[debian-knoppix] An idea to avoid hd installs?
I've been reading the floppy boot/hd installs posts. I certainly hope my
earlier posts weren't taken in the same light. And if so, it certainly
wasn't meant to be so.
I've been using knoppix since the 5/3 version, and am trying clusterknoppix
now as well. It makes a great rescue disk, and a great disk to run linux on
a windows box.
I did try the hd install, but it failed on several boxes for various reasons.
On one box, I had a dual boot install, windows, and suse, which died when I
had x/root/yast/partition table open, the computer crashed, and took /etc
with it. I tried installing knoppix to the box, but since windows (which I
no longer use, but have gigs of files and no place to put them) takes up the
first 24 gigs of my hard drive, and since I couldn't get grub installed on
the mbr (failure for some reason I can't remember right now), and couldn't
get grub installed on a secondary hard drive, and can't get lilo to work past
24 gigs, I am still running knoppix from the cd drive on my main desktop.
A floppy boot drive would be helpful in my situation, but I haven't even asked
for it. One thing I did notice is that on three different boxes, knoppix,
and clusterknoppix will only boot when burned to a cdr, and will not boot
from a cdrw. As another poster pointed out, regardless of whether knoppix
was meant or not meant to be a debian installer, people are using it for that
or trying to, in my case, among the many other uses we are using it for.
Also, for the boot floppy issue, I've been to several installfests where
someone had a laptop, and no one there could figure out how to change the
laptop from hd boot/floppy bypass, to cd boot. While this is different from
the floppy boot post hd install issue, making the creation of a boot floppy
for running the cd should be made more obvious for new users (perhaps a link
from the knoppix desktop, from an icon with a description underneath that
says, mkbootfloppy?) Yes, chicken/egg problem, but someone can always run
the cd from a different computer, make several floppies, then run on laptop,
without hunting for the mkbootfloppy instructions.
One application that I need, and have requested, is Quanta Plus. This single
application is what is motivating me to do the hard disk install (and the
fact that I need more fonts for scribus). Once the hard disk install is
completed, I can apt-get the applications I need, and move more fonts to the
scribus font directory. I believe that others are motivated to do a hd
install to get that one or two application(s) that they can't live without.
Actually, I prefer to use the cd, because then, upgrading is as simple as
downloading and burning another iso, instead of risking breaking something
with debian updates.
I have been able to access the underlying suse home partitions, and by su'ing
from the knoppix user, to my old suse username, have been able to run
konqueror, kmail, and save data to my home partitions for each of my
underlying users, and have all of my preferences and bookmarks intact. So I
have a usable, persistant home partition.
What I don't have, is the ability to download and install additional
applications. Perhaps that can help people avoid the hard disk installs, and
get a more usable system while still using the knoppix cd? How about
enabling the ability for a user to create a partition, say, /home/apps or
something similar, or /apps, where applications can be downloaded to, and
knoppix will access/install to ramdisk, the applications, making them useable
for the session?
I'd also like the ability to add fonts for scribus. If I download a newer
version of scribus to the theoretical /home/apps or /apps partition or
directory, I should be able to move fonts from my persistant /home directory,
or my fat partition to the corresponding scribus directory so that I can use
the additional fonts for scribus. And of course, I would be thrilled to have
the ability to download and use Quanta Plus from the same directories.
Since I'm not a programmer, I don't know if the above is possible. I would
imagine that it would be a lot of work, as each application normally puts
files in multiple directories. It would I believe, result in fewer people
needing to install knoppix to their hard disk.
This isn't a feature request. I'm going to avoid the booting problem by
eventually getting another hard drive, transferring everything, and starting
over (without a windows partition). And I'm going to have to do the hard
disk install anyway, since I have to learn debian if I'm going to continue
running my own web servers. I'm just putting the idea on the list (an
application partition) because I was thinking about this over the last week,
and the posts about the hd install/boot floppy have made me consider throwing
the idea out there, as the little I can contribute to helping knoppix become
even better than it already is. If that's even possible ;-)
Thanks for your efforts, Klaus, Fabian, and other contributors. And I look
forward to your evolving installer, Fabian.
Bing.
--
All spam received is reported to SpamCop.
http://spamcop.net/
_______________________________________________
debian-knoppix mailing list
debian-knoppix@linuxtag.org
http://mailman.linuxtag.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-knoppix
Reply to: