ISO file download vs copying ISO from CD

[Harry Kuhman]

I have a KNOPPIX CD and want to make an ISO image file in order to make copies. Of the machines available to me, two are partitioned with the NTFS and one has two partitions (vfat and ext2) with one of these partitions containing at least 850 meg free space.

Something about this just doesn't seem right and I wouldn't expect this would work to make a Knoppix CD copy. I guess you could check and see if the resulting ISO had an md5 sum that matched the posted md5 (which would confirm the iso is what you want it to be, and the md5 should download quickly from any mirror. But I would consider just using a Copy CD function built into most burning software, such as Nero.

.... However, on that computer I haven't been successful in running the live CD (lots of Cloop errors).

Another, but not the only reason that I wouldn't want to try "making" an ISO this way. Just copying the (I presume known good) CD would be far better.

By the way, have you tried to boot Knoppix on this computer with the nodma cheat code?

..... Tried bittorrent but the program never launches.

I have had to try several mirrors and let a download run overnight too. Worse, frequently a download of the Knoppix ISO from a mirror is corrupt, it has undergone a Linux new line to MS CR/LF translation (which should obviously only happen for a text file, not a binary file). BitTorrent is far better and imune to the translation problem. It has been very fast for Knoppix downloads lately. Not sure what your problem is, but I have set it up on several of my systems with absolutely no problem at all. Since you indicate that you have several computers available I would suggest that you try getting Bittorent running on another system. It is a tool well worth resolving this to have available to you. Are you perhaps behind a hardware firewall (maybe in a home router) that you need to make settings to for port forwarding? Do you have any software firewalls (like that annoying MS thing) that are getting in your way? This is worth solving.

....... I have read that it is not a good idea to enable writing to NTFS.

Yup, that's an understaement.

II would appreciate a clarification about why it is OK to download an ISO image to an NTFS partition, but not OK to copy the same ISO file to an NTFS partition.

You can download (in XP) the Knoppix ISO to an NTFS partition. You can also copy an ISO file, with XP, from another NTFS partition or from a FAT partition to an NTFS partition, no problem, the ISO will be fine, and you can still make a bootable Knoppix CD from it. Writing to an NTFS partition from Linux is a completely different matter. And I don't believe that what you write to a HD will be exactly the same as the original bootable CD ISO (although I'll let the md5 sums be the final judge of that).

More importantly, I would appreciate advice from others about how I might best obtain an iso image. If I launch linux on my old laptop with 850 megs of free space, is there a simple way I can copy an iso image to it without using the knoppix to hd command?

Many burning software packages will make an image file of a CD. They have to when doing a copy if you only have one drive. In some cases these are their own formats (such as te Nero nrg format), in others they can be "standard" iso format (beware Roxio, who seemes to have decided around version 5 that having a standard made things too easy and apparently started making isos that could only be burned with Roxio software). But I suspect that you would be best off downloading a newer ISO. Bittorrent works and is simple and fast; it would be best to determine why it isn't working for you. If you decide to go back to the mirrors, try starting downloads from several mirrors (into different directories or renaming each) and then look in about ten minutes and kill all but the fastest. But if you do download from a mirror, be sure to download and check the md5 sum. Do not skip this step, it is important.