Customer Reviews

Knoppix Pocket Reference

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you've had your eyes opened to the power of Knoppix as a Swiss Army knife of administration tools, Rankin's latest book will be the quick reminder guide of how best to use it... Knoppix Pocket Reference.

Contents: Introduction; Cheat Codes; Special Knoppix Tools; Install Knoppix to the Hard Drive; Image or Erase a Drive; Linux Security Response; Linux System Repair; Windows System Repair; Remaster Knoppix; Experimental Features; Final Words; Acknowledgements; Index

Pocket references are small (this one is less than 100 pages), so they are not good introductory guides to the subject at hand. This one is no different. If you're simply playing with Knoppix in order to see what desktop Linux is all about, you can easily pass on this book. You'll get a bit more out of it if you're looking to run Knoppix a bit more regularly (by installing it on your hard drive or saving configurations between reboots). Still, Knoppix Hacks would probably be a better title to better understand those techniques. Where this book shines is when you decide to use Knoppix as a bootable OS to allow you to administer and repair systems that are no longer working correctly (both Linux *and* Windows). Since you don't have to have a bootable sector on your hard drive to use it, you can get Knoppix up and running from a CD and then use it to repair the underlying hard drive. If you have a virus or rootkit installed, a Knoppix boot will allow you to get a clean system up and running which can then check out the hard drive for repair. Knoppix Pocket Reference will help remind you of the steps you need to take to accomplish some of these tasks. You're only getting the core commands with very little fluff, so you can quickly hone in on the trouble spot.

This is the book I'd recommend as a follow-up purchase to Knoppix Hacks. If you decide to use Knoppix in the ways that the Hacks book reveals, Knoppix Pocket Guide will be the volume that you refer to until the commands are burned into your memory.

A short reference that does away with all the hand-holding detail the Knoppix Pocket Reference is a great guide to how to do almost everything you want to do with Knoppix as well as resolve minor trouble issues. The items covered in this reference include the various startup codes that can be used when booting Knoppix, how to boot the different kernels, booting into different graphic modes, booting without hardware detection, disabling power management, disabling various hardware subsystems, implementing various kernel options, using options to make it run from memory or the hard drive instead of the CD, configuring persistent configuration information between sessions, imaging the hard drive, repairing the filesystem, repairing Windows systems, virus scanning and repair, and remastering Knoppix. When you just need to know how to do something and don't want to drag out the six hundred page book to try to find it you will find the Knoppix Pocket Reference a great investment.

I expected more of a reference to supplement "Hacking Knoppix," but still worth the price.