Kanotix Live CD
I’ve been playing around with the newest Kanotix Live CD (version 2005-03). Given the problems I have with my wlan card, I generally don’t get much use out of live cds because I can’t do kernel module inserts on a CD in order to get my card working.
Kanotix caught my eye because it professed to have superior wireless support, complete with ndiswrapper installed. I had heard of ndiswrapper and knew that it was some sort of application that allows some wireless Windows drivers to be used in Linux, but I had never had the time to play with it.
Well, today I did and while it wasn’t a complete cake-walk, I did manage to get my wlan card up and running in Kanotix using ndiswrappers and iwconfig. Very cool. This is the first time I’ve had a Linux distro connected to the Internet on this laptop other than Fedora.
I learned a few things: Kanotix (or dhclient or my router, not sure which) has problems getting an IP address assigned from my router when WEP is enabled with a 64 bit key. Once I changed my WEP key to 128 bit - no problem. Kelly’s two Windows machines both barfed on 128 bit WEP keys until I upgraded the software for both of them, then all was well.
I’ve always wanted to go back to a Debian based distro (which Kanotix is) and I’ll be playing around with Kanotix over the next few days to see if it’ll meet my needs. I’ll post a review of it when I’m done playing with it.
July 15th, 2005 at 12:37 am
Hey,
Kanotix is definately a good distro. I have also had problems with my wireless card in Kanotix, but I couldn’t get it to run at all.
Have you tried Mepis? Mepis has the most superior hardware detection on any single distro I have used. Kanotix could detect and configure almost all of my hardware on first boot, but Mepis detected and configured all of it. If you’ll be using Debian, why don’t you give Mepis a try, too.
July 15th, 2005 at 1:31 am
I’ve heard good things about Mepis. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl too :)
Thanks!
November 14th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Hi,
I am a newbie who wants to get some flavor of linux. So I yesterday downloaded Kanotix and burnt it as live cd using Nero. I have a IBM T43 thinkpad, which contains all the data of my research and I do not want to lose this data. Also I do not want to install Kanotix on my hard drive since according to google it has SATA-PATA hard drive which can crash.. I tried to find some step by step instructions on how to get Kanotix live cd running so that I do not make a mistake and crash my hard drive. Can you tell me step by step instructions on how to get the live cd running from cd rom without installation or creating any partition.
thanks
November 15th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Hi Sandeep,
I’m not 100% sure what stage you are at. You say you have downloaded Kanotix and burned it as a live CD, yet it doesn’t sound like you’ve been able to get it working. I’m going to guess that you’re having one of two possible problems. Let me know if neither of these is your case:
Problem 1: You have burned the Kanotix ISO image properly, but your laptop isn’t set to boot from the CDRom drive. To rectify this problem, you need to tell your laptop to boot from the Live CD in the CDRom drive. Normally this is done by setting the boot order in the laptop BIOS. If you haven’t been in there before, look for a message that says something like ‘F12 for Setup’ or something similar during boot up. Press whatever key combination is displayed, and then search for the boot order in your BIOS. Set the CDRom drive to boot before the hard drive, save, and reboot. If your Live CD is burned properly and in the CDRom drive, your laptop will then boot into Kanotix live.
Problem 2: You have burned the CDRom incorrectly. The Kanotix ISO that you downloaded cannot be burned like a normal data or music CD in Nero. An ISO file is a CD image and NERO must be told to burn an image, rather than just burn a data CD. I’m not sure what version of NERO you’re running and I don’t use Windows anymore anyhow, but here’s a link to what appears to be a pretty good tutorial in using NERO to burn ISOs. If you don’t like this one, a quick Google search will turn up a lot of information.
http://www.wizardskeep.org/mainhall/tutor/neroiso.html
I suppose it’s possible that you are having both problems, so if you still can’t get it to boot after ensuring that you have a proper ISO burn, perhaps visit the boot order as well.
A Live CD is designed specifically to NOT TOUCH your existing file system. You don’t need to do anything special in order to ensure that your existing file systems aren’t touched. Once you shut down and reboot without the Live CD in, you will be returned to your existing system. However, it sounds like you have some stuff that you cannot afford to lose. Therefore, I highly recommend to you that you back up your data before trying any of this. I’m not worried about the Live CD messing up your system, but I am worried that you may inadvertently mess up your system because your hard drives will look unfamiliar to you when you are booted into the Live CD. There’s a chance that you may not recognize where you are or what you’re doing and inadvertently delete your own data.
Hope that helps, feel free to report back and let us know how it’s going.
November 16th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
I have Kanotix 2005-3 running live from cd only on a hp ze1250 laptop. I boot using either a saved config from usb key or default boot with a Intellinet Networks 11mbps pcmcia card. This card uses a Realtek 8180 chipset. The website is www.intellinet-network.com. The card no. is 520614. Price is 26.00 usd. Very affordable card.
To start card open K, Kanotix,Internet-Network,Wavelan config.Leave fields blank until the iwpriv prompt enter wepmode=off authtype=opensystem
Most WAP is not passworded, such as hotels.Save Kanotix config to usb and boot next time using kanotix config=scan at boot, just type in after other text. Buy the Orielly’s book Knoppix a must have to unleash the capabilities of Kanotix/Knoppix.
November 16th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Don’t forget to do a DHCP broadcast from the network card config. listed above wavelan config.
November 16th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Thanks!
I’ve been running Kanotix since I posted this entry 5 months ago. It’s the real deal….very nice distro.
December 5th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
I have tried Mempis, Kanotix, Knoppix, Puppy, DSL, Feather, and the only one that even recognizes my wireless card properly is Kanotix. However, I still cannot get the browsers to connect to the internet. In the WiFi setup leave all of the dialog boxes empty except for iwpriv. Add “wepmode=off opensystem.” With this I connected to a wireless open network, however my browsers could not access any internet sites. DHCP was also turned on.
December 6th, 2005 at 2:00 am
Hi Patrick,
It sounds to me like you may not have an IP address assigned to your network card. Here’s a link to an article I wrote on New Linux User that explains how to request an IP address from your access point.
http://www.newlinuxuser.com/howto-manually-ask-my-dhcp-server-for-an-ip-address/
If that doesn’t help, post back and we’ll figure it out. If it connects to your access point, then the hard part is over.