Knoppix v3.3 CDs make good beer mats

[BarrySamuels]

I cannot get Knoppix v3.3 09-02-2004 to work on my machine although v3.1 will work.

I have a SCSI card that requires the sym53c8xx driver and I have modules for 2.4.20 and 2.4.24 kernels. The CD boots in expert mode and I can load either of the above modules after which I get the usual SCSI stuff on screen which shows that the hard drives, tape drive and, most importantly, the CD-Rom have all been found.

The CD-Rom drive is then accessed (light comes on) and I am dumped to the minimalistic shell with a Knoppix filesystem not found message. Why should the filesystem not be found even though the CD-Rom can be accessed?

At this point 'lsmod' shows the sysm53c8xx.o module as loaded but no other modules are listed. Should there be others showing at this point?

The shell message says 'Additional builtin commands' but these commands appear to be the only commands available. Additional to what?

Is there anything I can do from this shell to get the system going?

The same CD will run on another SCSI machine, using one of the modules provided, although it produces a string of 'modprobe: cannot access depenencies file' messages. So the CD itself appears to be in working order but I want to be able to run it on the machine requiring the sym53c8xx driver.

I've searched all the Knoppix resources I can find, including this forum, without success. If nobody can suggest a working solution then I can't see any other option than to confine Knoppix to the beermat drawer.

[gowator]

I guess its just that the modules don't support the kernel version as compiled.

I have a new gigabit adapter at work which isn't supported so I just put the driver source code on the USB key, compiled it and everytime I boot I just repeat the make install and insmod the driver.

However you need your symbois one to boot ....
I suspect that you might need to remaster with the correct modules available.... or maybee try a slightly different 3.3 ?

[BarrySamuels]

I guess its just that the modules don't support the kernel version as compiled.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Both modules load and all SCSI devices are found and the CD-Rom is accessed (light comes on).

I have a new gigabit adapter at work which isn't supported so I just put the driver source code on the USB key, compiled it and everytime I boot I just repeat the make install and insmod the driver.

However you need your symbois one to boot ....
I suspect that you might need to remaster with the correct modules available.... or maybee try a slightly different 3.3 ?

I don't have disc room to re-master and as the Knoppix kernel appears to be 2.4.24 in the latest version then one of the modules, at least, is the correct one. I have tried two Knoppix versions of 3.3 with no difference.

[gowator]

modules are REALLY FUSSY....

When you compile a kernel you leave hooks (symbols) for modules to attach to.

Exactly how you compile can influence this....

Now the modules are like the other half of velcro.... if they aren't from the same batch they can kinda work or seem to work for a while but then fail!!!

The knoppix kernel isn't a 'vanilla' kernel. Its has XFS ovbviously but probably some other modifications and my guess is that somehow one of these is interfering with the symbios module.

I have a lot of experience SUFFERING this... (Mandrake + 1GB RAM-> enterprise kernel which means the nvidia nforce chipset won't work, and even recmpiling for the kernel gives probs with symbols....) the only way is compiling my OWN kernel and paying about with the options....this led to instability and frequent lock-ups

Believe it or not this is how i ended up in knoppix....
I found (in 3.3) that I could compile the nvnet without errors and insmod it without errors. I orginally put the CD in to get the nvidia source and then thought, wait a minute, that compile worked without errors....

So I ended up with HD install and wrote over the Mandrake 9.2 install....

I don't know your situtation BUT if you have a different SCSI card perhaps try it, Adaptec are REALLy stable with all kernels since 2.0.

I can try it out for you on an adaptec tonight with SCSI disk and SCSI CDRom and see what happens .. othwerwise you might just hjave to use an older live CD OR wait for a newer or wait for someone who knows a shedload more than me.....