the way Knoppix works

[Nikolay]

Hello, I am looking for information about the way knoppix works, but all the documentation on a web site is either very old in german, does anyone know a good source for such information?

Thanks

Nikolay

[chris-harry]

ok... i take it you want to know just the basics... for what you are asking...

here is a link to a simular question just asked... [ULR]http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17750[/URL]

some FAQ's

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/General_FAQ


there are some links.... but here is me 2 second how it works explanation...

Everything is contained on the CD (or DVD...), it is compressed on there... its a live CD so, its a temperary Operating System... this means, that everytime you boot it up off the cd, it will load everything onto your RAM and or swap drive partion if you have one... The system first loads the kernal... its like a translator for your computer... the code and you give it commands and it translates them so your computer can read them... its like a rule book too... anyone can correct me... me did get a D+ in english...

the system then loads the linux operating system (once again to ram or swap)... from here, it can either load on more programs, access them etc...

linux works a bit differently from windows... windows is like an automatic car, hardly any control... linux is like a manual, lots of control (anyone can be free to use me expression... i feel smart because i just thought of that... man, see what driving can do)... you have the root (admin) acount and uses etc just like windows... one thing to get your mind around is the mounting... and the way every drive is set out... but there is an obious pattern (you'll hit your self when you reconise it)...

linux mounts drives by the way...

ok... i proberly havent answered what you asked... with me little how it works that seems jumbled up and out of order... but hay... hopefully i have done something... yeah, some of the documentation is in german... but hay, thats why we have google... free and reliable translator...

[Nikolay]

Thanks I am also looking for information for example which folders it does copy to the RAM or SWAP, plus which folders are responsible for what. like /etc/skel for example and so on.)

Thanks

Nikolay

[chris-harry]

well, its like the commands... it may not make sence at first... but after a while you see a patern...

nearly everything is copied to the Ram or Swap... (this is if you dont have a hard drive installed version, but we'll tell you about that later)... i really dont know what goes where... sorry about that....

the folders... ok simple as... you have the folder /home/ which is the equivilant as my documents, it contains every user on the computer (not in all cases, but once again... lets keep this simple)... for example... /home/chris-harry/ is where i keep all me documents... after that /home/chris-harry/.kde/ holds all me information about KDE desktop, etc... most information about the user is kept under the users name...very useful...

/dev/ holds every possible drive location... once again, if you look in this file and see 10 billion links... they are each like a different drive... even though many dont exist... but they are there just incase... the one advantage linux has above windows is that it can support lots more drives/cd-rom etc at the one time...

/mnt/ is where are the known drives are and the mounted ones... see the pattern of the names yet???

/root/ where the root information is kept...

now, if any one is reading this, and find i said something worng... plesae correct me... thanks...

there are other folders and that... and if you are always really interested, just click on them and see whats inside... thats what i do... its great fun getting lost... now while your here, can you please tell me where the toilet is...

[OErjan]

i am just going to point out that any file, folder... with a dot infront of the name (like .KDE above) is "hidden".
another important thing to know is that linux makes diference between regular and CAPPITAL letters.
this means text.txt, Text.txt teXt.txt )or any other combination of large small letters) is NOT same, in linux that is 3 diferent files.

[chris-harry]

hmm... i just learnt something... the dot infront of the file is hidden... hmm... you do learn things every day...

[OErjan]

both of you might benefit from lerning some console "moves" in linux, for that i would recomend
http://floppix.com/labs.html
it is not too long for a "textmode linux" tutorial, it is actually fairly thuroug in only 75 printed pages or so (well worth printing out, and i mean it)
there they explan that about "dotfiles" and quite a bit more,

[Nikolay]

Thanks guys, got to know quite a few things, which was taking for granted, means using without understanding what is it exactly.) everyday learn a new things
I am also looking for a detailed way how Knoppix starts : like it is described on this page
http://www.geocities.com/potato.geo/bootlinuxcd.html

The CD is installed with ISOLINUX, so it boots first.
ISOLINUX loads the kernel from the /isolinux directory on the CD.
ISOLINUX now loads the initrd.gz compressed ext2 file system. Its important to note that ISOLINUX loads this, and not the kernel. The kernel will grab it later.
The kernel starts up and eventually decompresses the initrd.gz to ram (in /dev/ram0 actually) and mounts it as root. You have to enable INITRD and Ram disk support in the kernel to have this happen.
The kernel tries to execute the /linuxrc file in the new root filesystem (because its an 'initrd').
The linuxrc program tries to mount the CDROM (It has to make a few guesses to work out where it is), then copies a compressed 'real' root filesystem from the CD into /dev/ram1. We mount the new filesystem just so we can add a softlink in its /dev directory for the CD (so we don't have to work out where the CD is again).
When the linuxrc script finishes, control returns to the kernel and it attempts to mount its configured root filesystem. In this case, I've rdev'd the kernel to make it use /dev/ram1 as the root filesystem. This will mount our newly created ram based root file system

does it apply to Knoppix as well?

Thanks

Nikolay