Quote Originally Posted by kl522 View Post
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.