Flash to USB installer (experimental) in 7.0.5

[STraute]

Hello ttopp;

But, Does this mean that I am stuck with needing a DVD or a pre configured floppy disk to get the USB booted?

Well, I still don't know why Your PC can boot Spinrite from flash storage but seemingly nothing else. Therefore I don't yet have an answer.

I have a floppy drive if someone would care to share how to get this done.

Sorry, I can't help you there either. The only PC (Laptop) with a floppy drive I still have does not have usable USB ports. But I remember to be able to write boot floppies for/from a Linux Installation on the internal hard disk of that laptop. That was a nice way to preserve boot loaders of other OS on the HDD of the laptop.
Knoppix still comes with the needed tools, I think: fdformat and grub-mkrescue (or grub-mkimage) might be the ticket for that. Perhaps other forum members can help you to find and test a procedure for making a Knoppix 7.0.5 boot floppy?

[ttopp]

Hello ttopp;


Well, I still don't know why Your PC can boot Spinrite from flash storage but seemingly nothing else. Therefore I don't yet have an answer.


Sorry, I can't help you there either. The only PC (Laptop) with a floppy drive I still have does not have usable USB ports. But I remember to be able to write boot floppies for/from a Linux Installation on the internal hard disk of that laptop. That was a nice way to preserve boot loaders of other OS on the HDD of the laptop.
Knoppix still comes with the needed tools, I think: fdformat and grub-mkrescue (or grub-mkimage) might be the ticket for that. Perhaps other forum members can help you to find and test a procedure for making a Knoppix 7.0.5 boot floppy?

Thank you so much. And, the 256MB USB that booted Spinrite had a FreeDOS on it -if I hadn't mentioned it-, prior to now. I apologize, I thought I covered all the particulars. I last used LILO so I am now off to read up on, grub? Thank you.

[deviouswun]

As a new user to Knoppix, and Linux in general, I could not get Knoppix 7.0.5 (Experimental) to install on my USB due to the error message saying that the overlay must be set at 400MB.

I read Straute’sposts, 11 and 21, over and over trying as a FNG to understand what he was advising Philo to do and most importantly, how to do it. So with the little UNIX knowledge I have, I ventured down the following path.

To apply this fix/patch I used vi editor. Google “vi editor commands” if you’re not familiar with vi

1- Open a terminal window and at the “knoppix@Microknoppix:-$” prompt type su then hit[Enter]
2- At the “root@Microknoppix:/home/knoppix#” prompt type “cd /usr/bin” hit [Enter]
3- At the next prompt type “vi flash-knoppix2 [Enter]
4- At the #!/bin/bash prompt, use your down arrow key to scroll down to line “367,1.
You should be on the line that reads “total="$(awk '{print ($1 / 2048 )}'/sys/block/"${FLASH##*/}"/size 2>/dev/null)"
5- Use your right arrow key to scroll over to “total="$(awk'{print”
6- Place your cursor just after the word {print_” and press the letter “i” to Insert characters.
7- Make these changes: {printf ("%d", ($1 / 2048 ) )}’
8- Hit the ESC key, then type “:wq [Enter]” to write and save your changes to flash-knoppix2.
9- Open another terminal window and again type su [Enter]
10- Type “cd /user/bin/ [Enter]”
11- Type “ flash-knoppex2 [Enter]
12- When the “flash-knoppix (as superuser)” window opens, select your USB drive and click on [OK]
13- At the next window select option “p” and click on [OK]
14- You can now proceed with the install without the “overlay must be set at400MB’ message

I hope this is of some helpto those new to Linux and newer to Knoppix.