hey i am planning on doing aknoppix hd installand would like to know if its safe as in it wont overwrite my mandrake lilo and i can just add knoppix to my drake lilo.conf i hope someone know this

One thing you can do is save your mbr to floppy, a good idea with any multiboot system. I haven't done a knoppix hd install for months but I believe you can choose between putting lilo on your mbr or the root of the install partition.

use dd to save your mbr to floppy like this:

(assuming /dev/hda is your hd boot device)

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1

you can boot from the mbr floppy if your hd mbr gets messed up, then if you need to reinstall use this:

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

HTH

~rock

You can also make a LILO boot-disk with:
lilo -b /dev/fd0
where /dev/fd0 should be you disk drive.
After installing Knoppix you can boot with your disk an run lilo again without arguments.

well i went and did it anyway before i got a response so what happened was it went really smoothly i didnt configure lilo during setup and my mandrake lilo is still entact exept now i need to know what to do to add knoppix to lilo in mandrale lilo.conf

here is my lilo.conf for mandrake

boot="/dev/hdc"
map=/boot/map
install=menu
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout="100"
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw

image="/boot/vmlinuz"
label="linux"
root="/dev/hdc6"
initrd="/boot/initrd.img"
append="quiet devfs=mount hda=ide-scsi acpi=off"
vga=788
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hdc6
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hda=ide-scsi acpi=off"
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hdc6
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe devfs=nomount hda=ide-scsi acpi=off"
read-only

other=/dev/hdc1 label="windows"
table=/dev/hdc

other=/dev/fd0 label="floppy" unsafe

and here is my lilo conf from knoppix

boot=/dev/hdd5
vga=791
prompt
timeout=50
append = "hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi apm=power-off nomce"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-xfs
label=knoppix
root=/dev/hdd5
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.gz

## A Windows installation, example for partition 1 on first IDE harddisk
# other=/dev/hda1
# label=dos
# optional
# table=/dev/hda


is it as simple as adding

this line to my mandrake lilo.conf

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-xfs
label=knoppix
root=/dev/hdd5

could some plz help me clean this up i also have my fstab
here as well from mandrake

dev/hdc6 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdc8 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/hdd,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hdc1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hdc5 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc7 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd1 /mnt/hd auto user,kudzu,noauto,umask=0,exec 0 0




i like it how it mount my drives at start up, and here is my knoppix fstab


# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hdd5 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdc7 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# partitions found by Knoppix
#/dev/hdc1 /mnt/hdc1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
#/dev/hdc5 /mnt/hdc5 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
#/dev/hdc6 /mnt/hdc6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
#/dev/hdc8 /mnt/hdc8 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
#/dev/hdd1 /mnt/hdd1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0


do you think it is as simple as copying my fstab from mandrake to my knoppix box if so i need to keep file attributes i know there is a cmd to copy a file keeping these attributes is it cp somthing fstab
oh and i did make a boot floppy thats the only way to get into knoppix it has a syslinux.cfg file that reads default knoppix
prompt 1
timeout 50
label knoppix
kernel vmlinuz
append root=/dev/hdd5 ro vga=791 apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi nomce initrd=initrd.gz

alright thanx in advance

Seems quite nice as an entry in your mandrake lilo.conf, doesn't it.
I have tried without initrd, but then it would not work because yout system need initrd.gz for additional modules and stuff like this. So you only must give lilo the complete path for your knoppix-kernel and -initrd.gz. I have made a directory /boot/others and copied kernel and initrd into it. Then the lilo.conf image should look like this:

image=/boot/other/vmlinuz-2.4.20-xfs
label=knoppix
root=/dev/hdd5
read-only
initrd=/boot/others/initrd.gz

The command for copying should be "cp -p" or "cp --preserve".

That's all I can tell you.

Have fun

thank you very much this will be usefull in the future i ended up formatting my mandrake install as i was having problems with resources and planning on doing a full debian install tonight.

i made a boot floppy for knoppix and was thinking i might be able to copy it to my mandrake box guide lilo.conf to it but never tried it in haste i formatted mandrake to prepare to try other flavours of linux.
I am gratefull for your reply and will use this in the future as i plan to try as many linux OSs as possible as i am a keen newbie to linux. thanx

id just like to report that i installed slackware and my i set lilo up well using your reply copying my knoppix boot floppy into /boot/knoppix and it worked without a hitch