I successfully used the English CD ISO to boot Knoppix 6.2.1 on VMware Fusion 2.0.6 (on Mac OS X 10.6.2), but using it without vmware-tools installed is pretty clunky. I'd like to install vmware-tools, but it's an exercise in futility if I can't get some kind of persistence! I tried the HDD install despite the caveats, but it wouldn't even boot (complaining about "unable to mount root fs on unknown block").

Then I tried reformatting the ReiserFS partition to FAT32 and installing to it as if it were a flash device, or even making a persistent image on an existing physical flash drive and copying its /KNOPPIX directory to the virtual hard drive, but every time I tried to boot from it (either directly or from the Live CD w/ "knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda2") (there's swap in /dev/sda1) it would get as far as the multicolored MICROKNOPPIX and say "Waiting (USB)" until it finally fails to mount /mnt-system.

I verified that fromhd works in certain circumstances, for example when actually rebooting my physical Macbook and booting the Knoppix Live CD I burned, then using fromhd with my physical USB drive (this uses the USB drive for everything, including the persistent image, as expected). But for some reason Knoppix insists upon loading from a USB drive when this cheat code is used, regardless of which device it was actually passed.

The only thing left to try (though this would likely work) is attempting to remaster with vmware-tools installed, but that just seems rather heavy-handed. Plus I'd have to do it again if I ever wanted to install anything else. I mean, I could use VMware Fusion's "suspend" function as a poor man's persistence, but I think you have to full-on reboot to use vmware-tools properly, which of course trashes the vmware-tools install. Any other ideas?