Knoppix 3.9 hdinstall - Confused!

**jayzon915** · 04-20-2006, 05:29 PM

Hey Knoppix World!

I am completely new to the whole knoppix deal. I downloaded Knoppix 3.9
several months ago and absolutely love it. I use it off and on to just mess
around. Here recently however i decided I would like to install it to my
Hard Drive. Being a newbie I looked everywhere on the internet and found
many different ways to do this. Is there any way someone could walk me through
this? I've heard that 3.9 has some problems and itd be better to update but i would
rather not because it takes FOREVER to download another version.

Any gelp would be appreciated. Thanx

-jayson

**jayzon915** · 04-20-2006, 05:33 PM

Oh yeah. I have a Compaq Presario with Athlon XP 2400+ running windows XP. I'd like to dual boot knoppix off another hard drive. I have a 12GB hard drive and a 40GB Hard Drive both black formatted Fat32.

**dvryknopper** · 04-20-2006, 06:25 PM

It is not recomended that you go through with the hd install of knoppix, try downloading kanotix, it is a distro largely based from knoppix with more debian packages to make it more suitable for life on the hd. First thing I would need to know though, are both drives "normal" internal hard drives or are one of them a usb drive, and which drive would you like to install onto and which hard drive has your windows partition and how many gigs of space is used?

**Harry Kuhman** · 04-20-2006, 06:36 PM

I generally don't keep posting the warning not to install Knoppix every time someone states that they intend to do it in spite of the warnings. But while Kanotix does avoid some of the known problems with installing Knoppix, I don't see any compelling reason for installing it and it's selection of Debian applications, when you could just install Debian and install exactly the applications you want with the Debian package system.

**dvryknopper** · 04-20-2006, 08:12 PM

The reason I chose Kanotix is because it has many of the same packages that come with knoppix pre-installed on it. For me when I installed it, I found it to be more newbie friendly because it allows for use of much of the same application without having to apt-get them. I just found Kanotix to be helpful to me as a newbie, I'm not saying pure Debian is at all bad, or that Kanotix is only for newbies but I am saying that the package similarity makes it easier for users (in my experience) who were (re)introduced to linux/unix by Knoppix like I was.

**Harry Kuhman** · 04-20-2006, 09:03 PM

Learning apt-get is extremely simple (apt-get update then apt-get install packagename) and a skill anyone who is installing a Debian based Linux will want to learn quickly anyway. Years ago people saw Knoppix and asked why can't the Debian installer be this smart and do the hardware detection for me. Well, the developers listened and modern versions of Debian like Etch detect hardware as well as Knoppix, and it is much less problem prone. I still see no reason, if one is going to do a hard disk install, to not go ahead and install real Debian. Any learning one has to do, like learning to use agp-get, will be will worth it and better than hiding from those important steps with a Live CD installed on hard disk. Of course, if someone really wants to install Kantonix, I have no problem with that. But if they want to install Knoppix in spite of the warnings and then come to the forums asking the same questions that have been asked over and over again, or bad mouth Knoppix because their install is awful, then I consider the advice of Nelson and Mr. T.

**irlandes** · 04-21-2006, 04:03 AM

Well, Harry, I cetainly can give reasons for installing a distro THEY HAVE ALREADY TRIED ON THEIR MACHINE, rather than install one they haven't tried on their machine. I gotta' wonder. When you buy a pair of shoes, do you try on several, then deliberately buy a pair you haven't tried on because someone tells you that is logical? I would be surprised to hear that. But, that is essentially what you are telling them.

I do agree not to install Knoppix, but I go farther and also recommend they don't even try Knoppix as a live CD. A lot of people are being attracted to Linux by Live CD's and it is totally logical that after trying a distro and liking it, one would consider installing it. Thus, they should be warned to avoid Knoppix completely. There are too many good Live CD's that will install and run well if they run as a Live CD.

Of course, I also know people who have installed Knoppix and it serves them well. The real problem is the forum dedicated to Knoppix doesn't want to help those who have problems with it, and even discourages those who would be willing to help, and Knopper really did not work on the Install utility as others have, though most problems are fixable on most machines.

OP, try pclinuxos and I suspect you will find it actually works better as a Live CD then Knoppix -- unless it fails to work on your specific machine. I realize there is a long download involved, but you can see you will not get anywhere here. pclinuxos has a tremendous amount of help pages on their homepage.

**Harry Kuhman** · 04-21-2006, 04:50 AM

Originally Posted by irlandes

.... cetainly can give reasons for installing a distro THEY HAVE ALREADY TRIED ON THEIR MACHINE, rather than install one they haven't tried on their machine. I gotta' wonder. When you buy a pair of shoes, do you try on several, then deliberately buy a pair you haven't tried on because someone tells you that is logical? I would be surprised to hear that. But, that is essentially what you are telling them.

By that logic, anyone who ever tries a Live CD version of Linux should never install a version like Debian that is intended for hard disk, because they have tried live CD versions but not tried Debian before installing it. That makes no sense at all. Why should everyone who has used a Live CD suffer the extra bloat of a Live CD even after installed to hard disk, when they could install Debian, the distro that the live CD is based on and reflects, instead?

Originally Posted by irlandes

I do agree not to install Knoppix, but I go farther and also recommend they don't even try Knoppix as a live CD. A lot of people are being attracted to Linux by Live CD's and it is totally logical that after trying a distro and liking it, one would consider installing it. Thus, they should be warned to avoid Knoppix completely. ...

Well, that logic only makes sense if one accepts the first argument and only ever installs live CDs. But with so many Live CD based on Debian, and even other Linux distros based on Debian, I take the opposite approach. I give away Knoppix CDs but tell people it's a great way to try Linux, to learn a little about Linux and see if they like it, but if they want Linux installed to a hard disk they should use the now easy to install Debian installer and install Debian, and get exactly what they want, not a bloat of stuff that was just thrown on the disc to make a Live CD or worse Live DVD for everyone. By that logic Knoppix is a much better choice of a CD to hand out than most, precisely since it is such a bad choice to install to hard disk.

Originally Posted by irlandes

Of course, I also know people who have installed Knoppix and it serves them well. The real problem is the forum dedicated to Knoppix doesn't want to help those who have problems with it, and even discourages those who would be willing to help, and Knopper really did not work on the Install utility as others have, though most problems are fixable on most machines.

The Debian forum certainly doesn't want to hear from anyone who installs Knoppix and calles it Debian. There are plenty of people who help others who are determined to install Knoppix in the Knoppix forum, and I have never seen anyone say anything like "Don't help him, he brought this on himself". But several of us do try to let new users know that Knoppix is not well suited for a hard disk install, particularly by new users, and suggest that they look at a Debian install. I can't understand the logic in fighting with a Live CD install when you have never looked at a modern Debian install. If you are making an informed choice to install a Live Distro over Debian that is one thing, if you are just following the first thing that you saw when you hatched like a baby goose that's not an informed choice. Sure, most problems are fixable on most machines, but they shouldn't even be there and most problems are not fixable by new Linux users. It is ceratinly unfortunate that the Knoppix installer keep having the same problems like the network not working after install year after year after year, but perhaps it is more unfortunate that a buggy installer was included at all.

Originally Posted by irlandes

OP, try pclinuxos and I suspect you will find it actually works better as a Live CD then Knoppix -- unless it fails to work on your specific machine. I realize there is a long download involved, but you can see you will not get anywhere here. pclinuxos has a tremendous amount of help pages on their homepage.

Long downloads don't bother me, my machine can do that while I sleep. I have not tried pclinuxos and perhaps will give it a look. You have not made it clear though what it does better than Knoppix, I would be interested to hear why you prefer it.

**NuxIT** · 04-21-2006, 10:40 AM

Rather then go on a lengthy rant about why not to install Knoppix to the HDD I'll let you know how I did it. After you boot to the CD and when your sitting at the boot: prompt before knoppix loads.. Type
knoppix lang=us 2

The 2 after us will tell knoppix to boot to the command line instead of the GUI. If you do boot to the GUI you can just hit ctrl-alt-F1 (I think) to have it shut down the GUI to a sudo enabled command prompt. Heres the important part that had me stumped for a while. The newest dirtribution Hard disk install command is knoppix-installer

Bam, that will launch the installer and your off. I choose the Debian load since the knoppix load is a little more resource and disk instensive. It still looks just like knoppix and works all the same. It's a great load and I'm really happy with knoppix on my old POS PII 366 laptop. It made windows network file sharing/printing a breeze.. Soooo much better then other linux distros I've used for getting things up and running. For me this is as close to Linux can get to becoming mainstream due to its ease of use. I spent hours trying to figure out how to get the Mandriva 2006 load to properly mount a CD-ROM.. Now that's ghey and a waste of time. Let the stupid OS mount the CD"s so I can get on to learning about the cooler things linux has to offer. YMMV and goodluck.

**jayzon915** · 04-21-2006, 02:35 PM

Well I didn't mean to piss everyone off. Thank You NuxIT! I figured that out last night but at least someone answered my question. It shouldn't matter what I use, I just asked a question and you guys just beat around the bush confusing me even more. I had my Knoppic Cd and I enjoyed it. Why did everyone else have to have a say in my descision? I just wanted to install it.. I don't want to download a different one. I LOVED KNOPPIX. not debian or Kanotix or PClinuxos. I just wanted to know how to install KNOPPIX. SPECIFICALLY KNOPPIX. But thanx. I got it. "Sudo Knoppix-installer"

So here is a new problem see if i can anger some other people.
I have three 40GB hard Drives

Primary-Master 5GB for XPas C:\ ; 35GB for Storage as D:\
Primary-Slave 40GB for storage as G:\
Secondary-Master 8GB with Knoppix Installed ; 500MB swap partition (when i boot this primary master Knoppix will completely load fine)
Secondary-Slave DVD-RW

Now I have "Grub" installled and can load windows but not knoppix in this setup but i don't know what i need to put on the menu.lst so Knoppix will boot.
So now i pose this question... On the grub bootloader what do i need to put to load Knoppix?