Knoppix 6.5, localization and flash issues (was: Knoppix 6.4.4 and the X11 Compose Key)
Hello Ilari & list,
as followup to the localization topic:
On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 07:58:11AM +0200, Ilari Halminen wrote:
> Well, actually I can tell you that you have some strange lines in
> where you parsed locales, especially near finnish.
>
> I am not sure what there should be, but I have often seen LANG,
> never lang. And I fear that is causing some problems.
Caution: Different variables. :-)
Whereas lang=fi is just a boot option that is evalated during
knoppix-autconfig, LANG, LANGUAGE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_LANG, ... are
exported shell-variables that determine each programs localization and
charset. You will not see lowercase "$lang" in shell scripts, except for
Knoppix' own scripts that evaluate /proc/cmdline.
> I noted the problems with Knoppix 6.4.3, but I was waiting for 6.5
> before reporting bugs. And checking if those still exist.
>
> I am native a finn, and I am using LANG=fi all the time.
>
> There has also been some other bugs, that I would like to check and
> report. Most important is that:
> When installing from CD to USB stick, end result may differ if you
> format stick or just install Knoppix. Maybe this is related to
> lang=fi setting or something.
Probably not. All that flash-knoppix does is copying the DVD content to
the FAT32 filesystem, renaming boot/isolinux to boot/syslinux and
isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. The bootloader syslinux is
syntax-compatible to isolinux, that's why I favor this one with FAT32
(which does not require to reformat flash disks with a Linux-only
filesystem).
An unlikely case could be that there is a NEWER
boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg already present, or syslinux.cfg in the
toplevel directory, which will override the settings from the DVD.
Formatting with FAT32 again will remove the previous content and make
sure there are no conflicts with older versions. ON the downside, you
lose a previously installed overlay and everything "not Knoppix" on the
flash disk.
> I do not like to format my stick often, because there is limited
> number of writes in Flash memory.
Be not afraid, it is very unlikely that you will hit the maximum number
of write cycles (about 10000) for flash memory. Modern flash disks have
a semi-intelligent controller that will dynamically reassign the flashes
segments in order to equally spread write actions over the entire
available space. Also, "formatting" only affects a few kilobytes of the
flash disk (namely the "file allocation table(s)"), which is a small
percentage of the flash. Also, Knoppix itself only writes in intervals
of about 30 seconds to the persistent overlay file, instead of the usual
5 seconds, which also enlarges lifetime. The flashdisk will most likely
reach the end of its specified lifetime of about 5 years before any
physical segment will wear out by too many write cycles.
The german c't magazine has run some tests with excessive writes, which
point into the same direction. They did not manage to kill a flash disk
at all.
One dangerous action is removing the flashdisk during a write cycle,
which will confuse the internal structures for segment management. You
can easily kill an SD card or USB stick by physically removing it from
the sockes during write, which most often results in a defective "disk
geometry" that is not fixable either by partitioning or (lowlevel)
formatting.
But back to localization (I may use the section above for the FAQ later.
;-)
> I would also add, that in one version, (maybe 6.2.1) installing
> fails if you start with lang=fi.
This may be related by the GTK-1.2 "Xdialog" that is still used for
various Knoppix dialogs. Font and charset settings in Xdialog are very
much broken, which you can especially see by the "digital" font used in
every language but german. I have not found out yet how to fix this, but
chances are that I have to switch all Knoppix-related GUIs to a
different graphical dialog tool. So, I would not be surprised if Xdialog
just fails to start when using an utf-8 charset that was not known by
GTK-1 at that time. :-(
Workaround: Install in english, and set boot options in
boot/grub/menu.lst or boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg to your target language
later.
> I do not want report bugs that are already fixed, and because that I
> wanted to wait for newest version. I still cannot download it, there
> is no link for it.
Sorry, the CeBIT edition usually contains some proprietary programs
licensed by the DVD sponsor (Linux Magazine). In Knoppix 6.5(.0), these
are the proprietary NVidia(TM) driver, Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat
reader (TM). Since I personally cannot accept their redistribution
licenses, I am not allowed to redistribute them personally. The download
versions do not contain programs with such problematic redistribution
policies, but need some time to be fixed. Therefore, you get the 6.5
edition exclusively in Linux Magazine right now, until the download
version is ready (which will again be available as DVD as well as a
small CD edition). Can't tell a release date yet, but I'm working on it.
:-)
Regards
-Klaus Knopper
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