Knoppix 3.3 HDbased install problem.

[Durand Hicks]

Hello all,

I'm new to linux, and I like knoppix a lot! I am trying to do a hdbased install of knoppix to my hd so I can use the cd to boot and then have the hd install take over. Or have the xp boot.ini boot to the hd based install. I have a limited amount of space on my hard drive so can't do a full install yet until I get a new (larger) hd. Here's what I have and did. My config as follows on my laptop: 6 partitions- c:=FAT (200mb), d: thru g:=NTFS(4.5gb), j:=FAT32 (1.5gb) *note*:had to resize G: to 3 gb to make the J: partition for the hdbased install of Knoppix. I used qtparted to do this, and was successful. Booted cd and then copied the cd to J: using the instructions from the hdbased howto. Everything went ok, till I had problems with the lilo part. I don't want to install Lilo to be the boot manager on C:, but wouldn't mind if I could somehow get lilo written into boot.ini or use the cd to boot and then turn over to the hd. The kernel panics when I attempted the fromhd=/mnt/hda9 cheatcode when booting from the cd. It attempts to look for it from /mnt/hda1 instead and crashes. Is there a way to do this? If so, how?

[simon75]

Yes, there are several ways...
Here's (the) one to get the NT-Bootloader boot linux as well...
First, you need to boot up into linux.
(Knoppix works well for this.)
once running, issue these commands (as root):
# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 -o rw
# dd if=/dev/null of=/mnt/hda1/bootsect.lin count=1 bs=512

when you have already installed lilo into the partition-bootrecord
(/dev/hda9) you can now run:
# dd if=/dev/hda9 of=/mnt/hda1/bootsect.lin count=1 bs=512

now you can configure lilo to write it's bootblock to this file...
# boot=/dev/hda1/bootsect.lin
# root=/dev/hda9

All you need to do is now set up C:\boot.ini to include a line like:
C:\bootsect.lin="Linux"
# echo C:\bootsect.lin=Linux >> /mnt/hda1/boot.ini

You're done.

Hope this helps!

[Durand Hicks]

Well, I gave it a shot and it failed. Re-ran the hdbased steps again and when I got to the "lilo -C /mnt/hda9/boot/lilo.conf", it returned the following error: "Warning: partition type 0x0B on device 0x0309 is a dangerous place for a boot sector. A DOS/Windows/OS2 system may be rendered unbootable. The backup copy of this boot sector should be retained.
Proceed? [N/y]y
Fatal: Filesystem would be destroyed by LILO boot sector: /dev/hda9".

Still, I went ahead and used your commands, edited the boot.ini file and rebooted. That came up with a black screen with a blinking cursor in the left hand window. So, basically I think it's unable to create a lilo boot sector in /dev/hda9 so that I can boot into that. Any other ideas or clues to sort this out?

[Durand Hicks]

If this would help some more, here is what I have modified my lilo.conf file from /mnt/hda9/boot/:

lba32
boot=/dev/hda1/bootsect.lin
root=/dev/hda9
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
backup=/dev/null
map=/boot.map
timeout=100
vga=normal

default=Knoppix

image=/boot/vmlinuz
append="lang=us myconf=/mnt/hda9 home=/mnt/hda9 dma ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsci hdc=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsci hdg=scsi hdh=scsi vga=791 initrd=/boot/miniroot.gz quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix"
root=/dev/hda9
label=Knoppix
read-only

That's what I have it set to now. I hope that's correct as far as I can tell.

[Durand Hicks]

Simon,

Your tip helped a lot, but left out one thing I needed to do to get this working: I needed to chroot to /mnt/hda9 where knoppix was copied to and run lilo from there to get the bootloader installed in the partition and then run your commands. Too bad I figured this all out after finally giving up and resorting to a full hd install instead of a hdbased install. But that's ok, I'm learning and believe it or not, this is only my 7th day of working with Linux. I'm so used to working with MS, and if I didn't take to the command line like a duck to water, I would have just used the cd forever.

[Durand Hicks]

Sorted this out with a full install of the Knoppix distro. Thanks to all who helped out.