please help with liveCD booting

[econobeing5]

i have KNOPPIX and Damn Small Linux on bootable discs. but i cant seem to get them to work.

DSL works fine when i use the vga=normal cheatcode, but when it loads i get the command line, no GUI.

KNOPPIX wont even start, at least DSL has that over KNOPPIX. it just sits there saying Unpacking Linux... Ok, loading the kernel and freezes, thats the furthest i've gotten with KNOPPIX.

please help me :( i want to be able to use a liveCD version of linux with a GUI.

(i already made a topic like this, i dont know if it was deleted, i didn't post it, or it didn't get put on the message boards yet.)

[Loki3]

Funny that Knoppix would just kind of freeze like that. I think there's an option for booting into failsafe mode, 'knoppix failsafe' if memory serves me right. You might want to try that. If that doesn't work I'd suspect that your CD has some errors. Did you run the md5sum on the .iso after you downloaded it?

I'm not familar with DSL so I can't really help you there. Maybe try searching their website for instructions/bugs? If you have a command line sometimes 'startx' works.

[econobeing5]

i did an md5sum on both of them after i d/led and they were good.

i'm pretty sure that my KNOPPIX one is good because i can open up the text files and stuf in windows.

i'm gonna try that failsafe and startx thing

[retsaw]

I'd say that Knoppix didn't burn properly if it freezes at that stage. Do you at least get the boot prompt? If you do you could try booting with knoppix26, to try the 2.6 kernel instead of the 2.4 kernel which is default.

[econobeing5]

the boot prompt, you mean where it has the knoppix picture and says "boot: " at the bottom of the screen? i got that.

i booted with failsafe mode, and it worked! but i wasn't able to play any music or use the internet (i think because of failsafe mode) but it was great! i got my first taste of linux, now i need more O_O

i guess the next step is to find out how to start it and be able to use the internet,speakers and all that.

[Loki3]

Yeah, booting in failsafe mode will only load the bare minium of drivers. I think if you press F2 at the "boot:" screen it'll list more boot options. It says somewhere near the bottom of the screen.

[econobeing5]

which ones should i try out? because i have no idea what is wrong with it when it boots,

i really dont know anything, but i'd assume that since it loads the bare minimun of hardware, then something is wrong with the graphics card (or graphics card drivers?), which ones should i try? unless it DOES boot with the graphics card in failsafe mode ._.

[econobeing5]

if i get a driver from here (http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-6111.html) would that help? also, if i do get that driver, would XP start giving me the black screen that KNOPPIX is giving me? because i do not want to screw up windows, i'd be in deep ****...

[Loki3]

The driver from nVidia is for 3D acceleration. You don't need to worry about that right now. Is there an interactive mode for booting knoppix? Maybe it's called expert? I can't remember. Regardless it should let you manually configure and load all the drivers as you go. For the record what kind of hardware do you have?

[econobeing5]

what do you mean what kind of hardware? like soundcard and all that? i'll just list what i know

80GB some kinda HD
GeForce4 Ti 4200 128 DDR SDRAM
ASUS A7V8X motherboard
Audigy Soundblaster FX soundcard (thats what my brother told me)
AMD athlon XP 2000+ 1.67 GHz
1G RAM (not sure which kind)
TDK CD-RW drive
SAMSUNG DVD Drive

thats all i know (can think of). we got our computer made by infotech (http://infotechnow.com) around christmas of 2002

[infiniphunk]

If knoppix isn't working quite right for you maybe try using a different liveCD; there are many out there that work really well. I found that mepis worked better on my system than knoppix, in terms of the hardware that was autodetected and configured.

Try SLAX (http://slax.linux-live.org/)
orMepis (http://www.mepis.org/)
They're both easy to get going and work REALLY well.

[econobeing5]

do you have to buy Mepis? because i dont see a free download thing there.

i'm gonna try SLAX *stats downloading* if it works and i can do what, then i'll give you a dollar, heh.

[AdamZ]

http://www.mepis.org/book/view/1462

It can be kind of confusing to find a free download link on that site, I know ;).

edit: I should also mention that one of the Knoppix cheatcodes is testcd. If you boot with "knoppix testcd" it will make sure the CD burned correctly before booting. That way you can tell whether it is a driver problem or a CD problem.

[Loki3]

The reason I asked about your hardware is I was wondering if you had some weird stuff that could cause Knoppix autodectection to choke. Everything looks pretty standard. If you still feel like working with Knoppix, I'd try looking for bugreports on there website or google.

MEPIS is supposed to be great, I'd give that one a try too.

[econobeing5]

i got slax, and it works great! i'm using it right now :D i'm just a newbie to linux so i need instructions on everything, alot of the help files aren't there though. a couple things that are on the top of my list are help are using multiple accounts with kopete, getting my scroll wheel to work, and listening to a CD.

can i save stuff with this? or do i need to have linux installed on my hard drive to be able to save anything?

i'm probably going to try and find some tutorial sites now, are there any that you would recommend?

[infiniphunk]

When you're using the liveCD you are going to run into problems trying to save anything to your HD unless you have a partition that linux can write to. (If you have windows on there now on NTFS I don't think there's write support; you can't do it)
Good that Slax worked well for you, but its probably a bit lighter than you'd like at this point. Now that you know what to expect give Mepis a try if you want a bit more stuff; it also offers a GUI installation tool if you'd like to try a HD install. If you do you'll get a chance to try installing software packages using the apt-get application, and then there will be no turning back for you. Enjoy!

[Loki3]

Glad slax is working for you. My livecd is limited to Knoppix so I don't if I can help. On Knoppix you can generally create a small area on the file system that's already installed and save your configuration files there so you don't have to change them everytime you boot up. There is also an option for install to the hard drive somewhere too.

As far as I know, NTFS write support is consider stable since the 2.6.* kernel series.

[econobeing5]

i dont think i'm ready to install it on my system. i dont think i could anyway, we have about 2 gigs free on a 80 gig drive X_X

i would like to have KNOPPIX as a working liveCD because it has alot of programs that i'm already used to.

i got some questions though:
1.how would i set up an area of the HD to put my linux files on.
b.are there any good linux tut sites for REAL super newbs? including lots of stuf with the terminal?
3.is the main "core" of linux the same no matter what the version/distro(i dont know what its called)? is that why programs can work with any version/distro of linux?

[Loki3]

1)Well depending on what type of filesystem you're using you might be able to just write files to your windows partition. I thought that NTFS write ability was considered stable while under a 2.6 kernel. You'd have to check with the docuementation though.

To answer your orginal question, you'd need to resize your current windows partition with a program like parted or Partition Magic. Then you'd create a Linux file system in the newly freed space.

2)Try, www.justlinux.com/nhf. There should be some good starter documents there. If you prefer hard copies, look into picking up O'Reilly's Running Linux. Other places to find docs are www.google.com/linux, www.tldp.org and of course JL.

3)Yep, Linux is Linux is Linux. The kernel's pretty much the same in every distrobution. What seperates different distros, is generally package management, what software they include by default and how they manage configuration