Hoping I chose the right directory for this, didn't see a dedicated knoppix-help folder here.

I've been using knoppix 8.6.1 on a USB flash drive for about a year now, for the most part I have been extremely satisfied. Except as follows:

Just for the sake of completeness, I ran 2 different check sum operations on the downloaded .iso file, and ran memtest86 and testdvd after booting the dvd created, and everything checked out okay, so I don't think my problem is due to any errors in the download, or burn processes. lspci -v seems to have produced the desired result without errors, as well.

However, after creating the bootable usb device, which I had included their "create overlay" option.....the resulting system was extremely slow...and I mean "no one in their right mind would be happy"...slow.

After repeating the "create USB" proceedure several times, using multiple USB flash drives, all with the same result...I began to suspect there was perhaps a problem in their code.

But, have not had any luck getting help at the knoppix.net user help forum, so I'm hoping someone here might have been down a similar path, and can share their insight.

Eventually, I gave up on the "overlay" option, and just created the USB flash drive installation to be "read only".....and this has worked fine for a year, I've made 3 copies and they all work great....except there is no persistence for any "on-the-fly"changes I might make .....and I've got their 4 GB install on a 16 GB stick, with the remaining 12 GB laying in disuse, which I would like to make into an extended logical partition ...either during initial creation, or even after the fact, provided I can find a tool to create the extended partition without damaging the 4 GB knoppix install. (repartioning completed)
(see next post)

It's possible that I'm not understanding their nomenclature, as far as what the intended use of the "overlay" is supposed to be used for.

I thought it was intended to provide persistence to items added to the system after initial creation. For instance if a month after creating the USB install, I added plug-ins or patterns to gimp by placing them in the designated folder....those additions would be permanent. Or if adding bookmarks to the browsers toolbars, they would be permanent without having to remaster the entire system again.

But in practice, when trying to add just a few bookmarks to a system having the overlay,...it soon slows down to a near-frozen crawl.


During the install, the user is given 3 options specific to the overlay:

1. the [-n no overlay (like cd/dvd) ] option, which has worked just fine for me, for a year now

2. the [ -i install on FAT 32 with optional overlay file < 4GB] option, which I think is intended to provide writable (dynamic) persistence for changes to the system

3. the [ -p install on FAT 32 w/additional overlay partition ] option, which I am pretty sure is intended to give me the storage I seek on the portion of the USB drive not used by the Knoppix install


So far as I know, there is no way to employ #3 without also selecting #2

SO...given that the system created while employing the overlay option DOES NOT PERMIT CHANGES without adverse effect to system performance, I've started to wonder if perhaps I've misunderstood the intent of #2? Is there an alternate meaning of "persistence" that I am overlooking? (perhaps to create additional space beyond the 4GB file size limitation, but only usable for the initial creation of the USB device....is what I am starting to wonder)

Just for a little added depth, I decided to try it again, using a Lexar flash drive having an activity light on it. I'm glad that I did, because it reminded me of a very important part of the dysfunction I have been experiencing.

So, I created the knoppix system on an 8 GB flash drive, elected the -p option to create the overlay partition. And after booting it, did NOTHING besides a little casual internet browsing, and opened and closed a few programs and directories.

After about 5-7 minutes, the activity lite on the drive started strobing on and off....3 seconds on, and 3 seconds off. System responsiveness tapered off to the point where it often took 3-4 "clicks" on the system menu, just to get the "internet" or "graphics" sub menus to even respond.

It's like there is a hornet's nest of activity inside the box, that is intercepting my attempts to control even basic functions.

After about 10 minutes, the entire machine froze up.....requiring a hard restart.

The drive activity light strobing on and off was a common problem consistent with my earlier experiences, as well.

And just as a reminder, when I create the system using no overlay.....it works just fine.

What are the specifications of the computer?

Is the flash drive plugged into at least a USB 2.0 port?

On my Knoppix 8.6 USB Poor mans install the knoppix-data.img that I used the dd command to create in the KNOPPIX folder on an unbooted system works the same way. Its so slow its totally unusable. I'm having to wait at least one minutes for the scrolling menu to follow my mouse to a new selection on the start menu when I click and look inside one of the choices.

I booted the 8.6 iso on my HD with no persistence and its blazing fast. I'm not sure what's going on with the knoppix-data overaly. I"ve never used the data overlay but have continued to use mkimage at boot up. In 8.1 after trashing the data overlay file inside the KNOPPIX folder, mkimage would work at boot prompt and it worked like always, no difference in speed to that of no persistence. Now that don't seem to be an option and the knoppix-data.img I have now there's no way I would continue to use it like this.

Thanks for the reply. I'm using an Asus K73E laptop, with an Intel twin core 2.3G processor, 4 GB Ram. here is pretty much my machine:


https://www.cnet.com/products/asus-k...am-500-gb-hdd/


The built-in graphics are a little slow, and with that hard drive controller it's obviously never going to be a video processing beast, but it has met my basic needs very adequately.

Based mostly in the Sandisk Cruzer Force flashdrives https://shop.westerndigital.com/prod...DCZ71-016G-B35

But I've had identical bogginess (when employing the "overlay" install) with Lexar flash drives, as well.

I'm really starting to wonder if the problem is in my not understanding what the actual intent is for the overlay. I'd like to find anyone who has employed it successfully, and ask them what it does for them.

My desire to exploit "persistence" in a way that allows me to make lasting additions to the system well after installation.....might not be what they intended at all...perhaps I'm just assuming that, because THAT is what I want to believe?


Perhaps the barrier is a German/English one, where certain things are just not making it to the instructions, because translation is a "chore", is what I'm starting to wonder.

That's not meant as a slam against the developers, what they have created is fabulous.....I love using it. But there is a certain edginess in their "rap" along the lines of -"why bother us when you should want to find out for yourself?"- in their sparce help docs that force me to consider that English must be a second language for many of them.

I think it was you who mentioned in the other thread about problems sharing files between windows and the knoppix install?

Man, I think I see what you mean. Due to the iso 9660 file structure, I've found that once I've added "foreign" files to a knoppix folder (adding patterns to gimp, for example) and then remastering that to a new USB drive, there doesn't appear to be any way from ever removing those files for future remasters.

You can delete them via the GUI, but that is only happening in memory, and when you create a new USB, even with "remaster", there doesn't appear to be any attempt by their "Flash Knoppix" routine to distinguish files that have been designated for deletion...it just recopies whatever data was in the original ISO, and adds any additions you might have made...meaning things can get quite crowded fast if you've tried to substitute files while creating 3rd and 4th generation remasters.

I spent several hours yesterday with the original DVDs, recreating from scratch, and adding the cumulative changes I want to keep, while not including the mistakes that I wish I had never made....just so I could get a fresh start...

I'd love to understand the knoppix data overlay myself but haven't found any threads in my searching about it and how to use it.

The Knoppix Flash drive creator uses data overlay in its creation process and apparently does still write a knoppix-data.img inside the KNOPPIX folder on the USB drive. It boots just like the DVD which is kind of neat with syslinux.

Sunday I used the Knoppix flash creator to write Knoppix 8.6 to my old 8.1 USB drive and have also manually created one like I've done for years with grub2.

On USB's I've usually copied the KNOPPIX folder onto a 2nd partition in the USB and copied the boot folder and autoruns to the 1st partition so that I have a Fat32 partition that's visible to Windows and linux, install grub2 and get the boot options out of isolinux.cfg and add them to a grub.cfg

I just booted the Knoppix created USB and it does seem much slower than 8.1 did with knoppix data.img mounted, not sure what's going on with it. I'll try it again with the noimage command prompt at boot and see how it does without it.
It may be that the system has grown so large now that it needs a lot of power. 5.1 and 5.3 were loaded to the gills with tools but only 750mb in size. 5.3 may have been 1gig.

There is one post over at the knoppix.net forums where an "old head" says just in passing discussion, that he believes that the "overlay" and "remastering" are the same thing.

That's what got me to thinking perhaps my expectations as far as what I thought it should be, might be mistaken. If that actually is the case, I'd sure love to ask him what makes him suspect this. But of course I'd still need to get approved for posting in order to ask this. An d I've been waiting a year for that already

Of course another possibility might be...it's broken, and they know it's broken, and even have gone as far as to have read my questions, but have chosen to not publish them, because they have no solution.

Perhaps such speculation is unfair, but in a total vacuum, people have little alternative than to speculate.

There must be some conflict between the live system doing its thing and having the knoppix data image mounted because the live w/no persistence works fine.

Its almost like something is being mounted that's not allowed or goes against the grain of a working system.
Like if you put something just a little wrong in /etc/fstab it can wreck your system quick.

On the other hand, there are certain forensic advantages to having all traces of your recent activity vanish via a simple reboot. I'm sure that we all can imagine what those might be...

Well, I've had some interesting results after taking somewhat of a shotgun approach. I decided to just keep making trial installs onto a fresh USB flash drive, exhausting all available combinations of options that are available during the "transfer to usb" process.

Selecting the -i "install on fat32 w/optional overlay FILE" option coupled with the "Remaster system? y" option that is offered later.....resulted in a bootable system that seems to work......but DOG SLOW. This system takes longer to boot than from a DVD disc, with a very long time between the "start-up" voice, and the appearance of the boot screen that precedes the appearance of the desktop....where the screen is just black, except for a frozen underscore cursor at the very top left of the screen. After about 40 seconds of the blank screen, followed by the boot screen, then the desktop then appears. For comparison this same blankscreen lasts only 2-3 seconds on a "non-overlay" flash drive install.

Launching Chromium is way slow.....first just a light gray rectangle appears...for about 20 seconds, then the browser appears....but all the plugins fail with error messages..... and waiting for pages to load, for instance this forum's front page...takes an eternity.


But, there is some good news....there is persistence. I added a folder to the bookmarks bar of Chromium, I made changes to the preferences in gimp, and I took several screen shots of the desktop to document the maxed-out CPU meter while the system was trying to launch Chromium...and left those picture on the desktop. And those pictures, along with the new bookmarks folder, and the changes to preferences in gimp all survived a reboot.

But, why the system is so dog slow, compared to the non-overlay installs...I would dearly still like to figure out. The performance hit is so severe that it really makes the persistence NOT WORTH IT.

Just to illustrate what the overlay file makes the actual install look like, I took a screen shot of KDisk as well, which follows and I welcome anyone's observation. I installed onto an 8 GB flash stick, and specified that the overlay be 3GB.

Thumbing through the entries, it appears that the base system install is still in the iso 9660 format, but the overlay begins at mountpoint "KNOPPIX-DATA"and is written to a rewritable file system format.

For comparison, I'd love to see how much improved, if at all, an install using the USB 3.x hardware standard turned out.