USB: "Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry." Worka

[docduke]

Dropping you to a (very limited) shell...
Additional builtin commands available: cat, mount, umount, insmod, rmmod, lsmod.
This is what I see on the screen. I have two questions:

1. minux clearly sees the boot device, since it has gotten this far. Why then can't it see KNOPPIX? I have seen this message before from a CD. I reburned the CD, and the message went away. Now, I've bought Knoppix Hacks 2nd edition, and I've installed Knoppix on a USB using Hack #120. The BIOS finds it, and boots from it. It then reports "Scanning for USB/?Firewire devices ... Done." so it appears to find the USB. Nevertheless, it doesn't find the KNOPPIX file system. How can I get it to find the filesystem? It is now on read-write media, so I can edit files, as necessary.

2. What can I do in this "(very limited) shell"? I have found that ls and mkdir are not available; therefore, I cannot even determine what file structure is present, and I cannot create a mount point. I know the correct device (from a running live CD) is /dev/sdc1. Where can I mount it, and what command can I execute to continue the bootup after mounting it?

Thanks!

P.S. A search on "shell" does not bring up anything relevant, and I haven't seen anything in the FAQs, the KNOPPIX Pocket Reference, or KNOPPIX Hacks that mentions what to do when this error message is displayed.

[docduke]

That was "Workaround." Apparently, the title was too long for this BB software.

I have 3 different BIOSes in 3 computers: (1) American Megatrends (c) 1999 AMIBIOS v 1.22, (2) American Megatrends (c) 2004 v02.58 BIOS and (3) Award Software (c) 2004 v 6.00PG BIOS. For Knoppix 5.1.1, the procedure described in Hack # 120 does not work for any of them. Going to http://syslinux.zytor.com/, and applying ".../win32/syslinux -am" to the USB flash drive after performing the hack, produces a drive that is bootable in only the Award Software BIOS. Adding the "s" option to "am" produces a USB drive that still works in only the one computer, and boots more slowly.

My conclusions are: (A) The hack, which presumably worked in an earlier version of Knoppix, is now broken; and (B) even when the latest version (3.54) of Syslinux is used, the ability to boot off a USB flash drive is so BIOS-dependent, that it is likely to be of limited utility.

[gulliver69]

Hi, and sorry for my english.
I've waited to try the Knoppix release 5.3.1 before to decide to write this POST!!!
It seems that a very strange bug/issue is present into all the 5.x.x releases: if the boot optical drive is a SCSI device (but I presume this is valid for almost EVERY NOT IDE boot devices), during the initialization I receive the following error message: "can't find knoppix filesystem, sorry".
This happens even choosing the no hardware detection and/or the expert option. Sequentially, I can see: the searching for USB/Firewire devices, the DMA activation (if enabled) for the IDE devices and, finally, the HDD and Optical Devices enumeration. Quickly after this last operation, the aforesaid error message appears.
This happens ONLY when I select a SCSI optical device to load Knoppix: my PC1 starts Knoppix 5.x.x without any trouble when I boot Knoppix from an IDE device. I must to say moreover that both the test's machines run Knoppix 4.x.x without issues (but this old release don't recognise the SATA ICH9 and/or the Jmicron IDE CTRLs).
I can suppose that The Knoppix kernel makes, after the mass storage's detection, some kind of device re-enumeration and this operation changes arbitrarly the optical device logical position. After this, Knoppix becomes unable to find again the CD/DVD source.

Below, the test's machines:

PC1 - P4 3.0GHz on Intel D865PERL MB
1.5Gb ram DDR 400
ATI Radeon 9800 AGP
Intel IDE CTRL ICH6 (OnBoard)
IDE DVD-RW Samsung
IDE DVD-RW LG
IDE Maxtor 320Gb P-ATA
Adaptec SCSI CTRL 29160
SCSI HDD 35Gb IBM Deskstar
SCSI CD-RW Yamaha
SCSI CD-Rom Toshiba
Qtec IDE Raid CTRL 320R
IDE HDD Maxtor 20Gb (Backup Unit)
LAN 1Gbit Chipset DP83820


PC2 - Core 2 Duo E6300 on Asus P5K
2Gb ram DDR2 800+
ATI Radeon HD2600 XT PCI-e
Jmicron IDE CTRL (OnBoard)
IDE Maxtor 320Gb P-ATA
IDE Maxtor 120Gb P-ATA
Adaptec SCSI CTRL 29160
SCSI HDD 35Gb IBM Deskstar
SCSI DVD-Rom Pioneer
SCSI CD-RW Plextor
SCSI CD-Rom Plextor
LAN 1Gbit Chipset Attansic L1 (OnBoard)