Poor man's install, with extra storage, on NTFS/Win7

[Werner P. Schulz]

# mount /media/sda2
# rsync -ax /mnt-system/KNOPPIX /media/sda2 &
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/sda2/store.img bs=1M count=60000 &
60000+0 records in
60000+0 records out
62914560000 bytes (63 GB) copied, 682.558 s, 92.2 MB/s
# losetup /dev/loop6 /media/sda2/store.img
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/loop6
# losetup -d /dev/loop6
# mkdir /store
# mount -o loop=/dev/loop6 /media/sda2/store.img /store
# mount /media/sdb2
# rsync -ax /media/sdb2/local/ /store &

You have no 'sdb2' partition; and where does the directory '/local' comes from?

And then you wrote:

After starting from HD, I can manually mount this new image file, or I can add the commands to rc.local.

After starting from HD whith my Windows 7 installed on it, I don't know, how to mount with the tools from Windows7-tools this new image file. And where is the "rc.local" of Windows 7?

Or do you need changes of Windows 7 bootloader or are fiddling with VMServer? If so, I can not see the big advantage of your method in comparison with remastering in a virtual machine on a virtual drive.

[Capricorny]

# mount /media/sda2
# rsync -ax /mnt-system/KNOPPIX /media/sda2 &
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/sda2/store.img bs=1M count=60000 &
60000+0 records in
60000+0 records out
62914560000 bytes (63 GB) copied, 682.558 s, 92.2 MB/s
# losetup /dev/loop6 /media/sda2/store.img
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/loop6
# losetup -d /dev/loop6
# mkdir /store
# mount -o loop=/dev/loop6 /media/sda2/store.img /store
# mount /media/sdb2
# rsync -ax /media/sdb2/local/ /store &

You have no 'sdb2' partition; and where does the directory '/local' comes from?

And then you wrote:After starting from HD whith my Windows 7 installed on it, I don't know, how to mount with the tools from Windows7-tools this new image file. And where is the "rc.local" of Windows 7?

Or do you need changes of Windows 7 bootloader or are fiddling with VMServer? If so, I can not see the big advantage of your method in comparison with remastering in a virtual machine on a virtual drive.

I should have given more details! Thank you for calling attention to it!
The situation was, that I booted from an external USB SSD harddisk, with a (partial) copy of the /store partition on /local. That is one of the ways I keep things in semi-sync between computers, and also quickly test out things on new hardware.

My install is based on booting into Knoppix from external media - optical drive, USB etc. When booting without fromhd= cheat code from a USB stick with this KNOPPIX directory in place on the NTFS partition, Knoppix will find that first, and run from it, "auto-mounting" NTFS. So, just copying the KNOPPIX files and choosing an external boot option with Knoppix, this whole thing will get started. When up and running, we can modify the /etc/rc.local of running Knoppix to automount the /store image.

In fact, Windows doesn't need to know about this at all! No changes to bootloader, nothing in the system setup.

Later on, we may create a /boot partition and install grub - still no change to Windoze bootloader. Setting Win7 as default in grub menu, it will come up as usual - been doing that for years, several computers mostly in WIndows use. I don't want to go into booting Linux from Win bootloader - it can be quite easily done also with Win7, but I don't think it's the best way to proceed.

Remastering is the next step, think I hinted at that. For that purpose, I create another loop-mounted store, 10-35GB according to project, and mount it on a directory /tmp/knx_remaster. Then running a version of Forester's script. But I'll get back to that, it's basically the procedure described by Forester, but run with loop-mounted images off NTFS. It's simple and relatively quick.