How to create a live USB stick with KNOWIMS version 7.5.0 (with GNU/Linux)

  1. Download the file knowims-7.5.0.img.gz (3.5 GB); the download may be approximately one hour long, depending on your xDSL's average speed;
  2. Uncompress this file gunzip knowims-7.5.0.img.gz; this should make a file knowims-7.5.0.img (size: little less than 8 GB);
  3. Install the package bar if you do not have it (this utility is handy to manage a progress bar);
  4. Plug a USB stick featuring 8 GB of storage space to your computer;
  5. Check the actual device managing your USB stick; for example, if you type the following command line: dmesg, you will be provided many text lines; the trailing lines should disclose the device name, something like sdb or sdc, etc.
  6. Let us assume that your USB stick is known as disk sdc (if it is something else, please modify the following procedure accordingly); in order to copy the complete disk image onto your USB stick, the command line is: bar -s 8G knowims-7.5.0.img /dev/sdc; you should launch this command with root permission (maybe by prepending the "sudo" command);
  7. Have a coffee cup; after ten minutes you will see that the progress indicator is near the end; when the copy is finished, unplug the USB stick, it is ready.

How to create a live USB stick with KNOWIMS version 7.5.0 (with Windows)

  1. Download the file knowims-7.5.0.img.gz (3.5 GB); the download may be approximately one hour long, depending on your xDSL's average speed;
  2. Uncompress this file; this should make a file knowims-7.5.0.img (size: little less than 8 GB). The free software 7zip is known to do that kind of job
  3. Install the program WIN32 Disk Imager which helps you to manage the transfer of the image onto a USB stick.
  4. Plug a USB stick featuring 8 GB of storage space to your computer;
  5. Copy the image to the USB stick which you can select with WIN32 Disk Imager.
  6. Have a coffee cup; after ten minutes you will see that the progress indicator is near the end; when the copy is finished, unplug the USB stick, it is ready.

How to test a live USB stick with KNOWIMS version 7.5.0

You can boot a computer with the newly created USB stick, and it should work.

However, you may prefer to test the USB live stick without stopping the system which powers your computer. This is possible by using an emulator.

Prerequisites to emulate KNOWIMS

You need the following packages:

Also, your processor must be Intel or AMD compatible, and it must allow virtualization: launch the command line egrep '(vmx|svm)' --color=always /proc/cpuinfo; this should eventually show the word "vmx" or the word "svm" highlighted in the output text; if either vmx or svm appear, your processor can support virtualization.

Emulating KNOWIMS

Here is a command line to launch the emulation, when your USB stick can be addressed as device /dev/sdc: qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 1000 -vga cirrus -drive file=/dev/sdc,format=raw; you may need to have root permission to launch this command.