Ejecting disc during shutdown?

[puddleglum]

This should really be in the intial FAQ but I couldn't find the info anywhere. My question is how do I get the disc out of the box without resorting to a paperclip?

I got a copy of the Knoppix 6.2.1 DVD from OSDisc.com and everything works fine until shut down. I use the standard menu shutdown selection and it shuts down the computer but refuses to give up the disc at any time during the shutdown no matter how much you press the eject button. My only option appears to be a restart into the native OS (removing the disc in the reboot process) and then shutting down from there.

I may be wrong, but in older versions didn't there use to be a step in the shutdown where it would stop, asking you to remove the disc, and you would hit return to continue the shutdown?

[krishna.murphy]

This should really be in the intial FAQ but I couldn't find the info anywhere. My question is how do I get the disc out of the box without resorting to a paperclip?

I got a copy of the Knoppix 6.2.1 DVD from OSDisc.com and everything works fine until shut down. I use the standard menu shutdown selection and it shuts down the computer but refuses to give up the disc at any time during the shutdown no matter how much you press the eject button. My only option appears to be a restart into the native OS (removing the disc in the reboot process) and then shutting down from there.

I may be wrong, but in older versions didn't there use to be a step in the shutdown where it would stop, asking you to remove the disc, and you would hit return to continue the shutdown?

You are describing the same behavior I get with Knoppix 6+ (5 and earlier did what you described), though there is a work-around. I do a full shutdown, then start the system again and hit the eject button while the system is still getting ready to boot. Then I turn it off again. Another option that may be useful is to change the BIOS boot order to not use the CD first, and then use the boot options hotkey to choose the CD drive when I want it to boot (using the CD drive to store my Knoppix boot disk.)

Hope that helps!
Krishna

[kl522]

This should really be in the intial FAQ but I couldn't find the info anywhere. My question is how do I get the disc out of the box without resorting to a paperclip?

Did you not get this message appearing on the screen when the system shuts down ?

Please remove CD, close cdrom drive and hit return [2 minutes.

If you don't get that, chances is that you have a cheatcode which is stopping it from happening.

If you get the message, but yet the cdrom is not ejected, then you are reporting an unintended feature, ie a bug.

Cheers.

[puddleglum]

I'm not getting the prompt asking me to remove the disc. That is the problem. It looks like this was removed in version 6 -- at least from default settings on the DVD. Any idea why it was removed?

The problem with work arounds is I'm using the disc to show off Linux to people on other machines. Leaving a disc in their machine doesn't impress them.

[kl522]

I'm not getting the prompt asking me to remove the disc. That is the problem. It looks like this was removed in version 6 -- at least from default settings on the DVD. Any idea why it was removed?

Looks like there are multiple different versions of CDROM/DVDs which do different things in the syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg, with different parameters and cheatcodes.

The actual work of ejecting the cdrom is in /etc/init.d/knoppix-halt, so you should check that it's intact. Assuming that's intact, then you should check if your syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg contains things like 'noeject'/'noprompt' which will inhibit the eject of cdrom and its prompting.

You will be surprised that if I tell you the copy of KNOPPIX 6.2 CDROM which I have does eject the cdrom which shutting down.

[krishna.murphy]

Looks like there are multiple different versions of CDROM/DVDs which do different things in the syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg, with different parameters and cheatcodes.

The actual work of ejecting the cdrom is in /etc/init.d/knoppix-halt, so you should check that it's intact. Assuming that's intact, then you should check if your syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg contains things like 'noeject'/'noprompt' which will inhibit the eject of cdrom and its prompting.

You will be surprised that if I tell you the copy of KNOPPIX 6.2 CDROM which I have does eject the cdrom which shutting down.

Since demonstrating Knoppix-boot-from-CD is the goal, perhaps it's best to just shut down with the power switch! You can eject after switching the power back on, thus showing that the original OS is unaffected by Knoppix.

Cheers!
Krishna
p.s. My Knoppix 6.2.0 does the eject function properly, too; probably good to run the self-test on the disk to make sure that what you show around is in good shape.

[kl522]

p.s. My Knoppix 6.2.0 does the eject function properly, too; probably good to run the self-test on the disk to make sure that what you show around is in good shape.

Wow you seem to have changed your stand .....So now I don't know if there are multiple CDROM/DVD versions or there is just one version which does different thing for different users.

As for me, I am still interested to get to the bottom of it. I would really doubt if a disk could be only corrupted at that section of it, which otherwise everything is OK. I would insist that "prompting" and "ejecting" goes hand-in-hand. If you see no prompting, it will not eject. If you see prompting but no eject, then it's a software bug.

[krishna.murphy]

Wow you seem to have changed your stand .....So now I don't know if there are multiple CDROM/DVD versions or there is just one version which does different thing for different users.

As for me, I am still interested to get to the bottom of it. I would really doubt if a disk could be only corrupted at that section of it, which otherwise everything is OK. I would insist that "prompting" and "ejecting" goes hand-in-hand. If you see no prompting, it will not eject. If you see prompting but no eject, then it's a software bug.

Yes, I am singing in a different key now. I realized I was comparing my hard-drive-resident experience with your removable-optical-disk issue; I apologize for my well-intentioned, but erroneous, response in the beginning.

I wouldn't necessarily classify this as a "bug" per se - it's more of a quirk with one particular drive and disk. Since we still don't know whether the disk is okay, I'd say that's the most likely cause - because it's a frequently reported problem (and yes, it could affect only one thing - that you've tried.) The feature works, in general, but there may be some particular drives that aren't quite properly handled; however, the most likely cause is a bad burn - see the instructions here on how to do it with near-certain success (reportedly) under Windows XP.

Anyway, have fun!
Krishna