The KNOPPIX Gnu/Linux distribution rules (oops, let me say that again for the meter: KNOPPIX RULES! Gnu/Linux RULES! ), but running it from a CDROM gets a bit slow, so I figured out how to copy it to my hard drive. I'm already running RedHat 8.0 (which also installed flawlessly) among other OSes on my Toshiba 4005 laptop, and I have an extra >750MB partition that I'd like to use to boot KNOPPIX from time to time. The slides in this German-language PDF give you some idea that it can be done, but there are a couple of problems I had with their procedure:

• They are copying the decompressed filesystem in that line that says cp -a /KNOPPIX/* /mnt/partition/. That flowed my 2GB partition over. My technique will store everything compressed, as on the CDROM, using less that 750MB.
• They're having you run LILO, but I'm already using GRUB and am happier with it. It's much safer, really.
• They also have a shell script to do this. I looked at the script, and it's huge, so I don't understand it, so I'm scared to run it.

To be fair, that's kind of a "real install", and what I'm looking for is a "cdrom-style boot from hard drive." Here's my technique:

My system is like this, your partitions will be different.

• /dev/hda1 is my RedHat /boot
• /dev/hda2 is my RedHat /
• /dev/hda12 is spare -- i'll put KNOPPIX on it.
• KNOPPIX boots flawlessly from my CDROM (version KNOPPIX_V3.1-2003-01-20-EN.iso)

Here's what I did:

• Boot KNOPPIX from CDROM. (KNOPPIX is very safe in that it won't touch your hard drive, except to use a Linux swap partition if it finds one. I don't have one, and it was happy with that.) No "cheatcodes" (kernel parameters) were required.

• Click the big "K" in the bottom left corner, then choose the "KNOPPIX" submenu, then choose "Rootshell."

• Don't do this if you don't understand what you're doing! I want to reformat my hda12 partition. This deletes anything already there! Then I make a directory /z and mount hda12 there, so /z is my "target" I am building. (Under KNOPPIX, / is ramdisk, so changes to it (like making a directory /z) have no permanent effect.)

     # mke2fs (only-if-you-mean-it!) -i 99999 /dev/hda12
     # tune2fs -j -c 0 -i 0 /dev/hda12
     # mkdir /z
     # mount /dev/hda12 /z
  

  (You probably don't need to use a separate partition like I did. Look at the next step, and any ext2 or ext3 partition that won't have clashes with the next two "cp" commands should work.)

• Copy the CDROM (which appears under /cdrom in KNOPPIX) whole into the target partition. Then mount a boot floppy image (it's in /cdrom/KNOPPIX) onto /y and copy its files into the target partition as well.

     # cp -r /cdrom/* /z
     # mkdir /y
     # mount -o loop /cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot-en.img /y
     # cp /y/* /z
  

• The final step is to create a GRUB stanza. I need to edit grub/grub.conf in the /boot partition, which is hda1:

     # mkdir /x
     # mount /dev/hda1 /x
     # vi /x/grub/grub.conf
  

  Here's what I add to the end of grub.conf:

     title KNOPPIX hda12
         root (hd0,11)
         kernel /vmlinuz ro vga=0x317 lang=en
         initrd /miniroot.gz
  

  In grub, things start at 0, so /dev/hda12 is called "(hd0,11)" -- the "hda" is called "hd0" and "12" becomes "11". "/vmlinuz" and "/miniroot.gz" were copied from the floppy image into the root directory of /dev/hda12. "vga=0x317" is for my 1024x768 laptop display; omit it if inappropriate. "lang=en" specifies english, rather than german. Add any other cheatcodes to the kernel line, such as the word "2" to make it boot text consoles instead of X.

• "sync" three times ;) and reboot!

That's it. The only extra problem I had was my hda12 partition was not labled type 83 (hex) (Linux ext2 or ext3). I had to go into fdisk and change it, for grub to like it.

With this technique, KNOPPIX behaves as if my hda12 were the CDROM. It's still very stand-off-ish, not touching anything on my drive, and not saving any configurations. But that's kind of the beauty of it -- you could let guests use your computer in this mode, and they would have to really try to mess anything up.

Oh, and here's the link to the KNOPPIX Website again: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/ -- you can download the ISOs from there, to burn your own CDROM, or to just mount the ISO image directly, and copy to a taret hard drive partition from there.

Disclaimer: I'm typing these notes from an internet cafe in Hua Hin, Thailand, and I don't have my laptop right here with me -- so I may make typos. Write me, strick, at the obvious secondlevel domain where this web page appears, if you find tpyos!