Quote Originally Posted by utu View Post
I'm sure Synaptic is not the only way to crash, just the latest one I've found.
From what you have described, it's obvious that this is just a disk full problem. It's not a nasty low lever driver bug, corruption or something like that. As with all disk full, it's hard to guarantee any write or saving will be at a consistent or atomic state. But if you use synaptic, it has certain degree of protection against package inconsistencies. There is not too much you can expect out of this, except just to allow more space for it.

What could constitute an issue to KNOPPIX is that, when KNOPPIX is designed to work with low capacity flash, disk full happens a lot more frequently; and when it happens, it should not put itself in a state where you can't boot anymore. A total failure to boot to me is kind of unacceptable, for something which is designed to work on flash.

Nevertheless what I have written prior to this ( #2, #4 ) are still applicable, if only one is interested to have protection over such behaviour. Recovery without wiping out everything is certainly possible, and that has been covered in some other threads.

Cheers