knoppix syslinux.cfg config for booting

Question

I have installed Knoppix to my HDD, and I want if to boot with the cheatcode "fb800x600". I have added this to the APPEND line in /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg and /home/knoppix/Desktop/KNOPPIX/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg but to no avail. Please help! My Knoppix install is perfect appart from having to type "fb800x600" every time I boot up.

Thank-you for your time,

petemaxi.

Answer 1

Since /home/knoppix/Desktop/KNOPPIX is a symlink to /mnt-system, so, as you may have already noticed, /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg and /home/knoppix/Desktop/KNOPPIX/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg is the same file.

The reason it didn't work by adding fb800x600 to APPEND is, fb800x600 is not a kernel parameter, but a syslinux boot entry, written at the latter part of exactly the same file:

LABEL fb800x600
KERNEL linux
APPEND lang=en apm=power-off vga=788 video=800x600 xmodule=fbdev initrd=minirt.gz nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1, loglevel=1

As you can see, it's simply another preset which has extra kernel parameters in its APPEND than the default knoppix/knoppix64 entry (decided by the auto entry: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ifcpu64.c32).

To make fb800x600 the default, change:

DEFAULT auto

to:

DEFAULT fb800x600

The disadvantage of this method is it will skip the 64-bit CPU check in the auto entry. So you will always boot to 32-bit knoppix (which is also the case when you enter fb800x600 manually on boot).

To avoid this, add the three extra params (vga=788 video=800x600 xmodule=fbdev) in the APPEND of LABEL fb800x600 to that of LABEL knoppix and LABEL knoppix64.

Note that the APPEND after DEFAULT auto is apparently unused/useless, so don't add the three params there, it most likely won't work.

You can also instead add a 64-bit variant of the fb800x600 entry:

LABEL fb800x600_64
KERNEL linux64
APPEND lang=en apm=power-off vga=788 video=800x600 xmodule=fbdev initrd=minirt.gz nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1, loglevel=1

And change:

LABEL auto
KERNEL ifcpu64.c32
APPEND knoppix64 -- knoppix

to:

LABEL auto
KERNEL ifcpu64.c32
APPEND fb800x600_64 -- fb800x600