Knoppix on Rockboxed iPod 5.5G?

[cool_walking_]

Hi,

I have heard of people using their iPods as a boot media for Knoppix.  I've done this on a normal flash drive before, but not on my iPod.  I'm wondering if Rockbox needs the boot sector of the hard drive, and if so, if it could be somehow hacked to allow booting Rockbox from the iPod, and Knoppix when connected to a PC.  I don't care about being able to boot the original Apple firmare, Rockbox does everything I need.

Is this possible/easy?

[jswetzen]

I read a tutorial on booting Slax on an iPod (http://www.slax.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6840) so it should work, the only problem is that there now is an update saying that Windows iPods will be unable to sync with iTunes (Mac users aren't affected). The question is if anything will happen to the Rockbox bootloader...

[cool_walking_]

I couldn't care less about the original Apple firmware and iTunes.  I wouldn't have even bought an iPod if it wasn't for Rockbox.

The question is if anything will happen to the Rockbox bootloader...

That's what I'm worried about.  Obviously I care more about Rockbox than Knoppix, or I would have just bought a portable HDD instead.

[GodEater]

Absolutely nothing will happen to the Rockbox bootloader.

No part of the portion of the disk which contains the rockbox bootloader is looked at by your PC when you use the iPod as a mass storage device, and so the knoppix bootloader won't get written there.

[cool_walking_]

Okay, thanks.  I knew Knoppix wouldn't have a problem, but was concerned Rockbox might need the boot sector for something (which Knoppix would obviously write over), but I guess the iPod has something like a flash ROM where the bootloader is stored?

EDIT: Will blind people's screen readers pick up the inflection of that question-that-looks-like-a-statement?

/overly curious.

EDIT 2: Of course the boot loader isn't in the boot sector you idiot.  Who on Earth would put the boot loader in the hard disk boot sector?  What are you, an idiot? Idiot.

/split personalities

[GodEater]

The iPod has two partitions. The first one has no filesystem on it, but contains discrete blocks of code. This is where both the Rockbox bootloader, and the Apple firmware live.

The second partition is the one which gets mounted as a drive on your PC - and rockbox doesn't really care about the boot sectors on it.

So long as you leave the first partition alone, and leave your .rockbox folder on the second partition alone too - you'll be fine.

[cool_walking_]

Ahhh yes, of course. (Flash ROM indeed, idiot) Because you have to be able to write to the boot loader location, otherwise how did you get Rockbox on there in the first place?

EDIT: Ahhhh of course, and that would be why it gets mounted as sda2.

/enough epiphanies and false epiphanies for one day.

[GodEater]

Well there is a flash ROM bootloader too - it's just Rockbox code never touchs it, and leave it well alone.