Help starting Knoppix with 3d

[PowerGod]

I finally have found a distro that starts in my UEFI PC, with still Windows 8.1 installed.

Knoppix 7.6.1, as I read from the notes, have an "experimental efi partition", and seems working well from the USB stick !!

But, I have an issue, it is DAMN SLOW !! Impossibly slow !! I used Knoppix in many PC for years, and it was always fast, even in very very old rigs !!

Here I have a quad i7 4GHz CPU, 16 GB RAM and an Nvidia GTX 960, so there must be an issue somewhere, and I need some help to find the problem.

What I can see is that Compiz doesn't start (while it should by default), and I tried to force 3d acceleration with:

knoppix64 3d (changes nothing)
knoppix64 nomodeset 3d (I can't see graphic at all)
knoppix64 nocompose 3d (I can't see graphic at all, and I think it also locks the system)

From dmesg seems like the "noveau" driver is called correctly, but I don't know what exaclty should I look at.

 

[sulu]

You need a proprietary firmware from Nvidia to make use of the 3D acceleration of the GTX 960. [1] It is included in the proprietary Nvidia driver, but not in nouveau, so you'd need to get that extra.
I'm not sure if I got that right, but afaik the support to load Nvidia firmwares only entered in the kernel with version 4.3. [2] The latest Knoppix version ships Kernel 4.2 [3], so you're pretty much out of luck with that setup.

[1] http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/23254/nouveau-nvidia-veroeffentlicht-3d-firmware.html (German)
[2] https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/851880/gtx-960-and-nouveau-driver-/
[3] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=knoppix

 

[elw3]

It should not be slow just because of graphic card issues neither do graphic issues stop a composer from loading, there is enough power to do that in software side.
1. Show us your complete dmesg.
2. Tell us what _exactly_ is slow, booting from usb may cause such slowness if configured wrong, eg causing write access. Booting to ram should be tried first.
3.Last time i tried knoppix (10 years ago or so ) it shipped with nvidia drivers. You may try to load it by issuing "nvidia-xconfig" and "pkill Xorg"

 

[PowerGod]

@sulu : Thanks for the info, I'll have a better look tomorrow, and maybe even try to install the official nvidia driver, I have nothing to lose anyway

@Elw3 : Yeah, it's slow doing everything, even moving windows around takes like 1/2 seconds to refresh, launching IceWeasel require like 20 seconds and surfing to openpandora even more... but the internet connection itself is fast, wget reaches the max... if I paint with GIMP the cursor is like 3 seconds late, and sometimes I see refreshes of the entire desktop, all works as it was a very (VERY) old PC (my Pentium 3 - 256Mb RAM with LXDE was FASTER !!)... and from the Compiz configuration I see that all the relevant options are active (desktop-cube for example), but if I do a CTRL+ALT+arrow (I also checked the hotkeys) it just changes desktop in the classic way, without animations at all.
Oh, and by the way, Knoppix already works almost entirely from RAM, and the USB stick is read only when I open a new program.
I'll post dmesg.

 

[sulu]

It should not be slow just because of graphic card issues neither do graphic issues stop a composer from loading, there is enough power to do that in software side.

I currently have a GTX 950 in my computer (Sandy Bridge i7) for testing purposes. My main system that I don't use for the testing however has neither the Nvidia driver installed nor their firmware, so it's currently running nouveau without hardware acceleration (on Kernel 4.6).
I usually don't run anything that requires 3D acceleration, but if I do it get's very slow. Even hedgewars is barely running fluently. So my current system is slow just because of graphic card issues.

3.Last time i tried knoppix (10 years ago or so ) it shipped with nvidia drivers.

Knoppix never shipped proprietary Nvidia drivers. You always had to install them on your own.

@sulu : Thanks for the info, I'll have a better look tomorrow, and maybe even try to install the official nvidia driver, I have nothing to lose anyway

It would be easier (and less messy) to install them from the Debian repo. The drivers in the Jessie backports will work fine with your GTX 960. I just made extensive tests with my GTX 950 last weekend.

Yeah, it's slow doing everything, even moving windows around takes like 1/2 seconds to refresh, launching IceWeasel require like 20 seconds and surfing to openpandora even more... but the internet connection itself is fast, wget reaches the max... if I paint with GIMP the cursor is like 3 seconds late, and sometimes I see refreshes of the entire desktop

Except for the Iceweasel issue it all sounds graphics-related to me. Iceweasel most likely starts slowly because it's slow to load it from the USB stick. Even if you use a fast USB 3.0 stick it will be slow, because if it is used as a boot medium USB sticks are usually only treated as USB 2.0 devices by the BIOS/UEFI.
You could get around that by booting Knoppix with the toram parameter, which will cause it to load everything into RAM during boot. But it will only shift the waiting time, not eliminate it. Summed up it will probably even take longer because also programs that you don't use will be loaded to RAM. It might still make sense if you can bridge that waiting time, e.g. by getting a coffee.

 

[elw3]

Knoppix never shipped proprietary Nvidia drivers. You always had to install them on your own.

I probably meant Kanotix, i think that was a fork of knoppix, geez so many distros...

Even if you use a fast USB 3.0 stick it will be slow, because if it is used as a boot medium USB sticks are usually only treated as USB 2.0 devices by the BIOS/UEFI.

They are not always slow, some thumbdrives can easily keep up with internal SSD drives. But you have to know what to look for when buying them. That is, no wear level control, no error correction, many Read/write lanes. Those are fast enough for "real" installs without notable performance drop. Surprisingly none failed yet...

 

[sulu]

They are not always slow, some thumbdrives can easily keep up with internal SSD drives. But you have to know what to look for when buying them. That is, no wear level control, no error correction, many Read/write lanes. Those are fast enough for "real" installs without notable performance drop. Surprisingly none failed yet...

What I said isn't the stick's fault. It depends on the BIOS/UEFI. For all I know, there is no super speed support in the boot/POST process. So any USB drives will only be treated like USB 2.0 devices early on.
It is up to the operating system to enable the SuperSpeed protocol, which is fine for regular data sticks. But if you boot from a stick you can't change it's USB protocol, because it's already mounted when the USB 3 driver is loaded.

 

[elw3]

It does not matter if it runs as 2 or 3 for OS purposes. Its not about speed but data handling. Eg If the drive cant handle reading and writing at the same time a simple apt-get command may take 30 minutes despite almost nothing was written at all.

 

[PowerGod]

I tried to install the nvidia driver from the debian repo, but when I had to reboot I found out that the USB stick (that I made with Linux Live) is not writable at all... even if it was created with persistence

So I'll have to create a proper stick using the tool from knoppix itself... but I have only one stick with that size and no DVD around.... Maybe I'll download the CD version...

Anyway launching with "knoppix64 no3d" made the things a little more speedy

 

[elw3]

Actually persistence disables booting to ram.

 

[PowerGod]

I have found a DVD, but knoppix doesn't start from there... I hate UEFI seems like it's because I made the USB stick with "Linux Live USB Creator" the reason why it starts... it's not the efi partition from knoppix that works, but the one added by Linux Live !!, in fact I also tried with Rufus, but doesn't start with it too...

So tomorrow I'll go find another stick...

 

[PowerGod]

Ok, made an installation on a stick from another stick, and started to play with video drivers... but now I'm blind

First of all I tried with the driver in the Debian repo, it downloaded all the packages from the unstable tree, and was installing well until it told me that to configure it I had to reboot because nouveau was loaded... so I rebooted, but nouveau was still loaded and I was'n able to install the last two packages "nvidia-kernel-dkms and nvidia-driver"....

after some fiddling with /etc/modprobe.d files, I have seen that nouveau was already blacklisted by blacklist-knoppix itself !! but still loading...

then I tried another road and tried to install the official nvidia drivers, so I followed this guide:

http://www.allaboutlinux.eu/remove-nouveau-and-install-nvidia-driver-in-debian-8/

Spoiler

sudo apt-get remove nvidia*

sudo apt-get autoremove

update and download a few tools that we will need:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

This part is optional but its is recommended:

Install 32 bit support:

dpkg --add-architecture i386

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lib32z1 lib32ncurses5

sudo apt-get update

Now its time to blacklist the nouveau driver.

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

and add the following lines:

blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau off

echo options nouveau modeset=0 | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf

sudo update-initramfs -u

Now go to nvidia.com and download the driver for your graphic card.

The file name should be something like that "NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.21.run" depends on the architecture of your machine and the version of the driver.

Reboot your computer and at login screen press "ctrl+alt+F1″. That will redirect you to one of the active terminals. Login with your credentials and navigate to your Downloads directory

cd ~/Downloads/

chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.21.run

Replace "NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.21.run" with the name of the file that you Download in the previous step.

Stop the X-server:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm3 stop

execute the installation:

sudo ./ NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.21.run

follow the instructions on the screen:

At that point you might get a warning that " The distribution-provided pre-install script failed! are you sure that you want to continue?" You can select continue on this one.

Next it will ask you to register the kernel module source with DKMS. Select "yes"

If you dont have 32 bit compatibility the you will get a warning. Just select ok.

You might get a few more steps depends on the hardware and driver version but just before the installation finish it will ask you if you want to let the installation to run the nvidia-xconfig for you. Please let this one run unless you want and you know how to do that manually.

once you finish reboot your computer:

reboot

In case that the graphics are not as they suppose to be, open a command line and type the following:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

And then reboot again

and this actually explains how to disable nouveau:

echo options nouveau modeset=0 | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u

now the issue is, that after finally disabling nouveau, at the reboot my monitor turns off... so how can I install the nvidia driver then ?

is there some less-invasive driver I can use just to see the terminal ?

 

[elw3]

So far i know, /etc/X11/xorg.config goes above all. Means if this file exist and says to use nvidia there is no need to mess with nouveou at all.

 

[PowerGod]

So far i know, /etc/X11/xorg.config goes above all. Means if this file exist and says to use nvidia there is no need to mess with nouveou at all.

But I can't install nvidia because it complains that can't be configured while nouveau is loaded... and nvidia-kernel-dkms complains that can't be installed because the previous configuration failed... and nvidia-driver can't be installed until nvidia-kernel-dkms is installed too...

so... noveau is blocking the installation... and I can't call that driver from xorg.conf if it's still not installed

 

[elw3]

But I can't install nvidia because it complains that can't be configured while nouveau is loaded.

I have seen friends logging out when installing the driver from the nvidia drivers page, for some reason ubuntus .deb file does not care about that.
Oh yea, thre driver should be unloaded as soon x is closed. It should work fine from a tty.

 

[PowerGod]

I tried from a tty to unload it manually, but after I do a "rmmod nouveau" all I see is a black screen

 

[levi]

Last time I did this on fedora I had to roll back to runlevel 1 aka. single user no graphics. But that was an old sysvinit thing to do, and I'm not sure there is a systemd equivalent - perhaps systemctl stop nouveau, assuming there's a service called nouveau for running it.

 

[PowerGod]

Last time I did this on fedora I had to roll back to runlevel 1 aka. single user no graphics. But that was an old sysvinit thing to do, and I'm not sure there is a systemd equivalent - perhaps systemctl stop nouveau, assuming there's a service called nouveau for running it.

I tried the knoppix cheatcode "knoppix64 2" that should start a textonly session... but doesn't seems working too

 

[levi]

From the little I've read, it suggests 'knoppix64' is a boot option, not something you enter on a terminal (assuming that's what you were doing). Go, reboot and hit whatever key it is to bring up the boot menu (think it varies between boot processes) and then they key to edit a boot item (definitely varies) and add your boot option then boot off of it.