install to flash not complete

[John Hart]

I have been trying to install Knoppix 6.7 to a 4GB flash pen drive (Kingston). I have gone through
the procedure many times (>10) and have not been able to get a working system. I have tried the
install with just a single partition on the drive, and with multiple partitions.

Here is what I am seeing when I run flash-knoppix:

1. I get a prompt asking if I want to format the drive. I click yes - okay
2. I get a message that the partition is being formatted.
3. I get a message to the effect that a boot track is being written.
4. I get a message that data is being written. The progress bar goes to 75% and I get the
installation complete prompt.

When I reboot the computer, the drive is not recognized in the BIOS. I assume because the BIOS is
not seeing the device as bootable.

I have the same results when I try to install Knoppix 6.2 . Does anybody have a suggestion that will
help me out. I used to have a working Knoppix 3.6 but it broke. Had no problems when I installed
3.6

Thanks,
John

[utu]

...
When I reboot the computer, the drive is not recognized in the BIOS. I assume because the BIOS is
not seeing the device as bootable.
...

Greetings, John Hart.

One possibility is your computer's priority for booting different media.
If it's set to HDD first, it may never look farther than that, for example.

Usually you can change this priority in 'bios settings'.

[Werner P. Schulz]

When I reboot the computer, the drive is not recognized in the BIOS. I assume because the BIOS is not seeing the device as bootable.

Many computers with old BIOS cannot boot from USB. It is not a fault of Knoppix.
With Knoppix 6.7.1 you can use a bootonly CD; this can find and start your flash Installation. With my scripts you can also obtain a Boot-CD.

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD (Knoppix V6.7.1 remaster)

[John Hart]

Well, in the past, I was able to see the device in the boot priority list. It no longer shows up in that list. I have reset the BIOS to factory defaults but that did not help. I also tried to use the cheat code, knoppix boot=/dev/sdb1 (that is my flash drive), and that did not work. The load continued from the CD. Is there a problem with the fact that the knoppix-flash install only completed 75% ?

One more thing. I tried the flash drive on another computer that DID detect the device, but it would not run.

John

[Werner P. Schulz]

Perhaps your flash drive is damaged.

[utu]

Hey again John & Hi, Werner.

1. Was your 3.6 a LiveCD, a full-install or a LiveUSB?

2. If you have allocated a lot of Mb to persistence, Knoppix will take
a long time to prepare this. Is it possible that you aren't waiting
long enough for this to complete?

[John Hart]

You might be right. I just ran TestDisk, in Windows, and there are several warnings. They warnings and messages are as follows:

Warning: Incorrect number of heads/cylinder 124 <FAT> != 255 <HD>
Warning: Incorrect number of sectors per track 62 <FAT> != 63 <HD>
1 * FAT32 LBA 0 32 33 486 250 20 7821312
Warning: Bad ending cylinder <CHS and LBA don't match>

The * FAT32 would indicate that the drive is bootable, but apparently there is some problem with the installation.
Again I wonder about the fact that when flash-knoppix is writing data it only gets to about 75%. Should it not get to 100% ?
And would a damaged flash pen drive be the cause or might there be a problem with my live CD?
The CD appears to run okay but maybe there is a problem with some part of the CD. Will running knoppix testcd at the boot prompt
detect any problems with the live CD ?

I appreciate the assistance.
John

[John Hart]

In response to utu , the 3.6 was a LiveCD. After booting it I was able to install to a flash drive. Please see my post regarding warnings when I used TestDisk (Windows) to look at the drive.

Perhaps I should buy a new flash pen drive. It is several years old and may have some problems.

[John Hart]

It would appear that the flash drive may not be getting formatted correctly so maybe the drive is bad.
I assume that the warnings I referred to earlier are indicating that the device is not properly formatted and so
the bios does not detect it as a "hard drive". Normally the flash disk would show up in the boot list as USB-HDD0.
Guess I will buy a new flash drive and see what happens.

I ran knoppix testcd at the boot prompt and the CD checks out as okay.

John

[John Hart]

I bought a new USB flash drive. Went through the procedure and have the same results. TestDisk shows essentially the same warnings. The USB
flash drive is not showing up in the boot list as USB-HDD0. At this point I have to assume that something is going wrong with the installation procedure.
Why else would the install only be completing 75% of the data writing? This is really frustrating!

John