Knoppix on hard drive hanging on boot

[mattg2k4]

I installed Knoppix to the hard drive in the beginner mode (multiuser Debian with Knoppix hardware configuration).

Now while it's booting, the first thing it displays is "Loading Linux", and then it prints periods across the screen and a bit onto the second line before it starts showing the text Knoppix loading screen. Lately it has been hanging during this "Loading Linux" stage when it has periods about halfway across the first line (although it does vary). I can restart it with the power button or Ctrl-alt-del, and it usually loads fine after that, but I'm setting this up as an SSH/FreeNX/SFTP server that I can access from school, and I don't want to burden my parents to make sure it boots up fine after a power loss. Any ideas on what is causing it and how to fix it?

I have it set up to automatically log in, but I'm having trouble getting Azureus to start on login. I put a script file in ~/.kde/Autostart containing "/home/mattg/azureus/azureus" which will start Azureus if I run it from the command line, but when I reboot the computer it doesn't start Azureus up.

[Chromatic Distortion]

I'm not exactly sure how to fix it, but i think the reason that yours is pausing at boot time is because the i-node tables are messed up because the computer was not shutdown properly. Whenever i shut mine down improperly, at bootup i get a bunch of error messages that say

I-node 24 should be at 45
I-node 435 should be at 65
etc. etc.

Knoppix magically fixes all these errors, and you have to restart you computer and it works fine.

The reason you're not seeing these messages is because you installed your distro with the beginner option. If you install it with the Debian-like system option, you will get a whole bunch more boot messages printed on your screen before Knoppix's usual, colorful boot messages show up. That's the only difference i have found so far between the beginner/debian options.