improper shutdown - root unionfs and power off

[krishna.murphy]

By the way, this is a hard disk install, ie the ( remastered ) readonly compressed rootfs is sitted on the ntfs
harddisk.

I have myself to blame if it is my ( remaster/customization ) fault. But if I remember correctly, since day one of
using vanilla knoppix 6.2, the knoppix-data.img was never unmounted properly which resulted in the need
to fsck when booted ( the fsck is coded in minirt.gz).

I don't have a file knoppix-data.img in my setup; knoppix-data.aes is in my KNOPPIX folder (which comes from the "poor mans install" only, I think), an encrypted "persistent store" that is merged with the KNOPPIX file in that folder to become the effective filesystem. The difference is most likely due to hd-install nature of your setup.

Cheers!
Krishna

[kl522]

I don't have a file knoppix-data.img in my setup; knoppix-data.aes is in my KNOPPIX folder (which comes from the "poor mans install" only, I think), an encrypted "persistent store" that is merged with the KNOPPIX file in that folder to become the effective filesystem. The difference is most likely due to hd-install nature of your setup.

Cheers!
Krishna

I was able to repeat this problem with vanilla knoppix 6.2. I haven't concluded what is the reason yet, but this is how I repeat it, so some of the information given here might be spurious or unimportant :-

1. Install knoppix onto a flash using knoppix 6.2 Live CD.
2. The flash is > 1G, knoppix will create it as 2 partitions.
knoppix-data.img will be stored in the first partition (VFAT),
directory /mnt-system/KNOPPIX.
3. I chose the maximum size of the knoppix-data.img, which
I think it is roughly ~300 M.
4. Test boot a few times, knoppix-data.img was cleanly unmounted.

Moving on :-
5. I re-create the second partition as ntfs, and copy the
entire KNOPPIX directory (together with knoppix-data.img ),
and rename the existing KNOPPIX directory to KNOPPIX.bak
( All these performed offline )
6. Then I reboot the system, now /mnt-system is sit on /dev/sda2.
I check knoppix-data.img to see if it is unmounted cleanly,
yet it did.

Moving on :-
7. I increased the size of knoppix-data.img to much bigger ( 2.5G),
can copy a huge /home directory ( about 800 M ) to knoppix-data.img
file system. Again all these performed offline.
8. Now test boot/reboot, knoppix-data.img is never cleanly unmounted
after that ( even though I e2fsck on it each time I repeat test ).

Now I am not sure if a huge knoppix-data.img which is causing the problem,
or there are something in the /home which causes it to be unable to unmount
properly.

[krishna.murphy]

I was able to repeat this problem with vanilla knoppix 6.2. I haven't concluded what is the reason yet, but this is how I repeat it, so some of the information given here might be spurious or unimportant :-

1. Install knoppix onto a flash using knoppix 6.2 Live CD.

How did you do this - using the built-in flash install utility?

2. The flash is > 1G, knoppix will create it as 2 partitions.

My flash is 8GB, and the file system seems to be VFAT with but one partition, FWIW.

knoppix-data.img will be stored in the first partition (VFAT),
directory /mnt-system/KNOPPIX.
3. I chose the maximum size of the knoppix-data.img, which
I think it is roughly ~300 M.
4. Test boot a few times, knoppix-data.img was cleanly unmounted.

Great - problem solved.

Moving on :-
5. I re-create the second partition as ntfs, and copy the
entire KNOPPIX directory (together with knoppix-data.img ),
and rename the existing KNOPPIX directory to KNOPPIX.bak
( All these performed offline )
6. Then I reboot the system, now /mnt-system is sit on /dev/sda2.
I check knoppix-data.img to see if it is unmounted cleanly,
yet it did.

Moving on :-
7. I increased the size of knoppix-data.img to much bigger ( 2.5G),
can copy a huge /home directory ( about 800 M ) to knoppix-data.img
file system. Again all these performed offline.
8. Now test boot/reboot, knoppix-data.img is never cleanly unmounted
after that ( even though I e2fsck on it each time I repeat test ).

Now I am not sure if a huge knoppix-data.img which is causing the problem,
or there are something in the /home which causes it to be unable to unmount
properly.

Maybe it would be worth trying ext2 or ext3 filesystems instead of the always warned-against NTFS.

[kl522]

Maybe it would be worth trying ext2 or ext3 filesystems instead of the always warned-against NTFS.

For the purpose of testing and getting down to the bottom of things, yes I tested using ext2 on partition 2, and yes, now it is unmounted cleanly.

Testing aside, in my actual setup, because my flash is a slower device compared to hard disk, that's why I chose to 'host' knoppix-data.img on an existing NTFS harddisk/partition ( and I want to retain by original NTFS ). It's a lot faster than doing it on a flash. But this testing also revealed that there is indeed a problem with hosting knoppix-data.img on NTFS.

[krishna.murphy]

For the purpose of testing and getting down to the bottom of things, yes I tested using ext2 on partition 2, and yes, now it is unmounted cleanly.

Testing aside, in my actual setup, because my flash is a slower device compared to hard disk, that's why I chose to 'host' knoppix-data.img on an existing NTFS harddisk/partition ( and I want to retain by original NTFS ). It's a lot faster than doing it on a flash. But this testing also revealed that there is indeed a problem with hosting knoppix-data.img on NTFS.

Thanks for sharing the results of all your testing and glad it's working for you! I use NTFS on my hd, too, and it always unmounts cleanly unless the system crashes. In fact it's the same setup as my flash: ~4GB for the KNOPPIX OS files, 2GB for my knoppix-data.aes, and the rest for Windows/shared files. FWIW, I looked around a lot before I got the flash, and I'm pretty happy with it - a very fast and reliable Verbatim TUFF-'N'-TINY 8GB, though it's not quite as fast as a hard drive.

Cheers!
Krishna

[kl522]

Your setup is similar but no exactly the same, the key difference is that you are hosting the knoppix-data.xxx on VFAT, whereas my knoppix-data.xxx is hosted on the NTFS. It would be interesting if you could make a copy of your /mnt-system/KNOPPIX directory onto the NTFS and rename your existing KNOPPIX directory on the VFAT to KNOPPIX.bak ( you would have to do it offline ) - just to see if it is repeatable.

Anyway I would look into /etc/init.d/knoppix-halt in greater detail to see if I could umount the rootfs which is aufs2-ed onto the NTFS.

Regards.