Knoppix live boot CD can't write to any hard drive?!

[Ichinisan]

My first impression is that Knoppix has the most retarded graphical interface I've ever seen, but I needed to download a "live" boot CD to recover files from a bad hard drive that won't even mount in Windows. I can view most of the files just fine and I even burned some of them onto a CD-R. The problem is that some files are unreadable and I could trash dozens of CD-R's while trying to back up my boss' files. Knoppix tells me that I don't have permission to write to any hard drive, even my known-good drives. I tried connecting a 2GB PCMCIA hard drive (presumably FAT32) and I still don't have write access. I brought up properties and gave full read/write access to all "Owner", "Group", and "Other". I also disable the "read-only" option. I opened up the drive contents and right-clicked in a blank area to bring up Properties again. I enabled all read/write permissions that were available to me.

What gives? I still can't even create a folder or text file on ANY hard drive.

 

[n0cmonkey]

mount
ls -l /PATH/TO/MOUNTED/DRIVE

EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot the standard: RESTORE FROM BACKUPS.

 

[doornail]

OP is funny on so many levels.

 

[MattCo]

 

[TG2]

You should try BartPE instead of a Knoppix CD

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Get Kanotix, it has captive-ntfs which will allow write support for ntfs partitions and is seriously easy to use (and it might impress you more). I'm not sure if Knoppix has that. It just has ntfs which, afaik, only gives you read support.

 

[Ichinisan]

The drive that I need to write is FAT32. It's a 2GB PCMCIA (PC-card slot) hard drive. Right now, it's freshly formatted. Still the same r/w problems. Is it normal for a Linux distro to have no logical way to enable write access using the @#$%ing GUI? Sheesh.

n0cmonkey: I'll try that console command and let you know if it does the trick. Thanks.

[edit]

-rw-r--r-- 1 knoppix knoppix 511 May 10 00:01 /home/knoppix/Desktop/hde1

Still can't write to my PCMCIA drive.

How can I just format the PCMCIA drive and let the permissions/ownership get set that way? I can't find a LOGICAL way to format with the GUI either...
[/edit]

 

[Cerb]

Typically there will be an option in the context menu of the desktop item for the device to change R/W mode.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan
The drive that I need to write is FAT32. It's a 2GB PCMCIA (PC-card slot) hard drive. Right now, it's freshly formatted. Still the same r/w problems. Is it normal for a Linux distro to have no logical way to enable write access using the @#$%ing GUI? Sheesh.

n0cmonkey: I'll try that console command and let you know if it does the trick. Thanks.

[edit]

-rw-r--r-- 1 knoppix knoppix 511 May 10 00:01 /home/knoppix/Desktop/hde1

Still can't write to my PCMCIA drive.

How can I just format the PCMCIA drive and let the permissions/ownership get set that way? I can't find a LOGICAL way to format with the GUI either...
[/edit]

Forget the GUI. Are you logged in as the knoppix user (I've never used knoppix)?

Where's the output from mount? Basically fdisk and newfs the drive.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: Cerb
Typically there will be an option in the context menu of the desktop item for the device to change R/W mode.

I found the option, but it tells be that the drive is not mounted (even though I can browse/view the existing contents). I eventually found another nested option to "mount" the drive which appears to already be mounted in every sense of word. I "mounted" the drive and then the "Enable R/W" option worked. In what way exactly was the drive not already mounted? What is the reasoning to explain why I had to click "mount" when the drive was already mounted and accessible?

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Forget the GUI. Are you logged in as the knoppix user (I've never used knoppix)?

Where's the output from mount? Basically fdisk and newfs the drive.

I never entered a user account name. The Live boot CD went straight to a Desktop of sorts after it took a long time to boot up.



Anyway, problem finally solved. Knoppix has way too many nagging flaws for me to tolerate (even mouse input is ridiculous). Ubuntu has made a great impression with others that I have heard from. I'll give it a try sometime.

 

[Netopia]

I'm betting he doesn't have root access.

Try typing "sudo" before you commands and see if you get different results. IIRC, there's also a "SuperUser" terminal in the menu system. If so, you could just fire that up and issue your commands from there. If you are into drag and drop for you files, then you'll also want to type "konqueror&" in that same terminal and use the window that's generated.

Just my guess.

Joe

 

[yuchai]

When in doubt, read the manual! Especially if you're using something that's entirely new to you.

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_FAQ

Check out the "Using FAQ" in particular

 

[Jeff7]

Would there even be Permissions and Ownership settings on a FAT32 partition?

 

[Netopia]

It's not a matter of permissions from the partition, it's a matter of Knoppix (Linux) not giving ANY permission to do ANY writing to ANY hard drive. That's why I think it's just a matter of him executing as root, so that the OS would then give him write privileges.

Joe

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: Cerb
Typically there will be an option in the context menu of the desktop item for the device to change R/W mode.

I found the option, but it tells be that the drive is not mounted (even though I can browse/view the existing contents). I eventually found another nested option to "mount" the drive which appears to already be mounted in every sense of word. I "mounted" the drive and then the "Enable R/W" option worked. In what way exactly was the drive not already mounted? What is the reasoning to explain why I had to click "mount" when the drive was already mounted and accessible?

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Forget the GUI. Are you logged in as the knoppix user (I've never used knoppix)?

Where's the output from mount? Basically fdisk and newfs the drive.

I never entered a user account name. The Live boot CD went straight to a Desktop of sorts after it took a long time to boot up.



Anyway, problem finally solved. Knoppix has way too many nagging flaws for me to tolerate (even mouse input is ridiculous). Ubuntu has made a great impression with others that I have heard from. I'll give it a try sometime.

Mounted and connected mean two different things. Mounting a drive (that is already connected) gives you the ability to access the data. The FS that you were using is not a native linux FS, and wasn't automatically mounted for security reasons (probably) but thankfully Linux provides you with the CLI, which is an extremely powerful tool with a plethora of options, and will become your friend

 

[Nothinman]

Would there even be Permissions and Ownership settings on a FAT32 partition?

Yes, they're simulated by the VFS since FAT doesn't have any real permissions. His 'ls -l' output shows that the mount point is owned by the knoppix user and group so he should have write access to it.

Anyway, problem finally solved. Knoppix has way too many nagging flaws for me to tolerate (even mouse input is ridiculous). Ubuntu has made a great impression with others that I have heard from. I'll give it a try sometime.

The only nagging flaw here is the fact that you didn't know how the system worked and instead of putting forth effort to learn you just cried about it.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
The only nagging flaw here is the fact that you didn't know how the system worked and instead of putting forth effort to learn you just cried about it.

Not so. I'm particularly critical of the user interface. Many context items do not appear where they should, but are located in other places that simply make them unnecessarily difficult to find. As a freelance software developer, I have always over-analyzed UI's and have many criticisms about Windows as well. As a tech support representative who has to walk people through things over the telephone, I am well aware of annoying nuances and arbitrary restrictions that make a UI difficult or less useful.

I fully intend to learn the inner workings of Linux, but I would not start with a disorganized mess like Knoppix. As an experiment, drop Windows-user "Mom" or "Dad" into Knoppix and ask him/her to find some sort of "Device Manager" to list the hardware in the computer. Did they find anything by clicking around without wasting more than 10 minutes?

I expect that Ubuntu will be something I would enjoy learning and eventually contribute to.

 

[logicmaster2003]

you may have two options:
1) the easy way -- burn the NEW centos LIVE-CD (yes it came out just yesterday.. finally !!!)
ftp://ftp.net.usf.edu/pub/centos/4.3/isos/i386/CentOS-4.3-i386-LiveCD.iso

2) the hard way (but challenging ) -- boot up to your favorite KNOPPIX LIVE-CD , open up a terminal and type-in commands like..
sudo chmod 755 /media/hda3
sudo chown knoppix:knoppix /media/hda3
note: replace "hda3" with whatever device you have)

 

[Nothinman]

sudo chmod 755 /media/hda3
sudo chown knoppix:knoppix /media/hda3
note: replace "hda3" with whatever device you have)

That won't matter, since the device is FAT it doesn't have any real permissions to manipulate, they're all generated at mount time.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: Nothinman
The only nagging flaw here is the fact that you didn't know how the system worked and instead of putting forth effort to learn you just cried about it.

Not so. I'm particularly critical of the user interface. Many context items do not appear where they should, but are located in other places that simply make them unnecessarily difficult to find. As a freelance software developer, I have always over-analyzed UI's and have many criticisms about Windows as well. As a tech support representative who has to walk people through things over the telephone, I am well aware of annoying nuances and arbitrary restrictions that make a UI difficult or less useful.

I fully intend to learn the inner workings of Linux, but I would not start with a disorganized mess like Knoppix. As an experiment, drop Windows-user "Mom" or "Dad" into Knoppix and ask him/her to find some sort of "Device Manager" to list the hardware in the computer. Did they find anything by clicking around without wasting more than 10 minutes?

I expect that Ubuntu will be something I would enjoy learning and eventually contribute to.

Do so. Knoppix is not meant to be used by your mother. It is meant to have options handy for getting things done to a computer it is not installed on. Having them at your fingertips is more important than having them logically set out. My mom has not problem with Linux, and didn't even know she was using it (and not Windows) for over half a year. However, that was Ubuntu, then PCLinuxOS, and now Zenwalk--none of which would be as good to use for getting data off of a Windows machine as Knoppix or its derivatives. However, you should have used Knoppix on other PCs, without a critical need, to get used to it.

(aging thread, I know, but I just got around to my AT subscription emails)

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan
My first impression is that Knoppix has the most retarded graphical interface I've ever seen, but I needed to download a "live" boot CD to recover files from a bad hard drive that won't even mount in Windows. I can view most of the files just fine and I even burned some of them onto a CD-R. The problem is that some files are unreadable and I could trash dozens of CD-R's while trying to back up my boss' files. Knoppix tells me that I don't have permission to write to any hard drive, even my known-good drives. I tried connecting a 2GB PCMCIA hard drive (presumably FAT32) and I still don't have write access. I brought up properties and gave full read/write access to all "Owner", "Group", and "Other". I also disable the "read-only" option. I opened up the drive contents and right-clicked in a blank area to bring up Properties again. I enabled all read/write permissions that were available to me.

What gives? I still can't even create a folder or text file on ANY hard drive.

what the hell are you using a OS you've never used for recovery of important docs. slap in a new hdd install windows on it and recover using that windows

knoppix is awesome if you know what your doing.

 

[Ichinisan]

Why the hell are you criticizing people and pretending to be a know-it-all?

Any person with half a brain would have first tried to recover the drive by installing it in another Windows system as a secondary drive, as I had already attempted. Windows will not read it, just as you can't read my original post. Knoppix can read the drive. I had good reason to expect that Knoppix would read the drive, and my instinct was right. I was able to use Knoppix to recover the files. Are you trying to tell me that I did the wrong thing when I was actually able to get the job done? My criticism of Knoppix has nothing to do with performance, only with illogical interface design. This is something that *only* a first-exposure user should be able to comment on.