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System Recovery with Knoppix

Posted by michael on Sat Oct 16, 2004 02:00 AM
from the handy-stuff dept.
Software Debian Linux
An anonymous reader writes "This article shows how to access a non-booting Linux system with a Knoppix CD, get read-write permissions on configuration files, create and manage partitions and filesystems, and copy files to various storage media and over the network. You can use Knoppix for hardware and system configuration detection and for creating and managing partitions and filesystems. You can do it all from Knoppix's excellent graphical utilities, or from the command line."
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  • Yes, but.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:02AM (#10543120)
    What if the Linux that you can't boot already is Knoppix? Can you swap this recovery CD with your regular Knoppix CD during the boot process?

    • Re:Yes, but.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:15AM (#10543154)
      For those not in the know, "Knoppix is a GNU/Linux distribution that boots and runs completely from CD." (Source: www.knoppix.net [knoppix.net]).

      So it is kind of hard for a Knoppix installation to become corrupt; worst case scenario is you just burn new copy of the Knoppix CD. :-) The parent comment is in fact funny (and quite so!), rather than insightful as it's currently moderated. ;-)

      • Re:Yes, but.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by the_shaitan (596754) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:53AM (#10543240)
        Umm... Knoppix can be installed on to the hard disk and many people actually do so because then they get a Debian-like OS on their hard-disk.

        Knoppix itself ships with a hard-disk install script. See this page for more info - http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHow To

        Regards,
        The Shaitan
          • It would go down. Economy of scale.

            What BS. Ever heard of Microsoft? Ever hear of their prices going down due to economies of scale? If there was zero competition, would their price go down? I think not.

  • So weird... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheApocalypse (759538) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:03AM (#10543125) Homepage
    Just two days ago I just had to use Knoppix to recover my system after a failed attempt to upgrade the kernel. Very good to have as a recovery tool.

    • Re:So weird... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:24AM (#10543179)
      Does not compute. Why didn't you copy your new kernel as a different name in your /boot directory and add a new lilo.conf entry (if you are using lilo) and then run lilo? Even if you can't boot, most Linux installation cds allow command line boot parameters something like
      :boot /dev/hda2 linuxtest (linuxtest being /boot/linuxtest)
      On a side note, Linux install cds or apps like Knoppix are excellent tools if you are forced to administer a Windows server. It should be no suprise that a boot with the ntfs driver is vastly superior to the Windows Recovery Console. But suprisingly, the ntfs driver is robust enough that it can access hard drives that Windows will spit out saying a hardware error has occurred. Saved my ass twice already.

      • Re:So weird... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by typobox43 (677545) <typobox43@gmail.com> on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:58AM (#10543253) Homepage
        But suprisingly, the ntfs driver is robust enough that it can access hard drives that Windows will spit out saying a hardware error has occurred. Saved my ass twice already. Amen to that. It's the only reason I have any data left off of a hard drive that failed a few months ago. While the data was copied at a disgustingly slow pace to my USB flash drive, it was preserved, even when Windows refused to even boot off of the drive.

      • Re:So weird... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Random BedHead Ed (602081) on Saturday October 16 2004, @10:38AM (#10544496) Homepage Journal

        And I think you've hit upon one of the most interesting things about Knoppix: it's useful to Windows sysadmins. I work on a multi-platform network, and I've used this distro many times on both Windows and Linux machines. The NTFS driver works great, and recently helped me restore a DLL that a user had "accidentally deleted." Of course it's also a Samba client, so you can drag and drop their files from the damaged machine to the file server for safe keeping.

        It's all shown me how good a job Microsoft could do if they actually cared. Knoppix really is better than Microsoft's own recovery console, and makes me wonder why (a) Windows doesn't simply restore missing DLLs on its own when they turn up missing (copies are in the i386 folder, and sometimes other places, so what the heck?), and (b) why there isn't a bootable Windows CD for recovery (maybe because it would be the most pirated CD ever?).

        These experiences left me unsurprised when Google released a desktop search tool [google.com] that renders Longhorn's WinFS obsolete ... two years before the release of Longhorn. Is Bill asleep at the wheel?

    • Yeah, I heard about Knoppix about a month ago and decided to download it. I'll let you know if it's any good once I've got it all down over my 56k.

      • Re:So weird... (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's been out for a couple of years, but hey, we'll all wait for your review.

      • Re:So weird... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NanoGator (522640) on Saturday October 16 2004, @03:33AM (#10543320) Homepage Journal
        "Why bother with using bloated tools that only get in the way when you can do the exact same thing with a boot floppy."

        GUI != bloat. Web browser != bloat, especially during system recovery.

        Come to think of it, why am I even wasting time spelling out the obvious reasons why Knoppix is an awesome recovery tool?

  • New Kid on the block? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:04AM (#10543127)
    Knoppix, the hot new kid on the block

    New? Wow, I'm glad I don't live in that neighborhood.

  • What I like... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zoloto (586738) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:06AM (#10543134)
    Is that IBM has done this, right off their own website and helping the system admins, techies and anyone else interested in learning how to fix your defunct or otherwise broken system.

  • Oldie but a goodie (Score:5, Informative)

    by ozmanjusri (601766) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `bob_eissua'> on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:07AM (#10543138) Journal
    This one's been around for a while. It's a useful resource, but some of the more specialised distros are easier to use for rescue disks.
    http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php [frozentech.com] has a good list of them.

  • "Really? I had no Idea!!!" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zzootnik (179922) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:08AM (#10543139)
    Well, apart from the "Duh- What else are you gonna use it for?" line, I suppose its nice to RE-distribute the info to those 3 or 4 around here that haven't heard of knoppix...And also nice that IBM is running the piece. That kinda lends some pointy-haired massive corporate legitimacy to the tool...
    But maybe I'm mistaken...Okay, then--- Quick Poll- Who HAS NOT heard of and tried a Knoppix disk?

  • There are many other alternatives (Score:5, Informative)

    by auzy (680819) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:09AM (#10543142)
    You can also use the gentoo live CD (you can even get an experimental one for reiser4) at www.gentoo.org.

    There are also lots of speecialised ones. generally, the only time a linux box wont boot though is just a lilo or grub problem...

    By the way, the coralised link is: http://www-106.ibm.com.nyud.net:8090/developerwork s/linux/library/l-knopx.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01-obg-Sys Recover

  • Just used Knoppix... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dbCooper0 (398528) <dbc@trito n . net> on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:20AM (#10543171) Journal
    ...with Samba to copy shit off a dead-in-the-water winderz 98 box. Pest Patrol had found 3,212 nasties on the box in question. I retrieved enough data to not worry about a crash on a re-install of winderz 98. I'm thinkin' of puttin' them up to win2k, but WTF, they're not payin' that much. (they have an XP License, FWIW)

    Tbe Knoppix Distro has been helpful at this point - and I'm glad that I kept it around, because I needed to get these people's email transferred without much hassle

  • Toolbox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RealProgrammer (723725) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:21AM (#10543174) Homepage Journal
    In my bag, I always carry:
    1. Knoppix
    2. Windows Usual Stuff
      • MS service packs
      • Antivirus / Ad-aware
      • Putty, Ghostscript
      • Cygwin installer and scripts
    3. Solaris patches / packages / scripts
    4. 64MB compact flash card / USB reader
      (Mini Usual Stuff)
      • MS monthly patch of the week
      • Antivirus / Ad-aware
      • Putty
    5. Leatherman and mini-nutdriver set

      1. It's been a long time since I've needed anything else. I used to carry a Trinux CD, but now it's Knoppix.

        I use the compact flash card because it fits in both my camera and my PDA.

    • One thing your missing.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by msimm (580077) on Saturday October 16 2004, @03:10AM (#10543278) Homepage
      As a computer networking student I'm absolutely AMAZED this hasn't gotten more attention then it has.

      Under your MS stuff (I know, I know, but in industry it really is a necessary evil) you should definitely have a Windows Boot CD [windowsubcd.com]. And I don't mean a DOS floppy! Its basically a live, say Windows XP disk with preinstalled software (virus scan, adware removers, registry editors, complete networking setup). It really has all the tools you commonly use when fixing the obligatory windows box and probably a few you've never even known you'd need.

      I highly recommend you build one, and if the directions sound a little complicated, just take your time and reread them, there's about 3 step and none of the are actually complicated.

      The worst thing you can do is boot a infected PC from an infected hard drive, not to mention the trouble accessing NTFS with FULL read-write.

  • MEPIS rocks for this too... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fnkmaster (89084) * on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:23AM (#10543178)
    Yes, I'm distro whoring here. Personally, I'd recommend MEPIS [mepis.org] over Knoppix. Knoppix is fine as a boot disk, but MEPIS is by far the easiest-to-use distro and most overall enjoyable to work with that I know of. MEPIS started as a bootable CD, but it's grown into a full-fledged Debian-based distribution now, and I'd say a good 80%-90% of MEPIS users now use it as their primary distribution, not just a rescue disk or "Linux test" distro.


    No, I'm not a weenie who needs things spoon fed to them, I've been using Linux since long before it was cool or chic, starting with Slack back in '96, then RedHat, then Mandrake. After Win2k came out I moved back to using Windows for most of my day-to-day desktop needs (now mostly Win XP), but recently I've installed MEPIS on my laptop and I find it quite enjoyable to use. The things that stand out to me are 1) fabulous hardware compatibility, including out of the box support for almost every component of my Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop, with NVidia GeForce4 Go graphics and so on (I did have to make a quick manual edit to XF86Config-4 to get widescreen support, and my Microsoft MN-720 802.11b card took about half an hour of screwing around to get running, but ndiswrapper was already there, I just had to find the right driver version and run it.


    Okay, that's all the ranting I can do for now. Did I mention that MEPIS makes a great recovery CD? That's how I first discovered it. Give it a try, funny name aside.

  • news? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pe1chl (90186) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:30AM (#10543195)
    Is this news?
    The article was written a year ago, and even then it was not news (I have used Knoppix for this purpose longer than that)

  • "manage [...] filesystems" - or plain ranting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by l3v1 (787564) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:41AM (#10543219)
    I don't say K/Gnoppix is no good, because it's just great, imho the best live linux version for jumpstarting linux illiterates (other people check this [livebsd.com]. And I don't argue you can do lots of things with it. But for accessing and managing filesystems in general... well, access my xfs partitions with a knoppix please. or better not, keep away :)

    If one wants to have rescue stuff ready, ones prepares good rescue stuff. E.g. an usb drive with a mini distro with >2 kernel versions helluvalot compiled modules, all possible filesystem support, disk fscking tools (for all supported filesystems) and you don't relly need much more.

    A general purpose 2.4.x-based live distro for the masses jsut doesn't always qualify for such uses.

    You know the drill, use the right tool for the job.

  • I just used Damn Small Linux to overhual a Susebox (Score:5, Informative)

    by pair-a-noyd (594371) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:53AM (#10543241)
    A friend brought me his machine to upgrade.
    A Frys cheapo Linux special, originally it came with a 30g, 128m ram and Thiz Linux. I Thized the disc straight into the trash and installed Suse 9.0 on it for him when he first got it.

    Well, as time went on he realized that his system needed upgrading. So I sent him to the store and he brought back another 128m ram, a 120g drive and Suse 9.1 Pro.

    The plan was to have the old doggy 30g as his boot/OS/work drive (hda) and his new 120g as /home (hdb)....

    Well, booting up 9.1 does not come up and say
    "Hey, I see you have data on your drive already and a new blank drive. Would you like to move it around in anyway before we procede?"

    No, Suse just suggests that you wipe everything out and start over. Even if you tell it you want to do an upgrade, it has NO PROVISION what-so-ever to allow you to format the new drive then move your old /home from hda to hdb then reformat hda and partition it up in a useful way.

    Ok, so in light of this, I took Damn Small Linux 0.8.2 [damnsmalllinux.org]
    and booted up. Opened a root terminal, fdisked hdb, formated it for ext3 then moved all of his old /home data from hda to hdb.

    It copied EVERYTHING. Hidden files, configurations, email, cookies, bookmarks, music, photos, the whole works.

    When it was done I booted into Suse 9.1 pro, did a NEW INSTALLATION and wiped hda clean, installed the OS on it and told it that /home is on hdb1.

    I created the same user and password as the old system so Suse looked at the /home on the new 120g drive and asked me if I wanted to change the permissions and ownership over. I said yes.

    The install proceded normally to completion.
    When it was finished and I rebooted the system, it was identical to the way it was brought to me except that he now has a 120g /home directory instead of the 10gigs he had before.

    Damn Small Linux is the very best tool a tech can carry with him. I keep a copies on biz cards in all of my tool boxes and in each of my vehicles.
    I don't leave home without it.

    I also carry standard Knoppix in case I run into a case where I need k3b on the ailing machine.
    I have several other versions of Knoppix I keep handy for various network jobs, like knoppix-std [knoppix-std.org]
    and a few other network related Knoppix knock offs..
    • Of course you could have done this with SuSE as well, but you should not have tried two things (upgrade and drive reassignment) in one go.
      You could have upgraded from 9.0 to 9.1 first and then add the new drive and move /home to it, or first add the new drive and move /home, then re-install from scratch on the old drive.

        • Re:I just used Damn Small Linux to overhual a Suse (Score:5, Informative)

          by pe1chl (90186) on Saturday October 16 2004, @04:00AM (#10543377)
          I think you could have added the new disk to the old running system, fdisk and format it using yast or commandline tools, move your home there, and then re-install the system on the 30GB disk.
          I would have done:
          - login as root
          - cd /
          - mv home home.orig
          - mkdir home
          - yast
          (add the disk, say it will be /home, format it)
          - df
          (make sure the /dev/sdb1 is now mounted as /home)
          - mv /home.orig/* /home
          - rmdir /home.orig

          home is now on the new disk.
          reboot system from CD, install 9.1 on 30GB and during partition selection tell it that /home is /dev/sdb1.
          that should do it.

  • But what about winmodem support? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ziviyr (95582) on Saturday October 16 2004, @03:13AM (#10543281) Homepage
    I'm dying to figure this part out...

  • First rate device detection (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2004, @04:00AM (#10543378)
    Luckily I haven't had to use Knoppix to recover any crashed systems...

    However I did use it to tweak the device settings on my install of FreeBSD. Knoppix has always detected anything I threw at it, while FreeBSD isn't quite up to the same level (but getting better). So, I gave Knoppix a whirl and got enough driver info for the noname videocard that shipped in the used computer I was setting up as a server.

    Rock on Knoppix!

  • Tom's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grolschie (610666) on Saturday October 16 2004, @04:12AM (#10543397)
    Tom's Root Boot" [toms.net] is the only Linux boot CD needed to fix a Linux system. Although I use Knoppix occasionally to test hardware.
  • I had a fault on my home system, so I tried to knoppix my wife around. I did not recover from the attempt no matter what utilities I tried. I tried to reiser, I tried to fsck her. I even tried mem86 check her and remind her of all the good times we had. In the end, she rebooted me no matter how many times I tried to replug her.
    Knoppix not good for everything.
    Yep, this is bad. Baaaddd joke if you can call it that.
    Oh, by the way, this is nothing but flaimbait.
    Burn karma, burn.

  • Better safe than sorry (Score:5, Informative)

    by Deorus (811828) <jps@corah.org> on Saturday October 16 2004, @06:05AM (#10543571)

    First of all, there are a couple of basic steps people can take to ensure their systems are rescuable and secure regardless of any patches they have applied.

    • Make sure your root filesystem is as small as possible to minimize the chances of corruption there and that you can have it mounted read-only. This not only improves your security (since you can simply remove CAP_SYS_ADMIN from all your daemons and they won't be able to remount anything), but also makes it even harder to corrupt the root filesystem. Your user and group information files will need to be moved to /var and appropriate symbolic links created in /etc so that users can still change user and group passwords and you can create accounts without remounting the root filesystem read-write.
    • Never remove your legacy device inames from /dev, ever! Even if you use devfs or udev, a new /dev is mounted over the original one, so the legacy inames disappear magically from VFS. The legacy device inames may come in handy in a system recovery later. If you use devfs or udev, make sure your /dev filesystem is mounted with the noexec option enabled for security reasons.
    • Make sure your /var is always mounted noexec and nodev. If you use qmail, switch to Postfix (yes, I've done it, DJB is such a dumbass with his lack of respect for standard directory hierarchies).
    • Make sure your /tmp is not in your root filesystem. You can mount a tmpfs for your /tmp and point /usr/tmp, /var/tmp, and /anything-else/.../tmp to your /tmp with a symbolic link. If you do mount a tmpfs or any other kind of filesystem, make sure you do it with the noexec and nodev options enabled. If you can't or are not willing to use another filesystem for /tmp (tmpfs sometimes is too small for CVS, and you may not have enough space for a dedicated /tmp), use /var/tmp instead (assuming you've mounted /var according to my instructions above).
    • Grab a copy of the GNU fileutils from a mirror close to you, compile it statically, and install the resulting binaries in /sbin (not /bin). If anytime later something terrible happens to your libc, you can always make /sbin have precedence over /bin in your $PATH and use the static binaries in /sbin instead for recovery. Always remember to make add /sbin first in your $PATH if you ever upgrade your libc from the sources, especially if it is your first time doing so (believe me, everyone I know, including me, had problems with their first libc installations from the source). Doing this can save you from a lot of trouble.
    • Even when you know your kernel binary will boot perfectly (because perhaps you used the same configuration file to compile the same kervnel version), make a backup of your old kernel by renaming (not copying) it and specifying the new name in lilo.conf. LILO knows nothing about filesystems (never used grub, so I can't talk about it, but I suspect the same thing happens with it), so if your kernel, for some reason, gets fragmented in your filesystem, you will be in trouble to boot from it, since LILO assumes the kernel is never fragmented.

    Following above steps is usually enough to prevent rescue situations because the root filesystem is vital, so protecting it is the first line of defense, but if the worse comes to worst and you ever get into trouble, you must learn with the problem. If the kernel loads and init doesn't, it may be a libc problem. Try booting with init=/bin/sh, remount your filesystems read-write, examine the problem, umount them (or remount them read-write, when unmount is not possible), sync, reboot and watch the changes. If the kernel does not load, you may need a

  • slashdotted? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Krunch (704330) on Saturday October 16 2004, @08:51AM (#10543978) Homepage
    Our apologies...
    The IBM developerWorks Web site is currently under maintenance.
    Please try again later.

    Thank you.
    Here [google.com] is the Google cached version.

    • Re:So you can fix Linux.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by rixdaffy (138224) * on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:11AM (#10543143) Homepage

      I think NTFS is probably read-only so you can't fix it directly. But in case you weren't smart enough to keep backups around, you can use Knoppix to backup your files over the network. I did the same thing for a friend who couldn't boot up her XP installation anymore after Norton Antivirus "cleaned" a bit too much (even safe mode didn't work). But I ended up copying the data to an external firewire disk 'cause the network (which Knoppix didn't have any problems to detect) was too slow.

      Go Linux/Knoppix!

      Ricardo.
      • Well, actually my friend's dad wasn't smart enough to keep backups around even after I told him "be sure to make backups".

        The S.M.A.R.T bios check said the drive was bad, and to replace... so i'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue, but i'm not posative. I was able to get windows booting in safe mode up till a point though (which confused me if it was hardware related) and then it would freeze.

        As for the the partition, it was registered as "Unknown" by the install cd and another windows install, and r

      • Re:So you can fix Linux.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by kazoosandinstruments (717278) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:33AM (#10543203)
        captive-ntfs 1.14 works just fine for me w/Knoppix 3.4 (though 1.15 w/Knoppix 3.6 failed to mount my NTFS partitions, that is another story altogether) ... so, you can actually read/write to NTFS from Knoppix if you manually configure captive and mount the NTFS partition(s) yourself.

        • Re:So you can fix Linux.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by dmaxwell (43234) on Saturday October 16 2004, @07:04AM (#10543644)
          captive-ntfs needs a captive user and group to work properly. Manually adding them allows it to work correctly again on 3.6. I even made a personal remaster of Knoppix with fix and the XP drivers captive-install-acquire already done. That last is handy because I have had NICS that XP didn't recognize and it gets the driver install files on the disk.

      • You mean linux NTFS support... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by msimm (580077) on Saturday October 16 2004, @03:24AM (#10543301) Homepage
        Last I heard write was still experiencing random failures, not that it matters for data recovery.

        But I'd recommend using this [windowsubcd.com] to work on/repair Windows computers. You get read/write (its really just Windows, so..) and a lot of crap can be repaired with a virus/adware scan (or two). If your comfortable enough with Windows there really isn't much you can't recover from once you can read the disk (sort of a complete hardware failure).

        As a side note, it also reads ext2 and 3. Handy for working on your friends dual-boot systems too.

        Personally, I carry on of these and either Knoppix or an older Gentoo live disk.
    • This is what you do: You use Knoppix to boot the box and dd the filesystem onto a network drive somewhere (nfs/smb, doesn't matter). Then you work on the backup image as a loop mount. You never, never do anything on the corrupt disk, ever. This is why: If you screw up, you don't have anything to fall back to. You can't screw up a loop mount or a backup.

      If you can't loop-mount it, dd it back to an other disk, then use your favourite Windows NTFS tool, if there is any.

    • Yes, you can: knx-hdinstall (Score:5, Informative)

      by RealProgrammer (723725) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:31AM (#10543196) Homepage Journal

      "You can't install it to your hard drive."

      Yes, you can: [freenet.org.nz] knx-hdinstall.

      • Re:Yes, you can: knx-hdinstall (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Fnkmaster (89084) * on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:49AM (#10543233)
        True, but MEPIS has pretty much been built from the beginning as a dual purpose distro (bootable CD / rescue disk, and full-featured distro), and has a wide community of day-to-day users now (check out MEPISLovers.com [mepislovers.com]. There's probably nothing you can do with MEPIS that you can't do with Knoppix, and vice versa, but I still think Knoppix is first and foremost a rescue disk and "Linux intro" CD for newbies. MEPIS is the new Mandrake, and has basically been able to take mindshare by working with the (IMHO) superior apt-get system, and providing the best, most working hardware support out there.


        In theory, URPMI is fabulous, but in practice, I've had far, far better luck keeping a clean, consistent system without weird, incompatible RPMs and other stuff mucking up my install when using MEPIS, and find I almost never have to go outside of the pre-configured repositories. And Mandrake's lack of working out of the box Nvidia support (at least as of the last version I used, probably a year and a half ago) killed it for me. MEPIS is the first distro I've been able to use extensively without encountering some hitch that required a kernel recompile.


        Don't get me wrong, I have been doing Linux kernel compiles since around '96 (when I was a freshman in college, and I thought compiling the kernel was pretty 3733+), but I just don't want to screw around with that stuff for a day-to-day use desktop system. Custom compiled kernels for special purpose server boxes is fine, but it just doesn't fly for a desktop distro for me - I want to get work done, not screw around with kernel settings.

      • There are scripts right in Knoppix that let you do a HD install; but that doesn't mean everything is going to work as you would expect. I've been a regular at www.knoppix.net for a couple of years, and I'm always seeing problems that just shouldn't happen with HD installs. Simple things like permissions being set wrong on the install and networking that worked from to CD no longer working after the HD install. In fact, if you look at the specialized forums, you will see that there are nearly twice as many p
      • knx-hdinstall is not maintained and should no longer be used. knoppix-installer is the way to go. www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHowTo

      • menu option and waiting is difficult (Score:5, Insightful)

        by frovingslosh (582462) on Saturday October 16 2004, @03:22AM (#10543297)
        Yeah, cos using the Knoppix "Install to Hard Drive" menu option and waiting is difficult.

        Actually, the gripe is a legitimate one, although very poorly presented. I'm a regular on the Knoppin forums at www.knoppix.net and I constantly see people posting problems with things (mostly simple networking) that worked fine under Knoppix when running from the CD but stopped working as soon as Knoppix was installed to hard disk. Most of the time this seems to be simple permission issues or something that for some reason I don't understand needs to be added to a configuration file. But it's been going on for years and the install scripts never seem to get around to addressing it and making the premissioins right. See for yourself by scanning this forum [knoppix.net].

        I just write it off to the arogance that almost all Linux geeks seem to have for newcomers who don't know the cryptic commands to change permissions or all the magic places startup configuration stuff is stored. The geeks who master Knoppix must come across the same problems, but just know where to go to twiddle the right bits to make everything right. That they don't "bother" to go back and make the HD install scripts do this seems strange.

      • Re:Knoppix is good, but MEPIS rocks! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kethinov (636034) on Saturday October 16 2004, @03:43AM (#10543336) Homepage Journal
        Yeah, cos using the Knoppix "Install to Hard Drive" menu option and waiting is difficult.
        Have you ever actually DONE a Knoppix hd install? Sure the install is easy, but have you ever actually used a hard disk installed knoppix system? It always results in broken apt. And no matter how many times I've tried to beat a knoppix hdinstall's apt into submission to TRULY convert it into Debian, I simply can't.

        Knoppix is a great livecd, but a horrible installer. It's less trouble to just install straight Debian.

    • Re:Security?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by l3v1 (787564) on Saturday October 16 2004, @02:45AM (#10543229)
      how safe is it to be able to access anything just by putting a disk in the drive

      Well, on my machines (i.e. which I use, @home or @work) only booting from the main hdd is allowed, everythig else is disabled, bios pass'ed. If I want to boot from something else, I enable it. One would need many minutes long work to open the cases and reset the bioses especially if they don't know the specific mobo.

      Not a very good protection by any means, but it stops giggling coworkers from being jerks on my machine.

    • Re:Security?!?!? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cowens (30752) on Saturday October 16 2004, @04:54AM (#10543461)
      Without physical security you have no security at all. I don't even need a boot disk to root your linux box. When the box hits the LILO or Grub protion I can interupt the boot and add "single" to boot options of the kernel. The machine will now start in single user mode (which does not require the root password). I can now make a back of shadow password file, change the root password, and telinit(8) to whatever level your distro uses for network connectivity. I can then upload your "sensitive" files to box I own. To civer my tracks I can remove my presence from all of your logs (or if I was smart, just restore backed up version of logs), restore the shadow password file, touch(1) all of the files back to their original mtimes, and voila.

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