[debian-knoppix] Booting knoppix w. ide raid

To: holzhey@iapp.de
Cc: debian-knoppix@linuxtag.org
Subject: [debian-knoppix] Booting knoppix w. ide raid
From: "Karl O. Pinc" <kop@meme.com>
Date: Sat, 03 May 2003 13:15:36 -0500
Message-id: <[🔎] 20030503131536.A16904@mofo.meme.com>

Hi,

Wrote this in anticipation of getting a question from a friend
of mine who I just gave a copy of knoppix to (3.2 2003-04-28-EN).
He doubted whether it would work with his promise IDE raid card
so when I got home I did a little research.

I've booted knoppix a grand total of once so would appreciate
any corrections you might have.  (My one boot was on a machine
with too little memory to start kde, all I got was a lone

terminal window.) My goal is a procedure with the fewest number ofsteps

using the minimal number of unfamiliar interfaces.

It'd be good to put a working howto on knoppix.org, or at least
_somewhere_.

Regards,

Karl <kop@meme.com>

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Hi,

I wasn't able to find any decent documentation on
what steps somebody with no experience and an IDE raid
controller should do to use their disks. All I really found
was this person, holzhey@iapp.de, who just keeps saying
"email me" to people who want to know how to do it.
Looks like he _just_ put together the software, but I don't see
why it wouldn't work. If it doesn't work with a little fussing
and emailing back and forth, give up and use a distro that has
built-in support for your controller.

Hope somebody writes some instructions soon as somebody
who's never seen Linux would never figure
this out, and wouldn't be able to use his hard drives until
he does. The only thing about this is that I don't know what
it really produces, that is, whether or not you're placed in a situation
where you could inadvertantly change your hard drive after you
do this. The regular knoppix seems to do a lot of asking before
you can change your hard drive. Dunno about this procedure so maybe get
more information before the final reboot.

Here's my instructions, having never done it and with no
prior knoppix experience:

Boot Windows.

Download:
http://rcswww.urz.tu-dresden.de/~holzhey/plugscript/download/ps_knx_20030422a_ataraid_persistent_home.tar.bz2
(Or a newer version if it exists.)

Copy it onto a otherwise empty floppy.

Boot knoppix. Answer the questions so knoppix does not need
the hard drive at all. IIRC you get this going by pressing
the return key when it says "boot:" at the bottom of the screen.

Insert the floppy in the A: drive.

You will have a terminal window on the screen, I believe. Click on
it or do something so you can type in it. Type:

su -
mount /mnt/floppy
cd /mnt/floppy
tar -xjf ps_knx_20030422a_ataraid_persistent_home.tar.bz2
cp -a knoppix.d/important/tools/lib/knoppix.sh .

Now, you reboot knoppix with the floppy in the A: drive:

shutdown -r now
(the three finger salute might work instead of the above)

When you get to the knoppix boot screen again you want to
invoke the so-called 'cheatcode' to boot from a floppy.
IIRC there's a button you can press to get a list of cheatcodes,
or maybe actually do particular cheatcodes. But I believe
you can just type "knoppix floppyconfig" at the "boot:" prompt.

After that you're on your own.

Feel free to write me with questions. Maybe holzhey@iapp.de
will write with corrections to this howto or will answer your
questions.

I find web "forums" lame and much prefer an archived mailing list.
None the less, if you wind up with a procedure that works I'd appreciate
you posting it to the forum at:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/