Bootable USB Key
Knoppix 5.0.1 boots rather nicely from a USB key. It's getting easier to get it working, as the USB bugs from the previous versions have been fixed.
This is a "recipe" for creating a Knoppix bootable USB key. It was originally posted to the forums: http://knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25402
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Nice stuff,
PortableApps
Here's also something great I found. If you have roughly 260MB or more of free space remaining on your USB key, you might want to drop PortableApps on there.
This is a suite of freeware Windows utilities, and will help you if you need to do work within Windows without being able to reboot into Knoppix. Much better and cleaner than U3!
When installing PortableApps to a USB key that already has Knoppix on it, PortableApps will complain about overwriting the autorun.inf file. This is fine. Say Yes to the overwrite. This will allow the USB key to bring up the PortableApps menu, instead of the Knoppix homepage, when clicking on it from within Windows.
With a 1GB key formatted as FAT16, as per the above instructions, there is, unfortunately, just barely not enough room for both Knoppix and the full PortableApps suite to coexist. The workaround is to "install" PortableApps to a spare empty folder on your hard drive first. Make edits to that folder as necessary, deleting some apps you can live without. Then, copy the entire folder manually to your USB key from there.
Formatting as FAT32 will work, as FAT32 is more efficient at cramming in the thousands of small files PortableApps creates. A larger USB key will provide much more room for both Knoppix and PortableApps, and enough extra left over for a decently-sized Knoppix home directory as well. See above for alternate mkdiskimage command lines you can try, when formatting larger USB keys or using FAT32.
--Krellan 19:23, 27 Nov 2006 (GMT)
There is an another project based on PortableApps, with the addition of TOR-networking enabled by default. This makes it possible to anonymize web surfing at the cost of speed.
More info at http://www.democrakey.com/
--Neva 18:54, 20 Jun 2007 (GMT)
mkdiskimage won't set up a 2 gb USB device with the USB-ZIP format using the example given. According to other FAQ's this is an issue with too many cylinders. A 1 gb drive is supposed to work fine. You may be able to manually create two drives on the device and manually format it in order to set it up as USB-ZIP.
Depending on the USB device, you can use fdisk to figure out the cylinders, heads and sectors and get mkdiskimage to work with these values. The one I used had 1015 cylinders, 64 heads and 62 sectors per track -- these values worked fine and I was able to create a bootable Knoppix USB key.
I was able to use this guide to setup and boot from Knoppix on a Creative Zen Vision:M MP3 player. Details here: http://www.francisshanahan.com/detail.aspx?cid=509
For the Cylinders/Head/Sectors issue, an easy way to find the information is simply type:
hdparm /dev/sd?
Where '?' is the drive letter. It will output the "Geometry: x/y/z" where X=Cylinders, Y=Heads, Z=Sectors. Enter those in for the last three variables on the mkdiskimage command and you are all set.
--Geekner 18:53, 7 Oct 2007 (UTC)
When running Knoppix 5.1.1, and booting from your USB key, sometimes udev hardware detection will fail, or lock up entirely. This is strange, and I don't know why this happens. This doesn't happen when booting from the original CD.
The workaround is to use the "noudev" cheatcode. However, when using this cheatcode, fewer of your peripherals will be detected correctly. It's better than having the system lock up, though. If this cheatcode is necessary for you, consider editing it into your syslinux.cfg file as described above, so that you won't need to enter it every time.
--Krellan 10:55, 18 Oct 2007 (UTC)
