[TAG] Booting a "Live CD" image without a CD

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 05:09:27AM +0100, Robos wrote:
> On Thu, 17.03.05, Ben Okopnik <ben at linuxgazette.net> wrote:
> > Hi, all -
> 
> Hi Ben and List.

Hey, Robos - good to hear from you!

[snip of Knoppix booting problems ]

> > So, given all of the above - what do you folks think? Have any of you
> > had experience in booting something like this, or do you have any ideas
> > that I've perhaps missed?
> 
> Well, if you only want to show her the livecd, how about you use and emulator?
> Lately I've been using qemu a lot and it works like hell! Fabrice Bellard is
> really a god. Ah, and if she has winblows on that machine, how about this
> link:
> http://home.btconnect.com/chrisandcarolyn/torrents/KNOPPIX_V3.8-2005-02-28-CeBIT_Edition-qemu-0.6.1-2.iso.torrent

Ah. BitTorrent, I'd guess - which I know almost nothing about.
Presumably, this would download a Knoppix ISO onto her machine? That's
not a problem; our laptops are Ethernetted together. Although it's good
to see that 3.8 is out (<clickety-click><download>...)

> Well, I tried it once (screenshot here: http://vobcopy.org/pictures/fun_with_qemu.thumbnail.jpg)

I'm assuming you mean http://vobcopy.org/pictures/fun_with_qemu.jpg -
the other one is a postage-stamp sized gadget. Hey, it's got exactly the
same message as I was getting!

> and the folks that made the .bat file made some errors IMHO: -m should be
> more in the range of 128 (smaller than what shm has, whatever that means on
> winblows) and I think the error message in the pic also came from an error 
> of theirs but hey, it's close.
> BTW: qemu with kqemu (the kernel module he has now on linux) gives really a
> speedup to ~70% native cpu speed. Awesome (that's why win4lin pro uses qemu
> underneath)
> Helps?

I'm not sure - but I'll be back in NYC this Saturday, and will have time
to play with computer stuff a few days later, after we get back to St.
Augustine. But I'll give it a shot if the current pre-programmed
solution (the modified Knoppix boot floppy, the preparation of which was
so superbly aided by Kapil's suggestions) doesn't work. If it _does_
work, I've built a great script that automates the somewhat painful
process of creating it, and I'll definitely publish it as well.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *