Knoppix surfing

Knoppix surfing

by Jimrin1967 Nov 27, 2005 8:16AM PST

I just burned a Knoppix CD and have been playing around with it. It seems really cool and my surfing is actually faster with it than with XP. But a couple of concerns are...if I am surfing with the Knoppix CD, is there any firewall present? If not, can I turn one on? If I download a file with the Knoppix, will it go to my hard drive somewhere or is it lost in cyberspace for all eternity? Can viruses attack through Knoppix? Or is it truly 100% separate from my hard drive?

-Jim

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The One Side Effect to Live CD's

by angryfirelord Nov 27, 2005 8:40AM PST

When you use a live cd, the disc only loads the OS into the RAM so it doesn't touch the hrad drive. Therefore, any downloaded data can't be saved unless you put it on a cd or floppy or other storage media.

As for firewall and viruses, linux has so few viruses that you shouldn't need to worry if a hacker is trying to get through. Yes, there are viruses for Linux, but most are ''theoretical'', or only exist in labs or someone's hard drive.

However, you can install Knoppix onto your hard drive. Just make sure that you backed up any important data before proceding.

I haven't tried this but it looks about right: www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html

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Thank you

by Jimrin1967 Nov 27, 2005 8:48AM PST

Thank you, angryfirelord. And since nothing touches the hardb drive when I am using live cd am I to assume that unless I install Knoppix on my hard drive that viruses can't get there either?

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Right, but

by lilsim89 Nov 27, 2005 9:50AM PST

That's right, but like angryfirelord said, Linux isn't very likely to catch a virus. In fact, it's darn near impossible to catch a virus as long as your packages are up 2 date.

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but be careful... and yes you can save things

by bulldogzerofive Nov 27, 2005 10:57PM PST

Linux is protected by a degree of obscurity and user saavy that keeps it safe, but that does not mean you can abandon security practices. If you are going to stick to Linux you should read more about them. You cannot really get a virus on a live CD because the OS is written on the CD, which cannot be changed. There are other security concerns, but i imagine that you will not be online with a live CD long enough to really worry about them.

By the way, yes you can save things to your hard drive with knoppix. If your harddrive is formatted with NTFS, you will need version 3.8 or later, with FAT32 any version should do. By default, Knoppix mounts everything as read-only to keep curious new users from deleting C:\windows from their hard drive by accident. Needless to say, if you choose to mount a hard drive in read-write, you should be careful.

To mount a hard drive read-write in knoppix, open a command line (it is one of the buttons on the task bar that looks like a monitor with a black screen) and type:

sudo umount /mnt/hda1

hit enter. This will unmount the drive, if it is mounted. If it isn't mounted you will just get an error message. Then type:

sudo mount -rw /mnt/hda1

then hit enter again. You should now be able to read and write to the drive. Of course, you have to replace "hda1" with the name of the hard drive you want to mount... you can figure this out by right clicking on it and selecting "properties."

Good Luck!

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yes you can save things

by bulldogzerofive Nov 29, 2005 7:11PM PST

You can change anything on hard drive with knoppix... this is what makes it a great tool. You just have to mount the drives in read-write.

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