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I want to know how knoppix detects hard disks drives
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Good question ...

Normally, when the kernel boots, it will get to a stage were it will remount the root file system read/write, then continue on to complete its' initialisation. It needs to do that so it can log the final stage. And it needs to do some sought of 'root' mount in order to find an init program/script to run, to govern its' initialisation.

Before it actually does that remount it will need to read the boot drives partition table. From which it gets its' device mappings. That is ... sector addressing info. It will actually read the partition table associated with any hd plugged in.

I can't be certain as to how it actually detects other dives, such as cd/dvd drives. Possibly by probing, or possibly via the bios.

Thats the general process as per your basic hd installed distro.

Knoppix, being a livecd will obviously involve a variance on that process. It will need to write a fstab file at an early stage so i guess it must also involve some specialised scripting as well.


jm