by strick

How can I boot KNOPPIX off my hard drive?

The KNOPPIX Gnu/Linux distribution rules (oops, let me say that again for the meter: KNOPPIX RULES! Gnu/Linux RULES! ), but running it from a CDROM gets a bit slow, so I figured out how to copy it to my hard drive. I'm already running RedHat 8.0 (which also installed flawlessly) among other OSes on my Toshiba 4005 laptop, and I have an extra >750MB partition that I'd like to use to boot KNOPPIX from time to time. The slides in this German-language PDF give you some idea that it can be done, but there are a couple of problems I had with their procedure:

To be fair, that's kind of a "real install", and what I'm looking for is a "cdrom-style boot from hard drive." Here's my technique:

My system is like this, your partitions will be different.

Here's what I did:

That's it. The only extra problem I had was my hda12 partition was not labled type 83 (hex) (Linux ext2 or ext3). I had to go into fdisk and change it, for grub to like it.

With this technique, KNOPPIX behaves as if my hda12 were the CDROM. It's still very stand-off-ish, not touching anything on my drive, and not saving any configurations. But that's kind of the beauty of it -- you could let guests use your computer in this mode, and they would have to really try to mess anything up.

Oh, and here's the link to the KNOPPIX Website again: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/ -- you can download the ISOs from there, to burn your own CDROM, or to just mount the ISO image directly, and copy to a taret hard drive partition from there.

Disclaimer: I'm typing these notes from an internet cafe in Hua Hin, Thailand, and I don't have my laptop right here with me -- so I may make typos. Write me, strick, at the obvious secondlevel domain where this web page appears, if you find tpyos!

 


Annotation by jake :
You should not trust this to be a safe install for guest because you can simply use: sudo -s to get root. Change the root password and disable sudo, you will be better off.

 


 
Read more of   The Yak's Frequently Questioned Answers   (mod.2010-02-10)

441.   What is Conware?   [jake/2006-12-22]
429.   why does my 802.11g network seem to die around Uniden 2.4ghz phones?   [jake/2006-05-19]
424.   Where do you get StrickPants?   [strick/2007-06-30]
402.   What is Rape Juice?   [jake/2004-01-28]
384.   Where can I find good undergraduate summer research/internships?   [virgil/2003-10-03]
376.   What are three very useful online dictionaries?   [jake/2003-09-22]
331.   how do i convert my gaim buddy list to a centericq buddy list?   [jesse/2002-10-16]
318.   whats a good webmail system?   [jesse/2002-06-21] ( chota/2003-07-26 )
289.   How do I install a CPAN module in Perl?   [rupe/2001-11-21]
169.   Where does The YAK go out to eat?   [strick/2001-04-24] ( combee/2001-05-29 )
165.   What's the story with NTSC, PAL, SECAM?   [jss/2001-01-22]
146.   What commands do UNIX system administrators commonly use?   [rupe/2000-11-09] ( strick/2001-01-04 )
133.   How do I format an SGI filesystem?   [rupe/2000-10-09]
24.   Why is the ocean blue?   [simon/2000-01-20]