knoppix-installer, I've googled and faq'd but unsucessful

**nishtya** · 02-22-2004, 05:42 PM

Hi. Respectfully asking (read: begging

for some assistance doing a hd install of Knoppix 3.3 from image dated 2-16. After running from the CD for a few days have made decision knoppix is the distro for this newbie, anyway and have spent 24 hrs (yeah straight, pump that caffeine into a fresh vein, please

trying to do hd install. I run konsole and type sudo knoppix-installer. It brings me to qparted where I successfully created two partitions for it, one formatted linuxswap of 500 mb and one in ext3 of 5gig. That's as a far as it is going. The partitions are really set/formatted and I have rebooted (old habits die hard) but knoppix-installer kept saying hd was not properly prepared and bringing me to qparted again. And I tried IGNORE_CHECK=1 sudo knoppix installer and got the config options but then it dumps what appears to be an error about a radio button missing in the installer? I have also tried running from ctrl-alt-F1. Googling and faqing it appears something might be missing from this distribution? I dled another installer (a deb) with templates but am unable dpkg and install that installer to ramdrive maybe without root password. Suggestions most appreciated and pardon this sleep-deprived linux newbie's drawn out post. Regards, Nish

**johnb** · 02-23-2004, 12:54 AM

QT parted has been pretty good most of the time. When that dosen't work I step -up and use cfdisk. It is pretty bare on eye candy but it has always worked for me. Basic steps on using it from memory:
1. put away your mouse for this job. The up, down, left, right arrows and the enter button do the heavy lifting. The up an down buttons choose your different partition to work on(the middle of the screen). The left and right buttons decide what happens to the partition(bottom of the screen).
2. Delete all previous partitions(from your post it seems clear that this is not a dual boot situation). This allows you to start "fresh".
3.Create your partitions as you had before. They sounded right.
4.make your swap partition, swap by choosing "type" the number is in 80's. An amazing number of filesystems are available.
5. Make primary partition and make "bootable".
6.Choose "write" when you are sure that it is partitioned how you want it.
7. exit/quit
you should now be able to continue your hard drive install.
johnb

**Stephen** · 02-23-2004, 02:55 AM

Originally Posted by johnb

4.make your swap partition, swap by choosing "type" the number is in 80's. An amazing number of filesystems are available.

82

5. Make primary partition and make "bootable".

If you have a partition for /boot it must be made bootable instead of the partition that you will use for / (root). And once rebooted if it tells you to because it could not re-read the partition table you should sudo mkswap /dev/hd?? to format the space as swap, if it does not tell you to reboot do this anyway before you start the installer. Replace the ?? with the drive letter and partition number of the /swap.

**johnb** · 02-23-2004, 03:13 AM

thanks for the 82 couldn't remember of the top of my head. Decided to be more vauge then give the wrong info. I think there is also a swapon command that I used in RedHat. swapon, swapoff - enable/disable devices and files for paging and swapping.
johnb

**nishtya** · 02-23-2004, 03:35 AM

thank you all for your input. I did get it all sorted out by one of the most ridiculous roundabout methods, even for me! Using the old knx-hdinstall invoked cfdisk (which I should have just used from the start.

)It then redid the ex3 linux partition, apparently the linuxswap one was fine. I found no way to cancel the install from there so off it went with the old scripted install to completion. I made a boot disk just in case, but booted off the liveCD and then ran knoppix-installer for a debian install and it worked just fine. During one of the earlier attempts with knoppix-installer I did get a gloriously long error message that told me to send off to the experts, but I am too newbie to know how to copy it. You folks probably would've have it nailed from the get-go. Thanks again and I hope I don't become too much of a pain. Speaking of which I am off to debian-hardware about my interesting modem adventures.

**nishtya** · 02-23-2004, 03:47 AM

Originally Posted by johnb

2. Delete all previous partitions(from your post it seems clear that this is not a dual boot situation). This allows you to start "fresh". johnb

FYI, John - it is a dual boot with 98. I have loaded lilo. I wanted experience in this dualboot situation on an old machine before trying on my main PC. I feel pretty confident now - about what not to do with this HD install and probably will have a go next weekend. My main machine is imaged and data backed up regularly, so I should be ok. Crossing fingers.