Rescuing Word Files with Knoppix

May 7, 2007 11:48 AM

How do I get Knoppix to read .doc files?

Through a rather steep and lengthy learning curve, I have booted up my ailing XP laptop with a Knoppix CD. It sees the MSWord files of my wife's writing, but does not recognize them as .doc files, and when I try either to drag or copy them to the floppy drive, I get a message: "could not determine file type, and none was specified."

Knoppix sees that there are some KB worth of data in those files.

What now?

(and I would be delighted to find out that this is a double, but I could not find anything either in AskMeFi or anywhere else on the web.

posted by Danf to computers & internet (15 comments total)

Can you try copying the files through the command-line? The file-type shouldn't matter when you're simply copying files from place to place. Maybe the message you're getting is indicating that the files themselves are corrupted?
posted by odinsdream at 11:52 AM on May 7, 2007

odinsdream, can you tell me more? As in, an example of a command-line?
posted by Danf at 11:55 AM on May 7, 2007

See if your live CD has OpenOffice installed - it can read Microsoft formats. If it doesn't, Sam Desktop Linux comes with OO installed.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 11:57 AM on May 7, 2007

Are you able to start up OpenOffice's Word replacement (drawing a blank on the name), and then try to open the files straight from that (eg. File -> Open)?
posted by inigo2 at 11:58 AM on May 7, 2007

Agree with odinsdream that file type should not matter for copying. Make sure your floppy is mounted correctly?
posted by anaelith at 11:59 AM on May 7, 2007

Has the floppy disk been formatted? If not, try formatting it as FAT (if you have problems in Linux, try formatting it in a Windows machine..)
posted by dcbarker at 12:02 PM on May 7, 2007

Danf, you should probably search for a quick unix tutorial or read the manual for the copy command by executing man cp

In any case, it's still a little strange that you can't simply drag and drop the folders. That should not involve identifying file types. Maybe there's some preview pane turned on in the GUI that's trying to open the files as you browse to them?
posted by odinsdream at 12:04 PM on May 7, 2007

As for an example copy command, assuming your floppy is at /mnt/floppy, you could copy a directory with something like this:

cp -R "/mnt/C/Documents and Settings/Administrator/My Documents/That Book I'm Working On" /mnt/floppy/
posted by odinsdream at 12:06 PM on May 7, 2007

The floppy came formatted, I assume for Windows, but I had to reformat it in Knoppix for it to be useable. I was then able to get the files onto the floppy but they are not readable on Windows machine now.

I am pretty sure that I'll figure it out. It took me 4 days, off and on, to figure out how to get a workable Knoppix CD.
posted by Danf at 12:17 PM on May 7, 2007

sudo passwd
********create a password
********type it again

now you can do disk write operations -- this doesn't really solve your problem -- You could try installing plugins from within OO, and having sudo helps.
posted by acro at 12:43 PM on May 7, 2007

Do you have a usable internet connection from the live CD? If you do, get yourself a Gmail account, and mail the files in question to yourself, or use Hotmail, or Yahoo, or whatever. If you need an invite, my email's in my profile.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 1:09 PM on May 7, 2007

This is very strange. I think there's something going on here beyond what's been described so far.

First, you really shouldn't have had to reformat the floppy in order to use it with Knoppix. So something is weird there. Linux will read MS-DOS/FAT formatted floppies just as happily as anything else, so first thing I'd do is check to see if the disk is formatted correctly (and not formatted as ext2 or something else that would be interfering with Windows compatibility).

Then, I would try just copying the files onto the (mounted) floppy with the cp command, from the command-line.

I tend to wonder if there's something going on with the file names ... do the filenames actually end in ".doc"? Maybe they're just not being recognized by the destination Windows system as MS word files, for some reason?

Agree also that you should try using some other media, like a Gmail account or a USB keychain drive, to see if somehow your floppy-copy procedure is messing things up.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:25 PM on May 7, 2007

Since they're relatively small files (they fit on a floppy) just open the browser in knoppix and then email them to yourself.
posted by chrisamiller at 3:13 PM on May 7, 2007

Seconding the flash drive idea if you have one available. They're much easier than floppies.

I think you probably reformatted the floppy with the Linux filesystem, ext2. That means only Linux, basically, can read it. It needs to be formatted in regular FAT mode. Ideally, format the disk in a Windows machine, and then try to copy the files again from Linux. Don't reformat it with Linux... if you can't use it with the Windows formatting, there's something amiss with the Knoppix you're using.

If you have another spare CD handy, the Ubuntu LiveCD might be easier to work with. It's very recent, and I've read that it has full write support for NTFS. This means, if all else fails, you should be able to boot up your OTHER computer with Ubuntu, and copy the data from the strangely-formatted floppies onto the hard drive.

I haven't tried this, and I don't know whether or not it's difficult.
posted by Malor at 3:16 PM on May 7, 2007

Well, thank you everyone for trying to help. The problems were manifold and each one attributable to my inexperience with knoppix/linux.

First one had to do with my grabbing the docs off the "recent" folder, which turned out to be merely pointers, rather than from where they actually resided. Then, the intricacies of mounting and unmounting the floppies.

But my documents are saved, and now I can reinstall windows and limp this machine through for another month or so when I'll have the money to buy a decent MacBook.

Thank you again for your time on this.
posted by Danf at 4:18 PM on May 7, 2007