question, How do i install knoppix on my hardrive

[DonVergonio]

i'm moving away from windows and want to start with using knoppix. you see, i only have 1 cd drive on my notebook and i want to have it available while using knoppix, so how do i install knoppix on my machine.

thanks.

[lyran]

You go into root shell from the knoppix menu at the bottom of the desktop 2nd from the left and go to root shell.
When your in the root shell type the command
knx-hdinstall
and that sud be it ill leave the rest of the options to you.

[DonVergonio]

lyran, i apreciate it man, thannnkss

[DonVergonio]

hi it's me again. it went all perfect except for one thing. when i turn on my system i don't get that nice booting table where you choose whichever os you want to boot if you have more than one of course. so i have no way to boot to knoppix except again from the cd. i remember almost at the very end of the installation it asked something about creating a booting table and i answered no (don't created) thinking that the bios or windows would detect my new os from the start (now that i think about it i don't know what the hell was i thinking). so i think that's the mistake i made.

QUESTION 1>How do i get to that question again so that it creates a booting table? or how do i boot to knoppix because my machine is behaving as if there's only windows on it?

At some point in the installation it asked me for a swap partition so i had to make one, then it asked me for a different linux partition so i spent quite sometime why it was asking me for one then for the other one, so finaly i made 2 partitions one is a swap partition and the other linux partition.

QUESTION 2>Why did it asked me for two partitions? is knoppix really residing on those 2 partitions? can i delete one to use that space for other stuff?

At some point in the installation it asked me too for the type of filesystem and it gave me like 6 or 7 choices, i had no idea whic one to choose so i choose the first one.

QUESTION 3>which file system is better? what are the differeces, advantages/disadvantages of each of them.

i really really appreciate the help from you guys, you guys are great. thanks.

[Neo-Rio]

You should get asked if you want to place a boot record on the MBR, which you absolutely MUST do if you want to dual boot.
The other option about placing it on the first boot sector is only for really old crusty machines with tiny hard drives... which don't concern most people.

Knoppix needs a minimum of two partitions.
A ' / ' root partition (where you save all your stuff)
And a Linux swap partition. It's best to make the swap partition about twice as big as the amount of RAM in your system. So if you have 512MB DDR in your box, make the swap 1GB big or something.

Filesystem.... hmmm, my version of knoppix doesn't ask me for filesystem type. As a default, I'd stick to ext3.

ext2 - ext2 can use quotas depending on users. Its mainly useful say if you were working as an ISP you had a mail server with mailboxes for different users. You can adjust how much disk space a user has on the system when they pay you more money In practical home use it's bad because you have to do the linux equivalent of scandisk should you not shutdown properly.

ext3 - much like ext2, but without the quotas. Is a journaling filesystem. Don't need to fsck this one in case of a bad shutdown.

ReiserFS - Supposedly really cool. I don't know the details. Never used it.

Reiser4 - The Open Source equivalent of MS's forthcoming WinFS

[OErjan]

to begin with, it is possible to get NT4, win2000, XP to boot linux for you, it takes a whole lot of tinkering though, some knowlege may be requird, ask here if you feel uncertain. i will post a sketchy "howto" further down. just to se if it helps.
The lilo to bootable partition is NOT for old crappy hardware. it is necesary on some (older?) laptops, they use part of MBR for BIOS information, not a good thing to wipe. and there might be other things forcing it.
as to filesystem ext3 is good for most parts.

ok here comes the lilo on xp howto.

you could use the Win2000/NT/XP bootloader.
to do that I let the nt bootloader and lilo work together for me. works well.
quick sketch what i do, write LILO to a floppy, make a "image" of the floppy-mbr put that image in C:\ edit BOOT.INI mine looks like this.

[boot loader]
timeout=2
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
C:\linux.ipl="LINUX"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

a few more details.

1) make lilo write to floppy, have this line in lilo.conf:

boot=/dev/fd0

or give floppy as an argument to lilo

lilo -b /dev/fd0

2) make a image of the floppy-mbr: and put it in C:\

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/mnt/C/linux.ipl bs=512 count=1

3) Modifiy c:\boot.ini -- add a line with:

C:\linux.ipl="Linux"

4) Edit the BOOT.INI (what i have written is examples not the gospel)
Microsoft ntldr now believes you have yet another windows installed. happy booting

repeat 1) and 2) every time you run LILO (that is make new kernel, install new version of os, install win (that will wipe mbr).
keep that floppy, it is easy to boot linuxfrom in a disaster (if the rest of linux is still there that is)

oh btw, i have several linuxes booting from that same lilo, that is when the lilo menu opens it has several linux entries in it.

[lyran]

Does the command knx-hdinstall partion your HD aswell or do u need to do that seperate with other commands?
Im running Win Xp right now and im on a laptop.
And aslo if u dont get lilo or somethings rong with it can you change the bios at the start to boot another partion i think iv saw it before when changing my boot to CD.
Also how can i back up my xp i dont have a cd-r on my laptop and havnt got a floppy drive please help me out.
Also if your knx-hdinstall
doesnt run from your root shell just go into a normal console and type sudo knx-hdinstall
that sud be it.

[DonVergonio]

hey guys, thank you sooo much. i will try that.

lyran, tha knx-hdinstall takes you through and checks your hd to see if there are any linux partition, if it doesn't find one, it brings up a partition tool and there you can do it.

i got into the bios but there was no useful options in regards to linux.
thnks, read you later.

[lyran]

u sure it wont just overwrite my windows xp partion if it doesnt find any other partions?

[OErjan]

not unless you tell it to.
OR something goes wrong with the partitioning, that is why a backup is recomended. if you lived near me you could have used one of my external cdburners, one is for pinterport (paralellport, can write in 2X MAX) and one for usb ( 24x). they both work under knoppix...
do you know anyone with similar gear? or perhaps a external hdd?