Knoppix on usb, tweaks for power management and passwords?
 

I and family have been using Knoppix 8.1 booting from usb for a couple months now, with great success, getting rather fantastic use from an ancient Dell laptop.
The "stock utilities" in knoppix are a bit bare-bones, and I'm wondering if there might be some command-line solutions for a couple tweaks.

1. There is no power management gui on the menu in v8.1. It would be nice to be able to have the computer sleep/suspend after a specified time. Way to do that, perhaps thru terminal?

2. I initially set the usb stick as requiring no login password, but it'd be nice to be able to change that and require a password both at power-on and at lock-screen. There is no apparent way to do that via menu utilities.

3. I'd like to also to have a password to wake the computer from sleep. Xscreensaver is in the menu, and has an option of screen lock (after specified minutes). Out of curiosity, I ticked this box, and the result is that it DOES insist on a password once the screen is locked, yet no password has ever been set for it, and xscreensaver (in knoppix at least) offers no way to do that. (I simply had to restart the machine and untick the tick box.)

BTW, the knoppix specialty forum knoppix.net does not seem to let any new members post anything, and there is almost no new activity there other than people browsing the forum archives. That's why I come to linuxquestions.

Knoppix is a no install OS and if it does not have persistence any changes anyone makes to it will be lost, as you should have discovered being a long time (couple months now) user of said OS. if it has the ability to install and keep the newly added apps on the system then depending on the desktop/window manager used then determines the type of power saving methods needed / available to be used, and then their is the login manager, which one it is using to know what file to edit to remove auto login.

KNOPPIX Persistent – Saving settings to USB

Hi BW--
It's not as apparent as you say, since knoppix usb can "remember" changes I make to things like screensaver settings, files I store on the usb, printer setup, or adding/updating its software suite. Also, I recall making tweaks to similar pendrive puppy some years ago involving power-down behavior, with the help of the puppy forum. That involved making some "surgical" changes inside system files--rather than any command line--so perhaps my initial question was naive in that sense. It's too bad there is not currently an active specialty forum for the useful and fairly updated knoppix.

I suppose my better option now for password protection is to simply install it anew on a usb, this time using security options, but I still have not thought of a workaround for automatic sleep or power-down.

no , now that you know that your OS USB stick has persistence then what was my second part? just figure out what login manager it is using, then edit its config file to remove auto login. this is what Linux/GNU is about, yes surgical doctory is needed, you can even use the command line using sed to change config files. simply making a new usb stick you're still going to be needing to learn how to preform surgery on it if you want to customize it, or change its default settings. it is not as hard as you may think it is, but then again I do not know your aptitude for such things.