Counterspy Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Knoppix has locked up their distro in such a way that you can't get root access by any of the usual methods. l got this distro to convert some of my friends to Linux. It has a feature where you are able to save your customizations to a floppy, but so far none of my floppies work and the docs are in French and German. When I look at the contents of the floppy, it has two files, a knoppix script and a tarred file I assume would hold the customizations. The problem is that the first line states that only root can change the system. Commenting out the line then produces the message that the date is set in the future. The tarred file gives a message "no files". I might well be missing something in the meagre docs but if so, I can't see it. If anyone has a way of getting root access from within this program, I would greatly appreciate it. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aru Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 there is no *real* root account on knoppix, but you can run root commands with sudo, no password is needed. I think it is explained in the FAQ or SECURITY files that come in the cd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted February 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 I agree with you there from what I've read, but it absolutely refuses to make a floppy that works from their floppy config menu. It is useless as a demo except in the crudest sense if one needs to reconfigure it every time it is used. I will try again to get a floppyconfig and post the results. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted February 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 I agree with you there from what I've read, but it absolutely refuses to make a floppy that works from their floppy config menu. It is useless as a demo except in the crudest sense if one needs to reconfigure it every time it is used. I will try again to get a floppyconfig and post the results. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted February 10, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2003 It turns out that there was a gotcha in the floppyconfig creation. If you did not have all of the radio buttons on the save page pressed, then you got the "Only root can etc. etc." Another user found this out after some futile posting and finally getting an email with the answer. The posters at the Knoppix forum are a prime example of how not to behave, and the whole site smacks of arrogant self-possession. It is worth the trouble to download as a sales pitch for Linux but I would give it an F- as a distro that can do real work. Their docs are in French and German with no English translation as yet so one is limited to a badly written faq (aren't they all) and what can be gleaned from their horrible yellow on black web site. I didn't think it was possible to pervert Phpbbs quite as bad as that. It has miles to go before I would consider trying to sell it to my local Director of Education for use in the schools, but probably has some value as a demonstrator for your friends and relatives. Otherwise don't bother. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted February 11, 2003 Report Share Posted February 11, 2003 I recently installed knoppix 3.2 on my hard drive; basically used it as a Debian installer following this procedure if anyone's interested: http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html I had to do a lot of tweaking afterwards, but I'm generally impressed with what I've wound up with(wine, partion image, k3b, kernel 2.4.20 all installed and worked off the base install). Just wondering what forum you had the problem on; would like to steer clear of it myself given your comments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitz Posted February 16, 2003 Report Share Posted February 16, 2003 I downloaded the english version of KNOPPIX today. I burned the CD, booted up the CDROM, and in 2 minutes and 5 seconds flat it had booted, detected both my processors, configured most of my hardware, started X, and dumped me into a fully loaded KDE 3.0 desktop. Very slick and it uses no harddrive space. The documentation says the distro is primarily meant to be used as a rescue disk but man, it comes fully loaded. For those users needing root access from the command line just open a regular console and then do: sudo bash I managed to get the ethernet stuff running and am writting this from konqueror on KNOPPIX. For a bootable CD operating system that uses no harddrive space, this is amazing! To get onto an ethernet network quickly to access the internet through a gateway do the following from a console: sudo bash ifconfig eth0 <machine address> route add <lan base address> dev eth0 route add default gw <gateway address> cd /etc vim resolv.conf Now edit resolv.conf to add the address of your network's DNS server: nameserver <DNS server address> Now you should be good to go. Glitz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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