Hope this is the right section of forum to place my question.

1) I installed successfully (pivot_root) knoppix 5.0.1 on external usb/firewire hd (sda6).

2) Exited knoppix and launched my Debian Etch.

3) Placed sda6 on fstab of Debian Etch (planning to keep sda6 updated with my data files) and mounted sda6. Then, copied my data files and special applications to my home on sda6.

4) Exited Debian Etch.

5) Launched knoppix pivot_root. Openoffice opens my files (even impress) although ownership is root root.

QUESTION: I am a little confused about the bash use of knoppix pivot_root, because the konsole (or terminal window) only operates as user. The prompt is of the type

sh-3.1#

unusual for a Debian user. Commanding "exit" closes the terminal window instead of providing the user prompt. Well, that may be intrinsic to the installation and I have to learn ho to use it.

6) I tried to run a molecular modeling program that makes part of the applications mentioned above at (3). That was transferred as a self-contained directory, which includes all libraries except perhaps for graphics, see the following). I set the environmental variables:

PCM_DIR="home/francesco/<application>"
export PCM_DIR
PATH="/home/francesco/<application>:$PATH"; export PATH

which failed to launch

#<application>

returning
"command not found"
The same occurred while sitting in the directory containing the executable. And changing the ownership to user "framcesco"

#chown -R francesco /home/francesco/<directory_name>

did not help: "command not found".

QUESTION: I wonder whether I did silly mistakes or what? The executable was there, so that unaccepted environmental variables, if any, were turned around. I expected that libraries for its OpenGL graphics were not found, nonetheless the command <application>, which is the executable, should have been acknowledged.

Hope the trick is discovered and thanks a lot for considering my problem in the general frame of running applications with knoppix.

Cheers

francesco