how to mount KNOPPIX image without booting

**throwaway** · 07-10-2007, 01:12 AM

How can I decompress and mount the KNOPPIX image from a knoppix CD when not running knoppix?

I would like to use my knoppix CD in cases where I need known-good utilities to investigate a computer that may have been cracked. It seems to me there ought to be a way to do a loopback mount of something from the CD to make Knoppix's /bin and /sbin usable without actually rebooting (which would most likely destroy most of the stuff I am trying to get a peek at). But I can't figure out what/how to mount.

My best guess is that I need to mount KNOPPIX (full path on my system is /media/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX when I insert knoppix CD under my regular OS, not booting from CD) and that this is a compressed iso9660 image. It's apparently not in gzip format, nor is it plain iso9660, or at least I can't get zcat to deal with it or mount to mount it if I use -t iso9660. Could someone give me a hint how this should work? Is it even possible?

If this approach is bogus, is there some other way to make the software on the knoppix CD accessible, other than rebooting? Or should I just burn a CD that has what I want on it and not try to use knoppix?

Thanks,

Dave

tr · 07-11-2007, 08:59 AM

Mounting KNOPPIX file is easy IF you have cloop module installed in your hard disk.

Code:

# mount -o loop knoppix.iso  /mnt
# modprobe cloop
# losetup /dev/cloop0 /mnt/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX
# mount /dev/cloop0 /mnt
mount: block device /dev/cloop0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

To unmount you must do following:

Code:

# umount /mnt
# losetup -d /dev/cloop0
# umount /mnt

-tapsa-

**HoverHell** · 07-20-2007, 02:39 PM

What about cloop module on newer kernels? It doesn't compile on 2.6.22 (and, AFAIK, 2.6.20 too). Are there no alternative? cloop seems to be pretty outdated.

tr · 07-20-2007, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by HoverHell

What about cloop module on newer kernels? It doesn't compile on 2.6.22 (and, AFAIK, 2.6.20 too). Are there no alternative? cloop seems to be pretty outdated.

Yes, even cloop-2.06 dosn't work with 2.6.22 kernels. Klaus Knopper tries to get a working version of, so we must wait some time.

But cloop-2.05 works fine with 2.6.21* kernels. Perhaps you would like to try my kernel:
http://linux.ilmainen.net/suomiknoppix/linux-2.6.21.6/
You can download cloop-src from Debian testing by Apt if you like to compile kernel yourself.

-tapsa-