Hello Everyone!

I've been running KNOPPIX from micro SD on my laptop for a long time.

I'm far from being an expert, but so far I managed to get everything done with it and repair it once in a while by using an USB stick.

This time is different:

During a movie KNOPPIX 8.1 froze completely.

Since then it seems to be unable to boot properly. It gets stuck at searching for USB, and after an eternity it boots and tells me that the overly partition is too small.

My noob guess is that the KNOPPIX-DATA partition got fried somehow, so I tried to Reinstall, but no change.

Then I tried to fix the partition with g-parted which took forever, but still not back to normal.

Any ideas? Will gladly provide more info,
Just tell me what to do

Thanks in advance!

have you tried another usb stick?

You likely added a persistence file or partition to save settings etc, it's full. You'll need to delete it and create a new one and apply personal settings again. Avoid applying updates, one thing about persistence is that deleting items only deletes from view of the OS but does not delete it from the overlay to regain space in the overlay, it just get's marked as deleted.

1 members found this post helpful.

I have knoppix on other sticks, but I want it to work again on my 120 gig micro SD.

I tried deleting the KNOPPIX-DATA partition but without success.

By now I even tried a complete re-installation sacrificing my data, and guess what: Data still there and same problem. This is very strange.

I booted a different system (mint) and it showed me that the KNOPPIX-DATA PARTITION is still mounted, even though it's not even plugged in!

I guessed there is nothing left but doing a manual format and then trying re-installation again.

There have been some folks reporting that when the persistence file or partition was maxed out it rendered their USB key useless.

The Knoppix live CD image likely is hybrid, meaning it can be booted in both UEFI and legacy BIOS machines, depending on how it was written to the microSD, this hybrid boot configuration was also written to the card. There would be both a DOS and GPT partition table, this configuration would have a protective MBR which is required as part of the GPT standard. As such, I have found after writing a Debian ISO to a USB key using Rufus a few times reduced the size of my key and I was not able to get the full capacity back by simply deleting partitions and create new. By running command: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/USBkey and stopping it after a minute or so allowed the creation of a new MBR and thus regaining full capacity.
Other members here also experienced reduced functionality after writing multiple ISO images to their key, my suggestion to run the dd command allowed them to regain proper functionality also.

Thanks, I think this is what happened.
SD seems to be corrupted. DD command didn't do it.

When I try anything with G-parted I get an input output error.

Getting used to the idea that this amazing SD which I can't even buy where I live is toast...

Well, you mentioned KNOPPIX-DATA partition a few times, did you try to zero out that partition also with dd?
The command I posted would start at the begging of the drive.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdxx bs=4K, replace the "x" with appropriate values

Keep in mind, if you are placing the microSD in an SD adapter, some SD adapters have a lock feature.