Questions regarding Knoppix

[Mark Phillips]

Kevin,

Thanks for your response - I sent a message to Austin and it only went to 
him instead of the list.....Here it is...


Austin,

OK, I got it all figured out, I hope!

1. /dev/hda1=hard drive to copy, /dev/sda1=external firewire hard drive; 
destination for partimage (automatically recognized by Knoppix!)
2. I ran fdisk on each disk (/dev/hda1 and /dev/sda1) and they came back as 
fat32
3. I mounted /dev/sda1 as rw (default for both drives was ro)
4. I ran partimage -z1 save /dev/hda1 /mnt/sda1/Images/win2k.partimage.gz - 
copied about 700MB

Now, my last few questions.

1. According to the man page for partimage, the MBR is automatically copied 
with the partition image. However, I got an error message saying the using 
the default compression (bzip2) the MBR could not be restored, so I went 
with the -z1 option and gzip. When I did an imginfo the message indicated 
that the MBR was copied. However, in one of your emails you recommended 
making a separate step and copy the MBR manually using

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/sda1/Images/had-img.mbr bsQ2 count=1

Is this necessary, or were you helping me out with the bzip2 limitation in 
partimage?

2. If I mess up my hda1 later, all I need to do is run

partimage restore /dev/hda1 /mnt/sda1/Images/win2k.partimage.gz

and it will write over the MBR and all other files to restore the system to 
today's configuration. For example, I have OfficeXP currently on the hda1 
partition, so it will be restored to its current state. All other files 
will be lost on the disk. Or, do I have to fdisk the hda1 first and then 
run partimage?

3. When I restore, do I have to restore to the same size hard drive? If I 
repartition hda1 to have 2 partitions - one for win2k and one for Linux. 
Can I restore the Win2K partition from my firewire drive to the now smaller 
partition on hda1? If yes, does it have to be the same drive, or can I now 
take the saved win2k partition to another computer and different size drive 
and install it and boot up Win2k?

4. Now that I have saved this partition, should I use PartionMagic (Windows 
program) to cut the current partition in half to install Linux, or depend 
on the Linux distro's install program to repartition the drive? Which 
distro would you recommend Mandrake or Redhat?

Thanks for all your help!


Mark Phillips
Phillips Marketing, Inc.
mark@phillipsmarketing.biz
480 945-0798
480 945-9197 fax

No trees were destroyed in the sending of this contaminant free message,
however, a significant number of electrons may have been inconvenienced.


-----Original Message-----
From:	Kevin Brown [SMTP:kevin_brown@qwest.net]
Sent:	Friday, February 28, 2003 10:36 PM
To:	plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Subject:	Re: Questions regarding Knoppix

Mark Phillips wrote:
> I am trying to use a Knoppix CD to copy an image of a partition to an
> external storage device. The Knoppix CD boots without any errors and it
> recognizes both the external (firewire) and internal drives. I can mount
> the drives and read them. However, I cannot write to either drive. I just 
> get an error that says I cannot write to the drive. Both drives are
> formatted for Widows (the internal drive is for Win2K). The Knoppix CD
> reads the permissions rwx for everyone, and the user and group are 
knoppix.
> Since I have not changed the settings for the Knoppic CD, I assume I am
> user knoppix.
>
> 1. What do I need to do to be able to write to the drives?
> 2. Can I mess up the drives if I write to them from Knoppix since they 
were
> formatted from Windows?

What format are the drives?  If NTFS then linux has at best a read-only
capability in the kernel.  if you are just wanting a raw copy of one 
partition
to another, try unmounting the partitions and using dd to copy them.

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