cypher000

Hi guy's. Thought I had sorted all my problems with installing Knoppix to pendrive. I now have it on my 4 GB Maxell and it boots beautifully every time. The problem now is that I am having to set my preferences, e-mails, backgrounds, etc everytime I boot. I have tried to make a persistent area on the pendrive but it just says it is in use. I have tried to make the pendrive writeable, but all I get is a message saying "The remount command failed. Maybe there is another orocess accessing the filesystem currently."

There was almost 4 GB of space and Knoppix is not using much of that, so why can't I save my config to the pendrive? Has anyone else met up with this problem and is there any way it can be sorted? Thanks for any help you can give me. Cypher.

Charles4809

With the pendrive in your machine, give the outcome of the next command:

fdisk -l

(that's small L)

If your pendrive has only 1 partition on it you can probably shrink it and create a new /home partition that you can write on without hassle.

cypher000

Hi Charles. Thanks for coming in with your sugestion. I tried entering fdisk -l in the Konsole but all I got was unknown command, so I had done something wrong there. I then tried sudo fdisk -l but got the same response.

I looked at the drive through QPARTED but I was lost when it came on. I have never been able to fathom out how it works. It just shows a partition with 700 MB labeled primary. It does not show the other 3GB of the drive, which is empty. Does what I have said ring any bells Charles? Thanks for everything. Walt. (cypher)

devils casper

It looks like 3GB space is unpartitioned. Execute this
Post output here.

__________________

cypher000

Hi Guy's. It is amazing how things can move. Shortly after my last reply stating absolute failure, I had a thought. My wife dives for cover when I have one of these.

I reckoned I couldn't do anything with the Pendrive because it was in use. So I switched off. Put the 'Live CD' of Knoppix in and booted from it. Then I mounted the Pendrive and made it writeable. Went into configure and asked Knoppix to make a 1GB Persistent Home directory on sda1. Blow me down.....it did it without a murmer. Making a 1GB partition in the process.

Sorted out my desktop. My E-Mail and Konquerer. Went back into configure and asked Knoppix to save my settings to the Knoppix Persistent Home Directory. Again it did this without a murmer. I then shut down Knoppix, removed the 'Live CD' and rebooted from the Pendrive.

Imagine my joy when Knoppix booted beautifully and later asked me if I wanted to use the Persistent Home directory. I said yes and away it all went. A few seconds later I had Knoppix all set up on screen with my choice of desktop and all my E-Mails coming in nicely. Now I am wondering if I could set up a 1GB Swap File on the Pendrive in the same way. I wonder?

I just cannot thank everyone enough coming in and trying to help me out of this seemingly impossible situation. This forum is the best and I am so glad to know you all. Thanks again for being so kind. Regards. Walt (cypher)

Charles4809

Glad it worked out for you.
Making a swap file (in fact it is an other partition, formatted in a special way) on your USB drive could be done easily, but i'am not in favour for it.
Most computers nowadays have 1 GB or more Ram. Only very demanding apps will need all this memory and therefore swap is hardly used.
If however you are working with an older computer that is low on memory, the swap is usefull.
So, if your pendrive is ment to be a travel companion, used on a lot of different machines you could consider doing it. If your pendrive is just a secondary OS, used on the same machine every time, I would let it be, unless it is a low spec one. Then you could consider creating a swap partition on the HDD itself, being faster accessible then a swap on the USB.
Remember always to be very careful when working with partitioners.
When you have precious data on it make a back-up