Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A Live OS in your pocket

Live CDs need arebecoming very famous day by day. Knoppix is a pioneer in this category. In the past and present Knoppix was available on CDs and DVDs. All the user had to do is, insert the disk in the optical drive and restart the machine. Thats it, he can then enjoy a full fledged Linux operating system, without making any changes to his hard disk. However the CDs and DVDs have one major problem. They are only read only and hence we cannot store any file or document.
Hence I made some research and found out how to make a Knoppix boot from a usb flash drive. Sits very simple. Just sit back and read on.

Prerequisites
1. 1 GB USB flash drive.
2. Download the ISO of Knoppix 5.1 from
http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso
.
3. Another tool named fixkp.zip is required to make the Knoppix run from the USB. It can be downloaded from http://pendrivelinux.com/downloads/fixkp.zip.

Creating a bootable USB
Create a new folder named USB Knoppix anywhere on your computer. Let's assume that you created it at E:\. Move the Knoppix Linux ISO to this folder and then extract fixkp.zip into the same folder. Since fixkp.bat is a batch file, simply run it from the command prompt. It will extract the Knoppix ISO in the E:\Knoppix folder and modify it to run from the USB drive.

This process will take around a minute and it will automatically create a new folder named 'knoppix' in the E:\Knoppix folder.

Now format your USB drive. Then copy all the contents from the E:\Knoppix\knoppix folder to your USB drive. Now go to the command prompt and change the location to your USB drive and simply run makeboot.bat batch file.

That's it. Your live USB drive is ready. Enjoy!!!!!

Krish.

No comments: