worked great --

That is, I use Markus's instructions all the way up to the last step ("Let lilo write the boot loader to the master boot record (sudo lilo -C /mnt/hda6/lilo.conf)"), at which point I shutdown, boot off a Knoppix 3.4 CD, an type (in keeping with Markus' example):

sudo mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6
sudo mount /dev/hda6 /boot
sudo lilo -C /mnt/hda6/lilo.conf

And it works fine.

[Markus]

Umm, I didn't write the howto, just checked the wiki syntax due to conversion to mediawiki.
If you want to edit the howto or add to it, please do.

[Jansi]

Umm, I didn't write the howto, just checked the wiki syntax due to conversion to mediawiki.
If you want to edit the howto or add to it, please do.

Oops! OK, I see how it works now.

Thanks for the tip about editing -- I went ahead and added my bit about getting lilo to boot a copy of Knoppix 3.7 installed with the "tohd=" option (I believe that is called the "Poor Man's Installation", but correct me if I'm wrong).

Also, I see that someone else already corrected /mnt/hda6 to /dev/hda6

[Markus]

Yeah, I edited the /mnt/hda6 -> /dev/hda6 although I must say I'm not sure if it was wise.
The point being that the device is mounted on all occasions, but the mountpoint is changed temporarily from /mnt/hda6 to /boot and then back to /mnt/hda6.
You'll notice that I just changed it back to what the original author meant as he's talking about a partition, not a device. It's debatable which is the correct syntax here, so I'll just go with the authors version here. You can of course change it again

[markcomp77]

root@ttyp2[knoppix]# lilo -C /mnt/hda3/lilo.conf

Warning: /mnt/hda3/lilo.conf should be owned by root
/dev/mapper/control: open failed: No such device
Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?
/dev/mapper/control: open failed: No such device
Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?
Incompatible libdevmapper 1.00.19-ioctl (2004-07-03)(compat) and kernel driver
Fatal: creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system

write:
modprobe dm-mod <enter>
and lilo will work... without error


put dm-mod to /etc/modules & /etc/modules-2.6.9

> You need to have dm-mod loaded in your kernel
from http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=p....it%26rnum%3D2