Knoppix for the first time

"The most important design issue... is that Linux is supposed to be fun." -- Linus Torvalds

Overview

The purpose of this section is to get you started into Knoppix for the very first time. This section skips nearly all of the options for starting Knoppix. The options for starting Knoppix are explained later.

Requirements

The recommended hardware is as follows:

Starting Knoppix

There are two stages to starting Knoppix:

The first stage

The first stage is to get to the "boot prompt". The boot prompt lets you customise the Knoppix startup process. For example, you can specify at the boot prompt what screen resolution you want Knoppix to use. To reach the boot prompt, you use either the CD or the floppy disk.

The second stage

The second stage is to run Knoppix itself. This requires the CD. Knoppix follows the instructions given at the boot prompt to complete the startup process.

Getting to the boot prompt

From power-on to the boot prompt

To get to the boot prompt, follow these steps:

  1. If the computer is already on, insert the Knoppix CD. If the CD drive is set to "auto-run", information explaining about Knoppix will appear. Restart the computer.

  2. If the computer is off, turn it on, then immediately insert the Knoppix CD. To play for time, press the Pause/Break key immediately after turning your computer on. On many PCs and laptops, this will 'pause' the BIOS, giving you more time to insert the CD. Then press the Pause/Break key again to resume startup.

  3. Most newer computers will automatically check for a bootable CD in the first CD-ROM drive. The Knoppix "boot prompt" should then appear. The boot prompt is the last three lines at the bottom of the screen. If your computer can't display the white and blue Knoppix logo, you will get a blue background instead. This is normal.


  4. On some computers, you must press a key for the “boot device menu”. The boot device menu is used to tell the computer which drive to boot from. A prompt saying which key will display the boot menu will appear on the screen just after you turn the computer on. For example, on some Dell desktop PCs, press F12 when prompted, press the Down Arrow key until “Boot from IDE-CDROM” is highlighted, then press Enter.

  5. At the boot prompt, press Enter to boot Knoppix accepting all the defaults (including the German keyboard/language.) If you do nothing for 60 seconds, Knoppix boots automatically. To boot Knoppix with another keyboard/language, see the section “Which language?” below.

Tip

If you have two CD drives, and one of them is a CD-ReWritable drive, put the Knoppix CD in the other drive. Keep your CD-ReWritable drive empty if you can. This will let you try out the CD writing features in Knoppix easily at a later time.

Quick help

Question: Why does Windows start instead of Knoppix, even when the Knoppix CD is in the drive?

Answer: The CD-ROM drive is not set to boot before the hard disk, or the CD-ROM drive is not bootable. Turn off the computer. Insert the Knoppix boot floppy disk. Turn the computer back on. The computer should boot from the floppy drive. The Knoppix boot prompt should appear.

To fix the problem permanently, enter your computer's Basic In/Out System (BIOS) setup. The key to press that takes you into the BIOS setup is usually shown on the screen just after you turn the computer on. Visit the "boot priority" screen. Set BIOS to boot from the CD or floppy drive first. If you are unsure, check with your motherboard or computer manufacturer.

Question: The computer has two CD-ROM drives. Why does the Knoppix CD boot in one drive but not the other?

Answer: Some BIOSes can only boot the first CD-ROM drive. To work around the problem, start up from the Knoppix boot floppy disk. Then you can put the Knoppix CD in either CD-ROM drive. If you are really determined, switch the CD-ROM drives so the drive you want to boot from is the first drive.

Help at the boot prompt

Press F2 for the help screen. The help screen is a summary of the boot prompt options. Pressing F2 or any other key cancels the timer, so Knoppix will not automatically boot.


Which language?

The most important option at the boot prompt is the keyboard/language. More correctly, the keyboard/language option sets the locale. A locale is a collection of regional settings including keyboard layout, language, time format, date format, currency format and paper size.

The locale options are named using the International Standards Organisation two-letter country codes (ISO 3166 and ISO 639). The locale options are:

Code

Language/keyboard

cn

Canadian

de

German (default)

da

Danish

es

Spanish

fr

French

it

Italian

nl

Dutch

pl

Polish

ru

Russian

sk

Slovakian

tr

Turkish

tw

Taiwanese

uk

United Kingdom

us

United States


For example, to start Knoppix in the United Kingdom locale:

  1. Type this at the boot prompt:

    knoppix lang=uk

  2. Press the Enter key on the keyboard.

  3. Knoppix will begin loading with the UK language/keyboard.

Quick help

Question: How do I get out of the boot prompt?

Answer: Take the CD out of the drive, then restart your computer.

The automatic startup process

The first thing that Knoppix does is boot the Linux "kernel". The kernel is the "main program". It controls the computer, starts new programs, and manages programs once they are running.

The kernel will try to start a "framebuffer console". If successful, you will see a cute penguin logo in the top left corner. The number of penguins represents the number of Central Processing Units (CPUs) in your computer. This is either a pointless waste of space, or a cool hack, depending on your point of view.

If you do not have a graphics card that supports the "framebuffer console", you will see the error message "You passed an undefined mode number". This is harmless. Simply hit the Space bar on the keyboard to continue.

The Linux kernel will take a few seconds to detect the hardware in your computer. Then the "INIT" startup process will take over. Knoppix will try to detect and configure the following items, in this order:

  1. Random access memory (RAM) size.

  2. Processor model and speed.

  3. Advanced Power Management (APM).

  4. Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces.

  5. Firewire (IEEE 1394) interfaces.

  6. Mouse.

  7. Sound card.

  8. Video card.

  9. Monitor.

  10. Graphics resolutions of the monitor.

  11. Hard disk partitions.

  12. Wired Ethernet network cards.


When this process is complete, it will briefly say "INIT: Entering runlevel 5". Next, Knoppix will try to start the "X Window System". The "X Window System" is the graphics display. Knoppix will automatically detect and use the highest available screen resolution and colour depth. If successful, you will see a black cross on a gray stippled background.

Knoppix will then begin loading the "K Desktop Environment". KDE runs on top of the X Window System. The progress of loading KDE will be shown in the middle of the screen. When KDE has finished loading, the Knoppix welcome page will be loaded.

When the welcome page appears, congratulations! You have started Knoppix and the K Desktop Environment successfully.


Getting out

Now that you've got Knoppix up and running, feel free to have a poke around. Everything is read-only, so you're unlikely to do any harm to your computer. To exit Knoppix:

  1. Click the "K" menu in the bottom left corner.

  2. Click "Logout".


  3. Knoppix will begin its shutdown process.

  4. The Knoppix CD will be ejected.

  5. Remove the CD and close the tray.

  6. Press Enter on the keyboard.

  7. Knoppix will attempt to turn off the computer automatically. If it doesn't turn off automatically, it is now safe to turn off the computer yourself using the power button.

Tip

For a quicker (but less graceful) exit, press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. This “three finger salute” kills the X Window System. Killing the X Window System takes down KDE and all its open applications. Knoppix will then shut down automatically.

Quick help

Question: Why does KDE come up in German?

Answer: You need to specify the keyboard/language at the boot prompt. For example, for the UK locale, enter knoppix lang=uk at the boot prompt.

Question: It says 'cloop: read error', what does that mean?

Answer: This means there is a problem reading the Knoppix CD. You either have a faulty CD-ROM drive or a damaged Knoppix CD. To check the media, enter at the Knoppix boot prompt :

knoppix testcd

This will make Knoppix check the CD media for errors. If you have a known-good Knoppix CD, this error usually indicates a faulty CD drive.

Question: I get a blank screen when the X Window System comes up, why?

Answer: This means Knoppix is trying to use a screen resolution that your monitor doesn't support. For example, Knoppix may have detected your graphics card is capable of 1024x768 pixel resolution, but your monitor can't cope with that. Try setting a lower resolution at the boot prompt. For example, enter:

knoppix lang=uk screen=800x600

This will make Knoppix use a screen resolution of 800 by 600 pixels when it starts the X Window System.

Question: Why does the screen go blank when the kernel boots?

Answer: This problem usually occurs with low cost TFT (flat screen) monitors. The kernel is using a framebuffer console, but the monitor is incompatible with it. Turn off the framebuffer console. At the boot prompt, use the option 'vga=normal'. For example, type:

knoppix lang=uk vga=normal

This will turn off the framebuffer console and the penguin logo.

Question: Why doesn't the mouse work?

Answer: This could mean you are trying to use a PS/2 mouse in a 9-pin serial port through a PS/2-to-serial adapter. Some PS/2 mice do not work when plugged into a 9-pin serial port. Try a 'real' serial mouse.

Question: It says 'Initrd extends beyond end of memory'.

Answer: This means your motherboard is reporting the RAM size incorrectly. Specify the amount of physical RAM in your computer at the boot prompt. For example, if the computer has 128 Mb of RAM, enter at the boot prompt:

knoppix lang=uk mem=128M

Question: It says "Could not find the KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry. Dropping you to a (very limited) shell."

Answer: Try booting with:

knoppix ide2=0x180 nopcmcia

If that doesn't work, it means your PCMCIA CD-ROM drive is not supported. There is a workaround. In Windows, copy the directory called "KNOPPIX" from the Knoppix CD to the root of a local FAT formatted hard drive partition (eg: drive "C:"). The copy will take some time to complete. Then start Knoppix and specify the partition that you copied the KNOPPIX directory to, using the 'fromhd=' boot parameter. For example, boot with

knoppix fromhd=/dev/hda1

If Windows is not available, use a single-floppy Linux such as "tomsrtbt" to do the copy, however that is beyond the scope of this book.

Connecting to a local area network

During the startup process, Knoppix will automatically detect the network card. For Local Area Network (LAN) access, Knoppix will automatically obtain an IP address from a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server. To check:

  1. Click the Konsole button in the Panel (bottom row, 6th from the left).

  2. Type this command and press Enter at the end of the line:

    ifconfig

  3. You should see a response like this:


This says the first Ethernet interface (eth0) has been given the Internetworking Protocol (IP) address "192.168.1.18". If the Ethernet card has been given an IP address, it means the card is working.

To double-check the connection, find out the IP address of another computer on your network. For example, suppose another computer has the address 192.168.1.1. Type this command and press Enter, replacing 192.168.1.1 appropriately:

ping 192.168.1.1

You should see a response like this:


Press Ctrl + C on the keyboard to cancel pinging.

Configuring the network card manually

If there is no DHCP server on your network, you will need to configure the network card manually.

  1. Click the Knoppix menu in the bottom left corner.

  2. Point to Network/Internet.

  3. Click Network Card Configuration.


  4. You will be asked if you want to use DHCP broadcast.

  5. Click "No".

  6. You will be asked to enter the IP address that you want to give to the first Ethernet interface. You need to know an IP address that is free on your network. You can't use an IP address that is already in use, or both computers will not be able to communicate.

  1. Enter the IP address that you want to give to the card.

  2. Click OK. Follow the prompts to complete the setup process.

Quick help

Question: There is no "eth0", why not?

Answer: Check the network cables. If there is a DHCP server on your local area network, make sure it is running. Click the "Knoppix" menu, choose "Root Shell" and enter:

/etc/init.d/network restart
pump -i eth0

Try configuring your network card manually. If it still won't work it may mean your network card is not supported.

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