Knoppix 3.4 CeBit - don't bother

  • Thread starter Thread starter Achim Nolcken Lohse
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A

Achim Nolcken Lohse

Just burned and loaded the latest version of Knoppix - Knoppix 3.4
CeBit edition.

ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/knoppix-remastered

There's no boot.img file that I could find, so you'll need a bootable
CD-ROM drive to run this version.

More problematical is that this distro boots to a German keyboard
layout. With an English keyboard you find this out as soon as you try
to direct Knoppix to an existing permanent home directory or
configuration file, because typing "myconfig=/mnt/hdd5 home=/mnt/hdd5"
will produce:

"mzconfig'&mnt&hdd5..."

I had to flail around to find the kleys that would produce the desired
input.

Next I tried entering "expert" at the boot prompt, and this gives an
option to reconfigure the keyboard, whereupon I chose "us". I then
selected a permanent home directory (hdd5) and then saved my
configuration to that directory, and rebooted.

I still had to use the German keyboard at the boot prompt, but figured
then I'd be ok for the rest of the session. I quick test with first
Open Office Word, and then a KDE terminal proved me wrong.

Finally, I tried to read the information files prominently tabbed on
the startup screen. English tab didn't work, but neither did the
German one!

Oh, almost forgot, on one of the three (very short) sessions, Knoppix
shut itself down for no reason (I moved the mouse cursor to the KDE
terminal icon, and the system announced "initiating shutdown") , a
problem I've had with two versions of Knoppix 3.3 as well.

It looks like Knopper knocked this one together in a real hurry, and
perhaps that's why the final version of 3.4 is so late in arriving at
the mirrors (his ETA for downloads was shortly after CeBit at the end
of March).

To use the version described above, it seems you need to read German
and have a German Keyboard. It does have KDE 3.2, for those REALLY
keen to try it.


Achim



axethetax
 
Just burned and loaded the latest version of Knoppix - Knoppix 3.4
CeBit edition.


ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/knoppix-remastered

There's no boot.img file that I could find, so you'll need a bootable
CD-ROM drive to run this version.

More problematical is that this distro boots to a German keyboard
layout. With an English keyboard you find this out as soon as you try
to direct Knoppix to an existing permanent home directory or
configuration file, because typing "myconfig=/mnt/hdd5 home=/mnt/hdd5"
will produce:

"mzconfig'&mnt&hdd5..."
Click to expand...

Correction: typing "myconfig=/mnt/hdd5" actually inputs:

"mzconfig'-mnt/hdd5"

to input "myconfig=/mnt/hdd5" on a US keyboard, you must type:

"mzconfig)&mnt&hdd5"
I had to flail around to find the kleys that would produce the desired
input.

Next I tried entering "expert" at the boot prompt, and this gives an
option to reconfigure the keyboard, whereupon I chose "us". I then
selected a permanent home directory (hdd5) and then saved my
configuration to that directory, and rebooted.

I still had to use the German keyboard at the boot prompt, but figured
then I'd be ok for the rest of the session. I quick test with first
Open Office Word, and then a KDE terminal proved me wrong.

Finally, I tried to read the information files prominently tabbed on
the startup screen. English tab didn't work, but neither did the
German one!

Oh, almost forgot, on one of the three (very short) sessions, Knoppix
shut itself down for no reason (I moved the mouse cursor to the KDE
terminal icon, and the system announced "initiating shutdown") , a
problem I've had with two versions of Knoppix 3.3 as well.

It looks like Knopper knocked this one together in a real hurry, and
perhaps that's why the final version of 3.4 is so late in arriving at
the mirrors (his ETA for downloads was shortly after CeBit at the end
of March).

To use the version described above, it seems you need to read German
and have a German Keyboard. It does have KDE 3.2, for those REALLY
keen to try it.
Click to expand...



Achim



axethetax
 
Achim said:
Correction: typing "myconfig=/mnt/hdd5" actually inputs:

"mzconfig'-mnt/hdd5"

to input "myconfig=/mnt/hdd5" on a US keyboard, you must type:

"mzconfig)&mnt&hdd5"



Achim



axethetax
Click to expand...

You can't give it the language at boot, like in previous versions? In
version 3.0 (may be 3.1?), one passed "lang=us" to the kernel. This was
clear if one used the prompted key to boot with more advanced options.
"knoppix lang=us" doesn't seem too bad...
 
On that special day, Achim Nolcken Lohse, ([email protected]) said...


Try to start it with the command line
knoppix us


Gabriele Neukam
Click to expand...

Thanks, this strategy produced some facinating effects, unfortunately
none of them effective....

trial one:

"knoppix us"

[I didn't stay to watch the screen during bootup. When I came back,
the tray was open and Knoppix was prompting me to remove the CD and
hit enter to shut down the system.

Just in case it means anything to anyone out there, I noted the
closing lines displayed on screen before powering down:

starting single X-session for user Knoppix

Please stand by a few seconds while the optional configuration is
being determined

After this session terminates, the system will automatically shut down

starting x11 root@tty1[/]

/etc/init.d/session: line 177 :405 Abgebrochen

$x $NORESET "x86config" $xoptions $DPI :027/dev/null

X-window session terminated without error

shutting down

[etc...]

try #2

"knoppix us myconfig=/mnt/hdd5 home=/mnt/hdd5"

This attempt got me as far as the Knoppix splash screen. The system
reported initializing the home directory on hdd5.

However, after the splash screen, nothing more happened. No hard drive
activity, no CD-ROM activity. I could move my mouse cursor, but do
nothing else. Ctl-Alt-Delete did nothing. I had to do a hardware
reset.

try #3

"knoppix us"

this attempt resulted in a string of cloop read errors ending in the
line:

Init: no more proesses left in this run level.

hitting Ctl-Alt-Del resulted in:

Init: cannot execute "/etc/init.d/knoppix.halt"

I did another hardware reset

try #4

"knoppix us"

This time bootup went without a hitch. Kde 3.2 loaded, and I tried
accessing the "EN" tab on the initial screen, getting the following
error message:

"Datei..../index_en.html existiert nicht" (file index_en.html doesn't
exist)

I then tried the "DE" and "FE" tabs, and got the appropriate variants
of the same error message.

Next I tried opening a KDE terminal and typing some of the divergent
keystrokes. Knoppix still produced German keyboard results (my "y"
came up as z, etc.).

Finally, I tried KDE configuration help, which allowed me to choose my
continent, then Canada, then English us. I then clicked on "weiter"
(continue), and Knoppix immediately announced:

"Initiating shutdown sequence"....




Achim



axethetax
 
....
try #4

"knoppix us"

This time bootup went without a hitch. Kde 3.2 loaded, and I tried
accessing the "EN" tab on the initial screen, getting the following
error message:

"Datei..../index_en.html existiert nicht" (file index_en.html doesn't
exist)

I then tried the "DE" and "FE" tabs, and got the appropriate variants
of the same error message.

Next I tried opening a KDE terminal and typing some of the divergent
keystrokes. Knoppix still produced German keyboard results (my "y"
came up as z, etc.).

Finally, I tried KDE configuration help, which allowed me to choose my
continent, then Canada, then English us. I then clicked on "weiter"
(continue), and Knoppix immediately announced:

"Initiating shutdown sequence"....
Click to expand...
Forgot to mention -

On this spontaneous shutdown, there was also a mention of line 177, as
in trial #1, but this time it was followed by:

411 Abgebrochen (instead of 405)

As mentioned in a previous post, two versions of Knoppix 3.3 have the
same tendency to shut down spontaneously on this PC, sometimes
immediately after KDE is loaded, without any input, and sometimes when
the mouse cursor is moved. I've never experienced this with PCLinuxOS
or with Windows.

In case it's relevant, the PC is an AMD K6-2/500 with 384MB of RAM on
an EP-MVP3G motherboard.



Achim



axethetax
 
On that special day, Achim Nolcken Lohse, ([email protected]) said...
EP-MVP3G motherboard.
Click to expand...

Can it be that Knoppix is having a problem with the VIA Apollo MVP3
chipset (which is a bit problematic)? If it has got the 686b southbridge
(I don't recall if this is the fact), the southbridge bug might be
interfering with Knoppix. Remember - it is booted from CD, and most CDs
are attached to the IDE2 controller.


Gabriele Neukam

(e-mail address removed)
 
knoppix us doesn't appear to be one of the valid cheat codes:
http://download.linuxtag.org/knoppix/knoppix-cheatcodes.txt

You could try:

knoppix lang=us
knoppix keyboard=us (or xkeyboard=us) for text/X
Click to expand...

Bingo!

I tried typing:

"knoppix lang)us" (display shows "knoppix lang=us")

and Knoppix loaded with all English menus and accepted expected input
from us keyboard.

So now it seems to work ok (at least for a short trial).

Of course, at each startup I have to type:

knoppix lang)us mzconfig)&mnt&hdd5 home)&mnt&hdd5

For reasons unknown, it didn't autoshutdown on me on the last three
trials.

There seem to be some essentials missing from this version, however,
most notably KwikDisk (S?) was nowhere to be seen, which meant I had
to mount my zip drive with command-line entries in a KDE terminal.

After doing this, I tried to access the zip graphically using KDE's
File Manager - Superuser mode, and got nothing but a Konquerer splash
screen. I wonder if File Manager is broken in KDE3.2?


Achim



axethetax
 
(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse) wrote in
Of course, at each startup I have to type:

knoppix lang)us mzconfig)&mnt&hdd5 home)&mnt&hdd5
Click to expand...

If you're using a boot floppy, you can avoid having to type the cheat codes
in at every startup, by adding them to the syslinux.config file, as
explained in the Custom boot floppy section of the following article:
http://www.cclug.org/wiki/Main/KnoppixTricks
 
(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse) wrote in


If you're using a boot floppy, you can avoid having to type the cheat codes
in at every startup, by adding them to the syslinux.config file, as
explained in the Custom boot floppy section of the following article:
http://www.cclug.org/wiki/Main/KnoppixTricks
Click to expand...

Thanks,

An interesting and possibly useful post, assuming one can find/extract
the boot.img file from the Knoppix 3.4 ISO (I haven't been able to). I
see the text refers to Knoppix 3.2.

Mandrake 9.2 also gives instructions on modifying a boot floppy to add
specialized support, but I found these instructions inadequate. It
refers to unspecified "commands" required to make the necessary
drivers available to the Linux boot process.

I've tried the boot and pcmcia floppies from mandrake 9.1 with the
first version of PCLinuxOS (which was based on this distro), but the
boot program on floppy failed to recognize PCLinuxOS and aborted. The
Mandrake 9.1 pcmcia.img floppy allowed me to install MDRK on this
laptop via the pcmcia_scsi host adapter.

I have a boot.img file that works from one Knoppix 3.3 ISO, and
possibly this will still be able to boot Knoppix 3.4 (or at least the
2.4 Kernel), but I need to find out how to insert PCMCIA and
PCMCIA_SCSI support on the boot floppy or an auxiliary floppy to run
Knoppix on my laptop.


Achim



axethetax
 
(e-mail address removed) (Achim Nolcken Lohse) écrivait
As mentioned in a previous post, two versions of Knoppix 3.3 have the
same tendency to shut down spontaneously on this PC, sometimes
immediately after KDE is loaded, without any input, and sometimes when
the mouse cursor is moved. I've never experienced this with PCLinuxOS
or with Windows.

In case it's relevant, the PC is an AMD K6-2/500 with 384MB of RAM on
an EP-MVP3G motherboard.



Achim



axethetax
Click to expand...

by the way, i also got a amd K6-2, 450 MhZ, with 384 Mo RAM,
and i never could manage to make floppix work properly.
In fact, I stopped trying to install linux, as i got problems with
RH 7.3, and never connected to internet with mandrake 9.2
the only working distrib is "damn small linux" on my computer.
 
by the way, i also got a amd K6-2, 450 MhZ, with 384 Mo RAM,
and i never could manage to make floppix work properly.
In fact, I stopped trying to install linux, as i got problems with
RH 7.3, and never connected to internet with mandrake 9.2
the only working distrib is "damn small linux" on my computer.
Click to expand...

I also have a K6-2 501Mhz with 288Mb RAM and Knoppix 3.2/3.3 works fine for
me with a Lucent WinModem used for dial-up.

I tried DSL, and got an intermittent kind of Internet dial-up connection
using the Lucent drivers. However, as gcc isn't supplied with DSL I
couldn't get the drivers compiled within DSL.

I like DSL a lot, but since I can't get a decent connection I've had to
stop using it.

Horses for courses?
 
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