SCSI hard drive detection and Screen resolution

[Dan Connell]

I am using Knoppix 3.2-2000-04-15-EN on a CD. I verified the md5 checksums of the ISO image before burning the CD. I have two computers at work and have tried Knoppix on both of them. One works great but the other is having some problems.

My problem computer is a HP Vectra VL800 DT which is running MS Windows 2000 Pro (service pack 3) and has a ViewSonic VG181 LCD monitor (native resolution 1280x1024) with an ATI Fire GL2 video adapter (chip type: IBM RC1000 256-bit / IBM GT1000). The Vectra was set up with the FAT32 file system and a floppy drive.

The two problems I have running Knoppix from a CD on my Vectra are:
1) My SCSI hard drive (Quantum Atlas10K2-TY184L, FAT32 file system) is not automatically mounted in KDE -- I'm not sure if it is even getting recognized by Knoppix, and
2) The only way I have been able to get KDE to appear is to use the following cheat codes knoppix xserver=XF86_SVGA vga=normal. Otherwise, I get the message

You passed an undefined mode number.

The screen then blanks out a few times and I end up with Linux in text mode and another error message

No suitable x-server found for your card.

Unfortunately, when KDE does comes up using the cheat codes knoppix xserver=XF86_SVGA vga=normal everything is grainy and HUGE. When I go into the KDE Control Center --> Peripherals --> Display, the screen resolution is listed as 640x480/75Hz, Color Depth: 8. But when I click on "Screen" to change the settings, another window appears showing the Resolution as 1600x1200/60Hz, Color Depth: 24, and Virtual desktop: Not used. When I change and save the settings to be what I want them to be, I get a message saying that the new configuration was successfully saved and that I will have to restart my session for the changes to take effect. But I haven't found a successful way to do this.

Saving my configuration to a floppy disk at this point and rebooting with the cheat code knoppix floppyconfig doesn't give me the new screen settings; Adding one of the screen size cheat codes doesn't help; and Using Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a console and then entering init 2 and after KDE closes out using init 5 to reopen KDE doesn't get KDE to use the new configuration either.

Can anyone point me in the right direction so I can resolve these problems? Thanks in advance for any help.

[Dan Connell]

I found a post in the forum that gave about three different commands that could be used to see if Knoppix was recognizing my SCSI hard drive. Unfortunately, I didn't write down what they were as I was trying them. I did find out that my SCSI had been detected and was listed as "sda2".

Using some other posts, I tried the following:

1) Created a directory to use as a mount point
mkdir /mnt/tmp

2) Changed to a text console
<Ctrl><Alt>+F2

3) Opened the "/etc/fstab" file as root using the "joe" editor
joe /etc/fstab

I like the "joe" text editor -- that is once I understood that commands such as "Ctrl-K H" or "^KH" mean to hold down the Control key and while holding it down press the "K" key , then release both keys and press the next key --in this case the "H" key.

4) Added the following line and saved the file
/dev/sda2 /mnt/tmp auto user,auto,exec,rw 0 0

5) Closed the KDE session that I had running
init 2

6) Reopened a KDE session
init 5

I think a desktop icon for the SCSI hard drive was then automatically added to my desktop and I could open my SCSI hard drive but I couldn't save anything to it.

7) I saved my Knoppix configuration to a floppy using all of the options, and then rebooted using the saved configuration
knoppix floppyconfig

Unfortunately, the /mnt/tmp directory that I created was gone, so the desktop icon wouldn't mount my SCSI drive. Is there a way to have Knoppix automatically mount my SCSI drive when I boot from the Knoppix CD?

[Stephen]

I think a desktop icon for the SCSI hard drive was then automatically added to my desktop and I could open my SCSI hard drive but I couldn't save anything to it.

Right click on the icon and deselect the read only and you will be able to write to the drive.

7) I saved my Knoppix configuration to a floppy using all of the options, and then rebooted using the saved configuration
knoppix floppyconfig

Unfortunately, the /mnt/tmp directory that I created was gone, so the desktop icon wouldn't mount my SCSI drive. Is there a way to have Knoppix automatically mount my SCSI drive when I boot from the Knoppix CD?

There should be a /mnt/sda2 already there so if you used this for the mount point when you save your config it should be recognized on re-boot.

I see you edited the fstab was the line for /dev/sda2 not there already and come to think of it no icon on the KDE desktop too before you edited the fstab and re-started KDE?

[Dan Connell]

I see you edited the fstab was the line for /dev/sda2 not there already and come to think of it no icon on the KDE desktop too before you edited the fstab and re-started KDE?

That is correct. Here is contents of the original /etc/fstab:

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
pts /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/auto/floppy auto user,noauto,exec,umask=000 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/auto/cdrom auto user,noauto,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/auto/cdrom1 auto users,noauto,exec,ro 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
noauto,users,exec 0 0

The fstab file only contained lines for my floppy drive and my two CD drives, but nothing for my hard drive. Neither was there an automatic icon on the KDE desktop for my hard drive until after I created the /mnt/tmp file, modified the fstab file as follows, and restarted KDE.

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
pts /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/auto/floppy auto user,noauto,exec,umask=000 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/auto/cdrom auto user,noauto,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/auto/cdrom1 auto users,noauto,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/sda2 /mnt/tmp auto user,auto,exec,rw 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
noauto,users,exec 0 0

Unfortunately the /mnt/tmp file would disappear on reboot as mentioned before.

There should be a /mnt/sda2 already there so if you used this for the mount point when you save your config it should be recognized on re-boot.

I tried changing the mount point to "/mnt/sda2" but received an error message when I tried to mount it telling me it didn't exist. I changed it to "/mnt/auto/sda2" but when I clicked on the icon, my hard drive mounted along with the following "information" message:

mount: /dev/sda2 already mounted or /mnt/auto/sda2 busy

mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda2 is already mounted on /mnt/auto/sda2

But at least I could access the contents and read and write to the hard drive.

I was able to get rid of the "information" message by changing the mount point to "/mnt/auto/sda1", but when I moved my cursor over the list of files on the hard drive, Konqueror crashed. The KDE Crash Handler screen appeared and said that Konqueror had "crashed and caused the signal 11 (SIGSEGV)."

I changed the mount point back to "/mnt/auto/sda2". Thanks for that suggestion. Do you know what I should do to get rid of the "information" message that pops up when I mount my hard drive or how to correct my screen size problem?