persistence to HD when booting from DVD

[sstraw]

I'm fine with running a script after startup, if aufs can be merged in that way. Ultimately though, if I must remaster the DVD ISO, I still only want to have to remaster it to add support for an HD based persistence file.

Is persistence without a tohd install really a capability nobody else was using before?

[kl522]

Is persistence without a tohd install really a capability nobody else was using before?

I think so. If you look at the script 'init' inside minirt.gz, you will understand knoppix operations a lot better.
( Google around for remaster knoppix thingie, you will find some doc about how to view/modify minirt.gz. Basically 'minirt.gz' is a gzipped cpio archive. ).

Somewhere inside the script 'init', there is a function mountdata(). I would suggest you modify it. Right now, KNOPPIX only looks for knoppix-data.img under /mnt-system/KNOPPIX directory ( the /mnt-system is where KNOPPIX is located, so in your case, it's the DVD), so you can very simply modify it to look for knoppix-data.img at any other locations of your choice. This will likely be the only place you need to modify to accomplish what you want to do.

[sstraw]

I've been in minirt.gz several times. Enough to know that the older versions were ext fs, while the newer ones in 6.x are cpio.

I've already seen where I could for instance, add KNOPPIXn.IMG files to have them automatically be mounted in a stack below the ramdrive aufs. However, all of those would be mounted _read_only_, not rw. Not what I'm looking for.

I'd like to know the aufs syntax I'd be using is legit. The absence of an aufs manpage is curious (no mount.aufs, or aufs mention in the mount manpage either).

I guess I'd use getbootparam (shell script function) to grab the parameters from the kernel commandline and check for something like "persist", and just reinstate some selected code from 5.x (with necessary changes of course).

Was just really hoping someone had already gone down that road.

[kl522]

I've already seen where I could for instance, add KNOPPIXn.IMG files to have them automatically be mounted in a stack below the ramdrive aufs. However, all of those would be mounted _read_only_, not rw. Not what I'm looking for.

I BELIEVE it is because you stack it up too late, after the ramdrive.

Only the first one, is stacked as rw, anything stacked up later will become readonly. When the script 'init' inside minirt.gz found a knoppix-data.img, it will mount it as the first one, thereby making it readwrite (it will skip mounting the ramdrive in this case). If you do these things as a script after booting, the ramdrive is already mounted as the first one, you missed the chance.

That's what I deduced by looking through the script. I might be wrong.

[krishna.murphy]

Here are some cheatcodes that may be helpful:

knoppix nonetworkmanager            Don't start network manager
knoppix home=/dev/sda1/knoppix.img  Mount loopback file for overlay
knoppix toram                       Copy to RAM and run from there
knoppix tohd=/dev/sda1              Copy to Harddisk and run from there
knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda1            Boot from previously copied CD-Image
knoppix bootfrom=/dev/sda1/KNX.iso  Access image, boot from ISO-Image. ***)
knoppix knoppix_dir=KNOPPIX         Directory to search for on the CD. 
knoppix knoppix_name=KNOPPIX        Cloop-File to search for on the CD.
knoppix noswap                      Don't use existing swap partitions
knoppix forensic                    Don't use swap and mount read-only
knoppix secure                      Disable root access
knoppix noimage                     Do NOT use persistent image

Cheers!
Krishna

[kl522]

Here are some cheatcodes that may be helpful:

Instead of giving us a vague reply that some of the cheatcodes may be helpful, maybe you want to enlighten us specifically which one(s) are helpful.

The cheatcode 'home=something' looks promising but I wonder anyone has every tried it for KNOPPIX 6.2.X and 6.3, because I could not find a single thing in the related scripts which implements this cheatcode. In other words, this cheatcode is not implemented for the mentioned KNOPPIX versions. It should be removed from all the documentation.