[svlug] How reliable are LiveCD HD installs?

[John Conover]

Rick Moen writes:
> 
> Here's something to do and take note of:  While booting Knoppix, at the
> first prompt, try hitting several of the function keys that it says you
> can optionally use to find out more information, as opposed to just
> pressing Enter.  You'll read about boot-time parameters (keywords) you
> can pass to the booting kernel, that disable particular pieces of the
> kernel's built-in hardware-support code that are likely to cause
> problems on some hardware, e.g., noapm, acpi=off, noapic, etc.  They're
> actually broadly applicable to Linux systems' boot-time environments.
> 
> Odds are, one or more of those will make Feather, DSL, etc. work fine on
> your P466.  (Er, not that it matters, but are you quite sure about that
> "466 MHz" bit?  One suspects a typo.  266, maybe.)
>

On the Knoppix CD, there is a text file that lists the gazillion
"Cheat Codes" to use via the Boot: prompt for HW configuration.

Knoppix 4.0 is not available, yet, and the live CD will be on
DVD-although there will be a mini-CD, like the old 3.X versions; so I
gather.

The Ubuntu distribution has good HW detection, too. But the install is
a bit more complicated than just typing "knoppix-installer" at a root
prompt-its an install CD, (you can test drive it with their live CD,)
and then you get to use the debian apt-get to get all the stuff you
need-the default install is minimal-which can be kind of painful if
you don't take notes on what you put in your machine, and lose an HD,
etc., and have to reinstall.

      John

-- 

John Conover, conover at rahul.net, http://www.johncon.com/