Modifying Knoppix to have Samba running for file server

[DaveLembke]

One of my friends asked me today if there was a way to edit Knoppix so that on boot of this Live CD of 7.0.5, that it would mount an external USB hard drive so that he could make an old laptop act like a NAS.

I told him that the easiest method would be just to install Linux to a Hard Drive and then set up samba to this drive then.

But it sounds like no matter what SATA HDD he puts into it, the SATA port is blown. Yet, the DVD-RW drive still functions and he is able to boot this system up with a Knoppix Live CD and USB and everything else works. Instead of throwing this troubled laptop away, he thought that he could convert it into a NAS by creating an edited Knoppix CD or DVD which mounts the external HDD via USB 2.0 and set this laptop and hard drive in a corner connected to his LAN, and be able to use it as a NAS/Local File Server.

One other idea I had is if he put Knoppix 7.0.5 onto a thumb drive he should be able to have the laptop automatically boot off of that thumb drive and then also save the Samba config to that thumb drive since it would allow for you to save configurations such as a Samba shared drive without having to make an edited version of Knoppix and then burn that CD or DVD and hope that the static Samba info works.

But I have never modified Knoppix or any other Linux Live or USB bootable Linux drive before to know if this would work.

Its almost too bad that Knoppix didnt have a feature that looked for a USB drive present, and if present, look for a knoppix config file in the root of the attached USB drive to then make it easily configurable and still a Live read-only OS. How Apache uses a Httpd.conf to allow for you to enable/disable features, it would be nice if Knoppix on boot looked for a config file and if found run with the configurations that people want that can be easily edited and if one does not exist it would run with its default configuration as it reads off the CD or DVD itself.

Maybe I should suggest this to www.knopper.net as something to add in a future release.

But anyways, looking for a solution to give him with his laptop that has SATA port issues that he wants to use for this NAS type of setup. Any info on how to achieve this without swapping out the laptop or laptops main board is greatly appreciated.

[Squashman]

Most Linux distributions can be put on a USB stick and run from them. I would take a look at that route. Plenty of distros to chose from. FreeNAS can be put on USB.

[Geek-9pm]

Which version of Knoppix?
Why Knoppix?
I think current version of Knoppix does that.
Here is a live list:
http://www.livecdlist.com/
Some live Linux version scan burn a config file into a CD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux
After you config Puppy, it saves it to a file on the CD.

[DaveLembke]

Closure to this.... Friend ended up putting Fedora 17 onto a thumb drive and going that route. It allowed you to make changes that would hold after reboot whereas the Knoppix wanted to be read-only even with USB drive so that every boot was clean.

Laptop has since bit the dust. Running 24/7/365 it was acting like a vacuum cleaner without the bag emptied by it being left on, on the floor under his desk where the dog a lab sheds hair and the laptop overheated and died.

He has since bought a NAS by Buffalo used on ebay and is using that as a better network attached storage means.