need help w/ Zydas adapter on BT3 usb

[imported_pynstrom]

Please forgive me I'm very new to Linux.
I have a ZyDas 1211 wireless usb dongle. I searched for this in the wiki pages and found that this chipset requires firmware. I downloaded the tar file and extracted it to /lib/firware/zd1211, as per instructions in the documentation I restarted the computer, removing the usb stick. When I restart BT3, all of the saved files are gone and the wireless adapter still doesn't work. Also if I create a text file on the desktop, when I restart it's gone. What am I doing wrong? Any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[balding_parrot]

How are you booting BT, ie what type of install is it ?

[imported_pynstrom]

I'm not sure what you mean by "what type of install".
I downloaded the BT3 usb version from remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html,
copied the boot and BT3 folders to the main(only) dir on my freshly formatted cruzer usb drive. Then ran bootinst.bat and followed directions. Shutdown my computer and turned it back on. Pressing F12 to enter the boot setup menu and selecting to boot from the usb before HDD. Loaded <<back|track and continued as previously stated.
Thanks for the help.

[balding_parrot]

Then you have a live install only, therefore no changes are saved after reboot, therefore you are experiencing the problem that your changes are not there when you reboot.

Change it to a live install with changes and your problem is solved.

[imported_pynstrom]

Using The tutorial on this forum "live install with changes, swap and data partitions" intended for bt2, I partitioned my usb stick using GParted, a handy live distribution with a nice GUI from SourceForge.net that can create small partitions, and now have 1 primary Fat32 (996.19MB) partition,1 primary Linux-swap (996.22MB) partition, 1 primary ext2 (996.22MB) partition, and 1 primary Fat32 (925.62MB) partition.
BT3b is extracted to the Fat32 boot partition. I edited the bootinst.bat file and added the -f argument to the setupNT: line and the setup95: line in between -ma and -d. I edited the syslinux.cfg file in Wordpad adding the changes=/dev/sdb3 line to each label containing an APPEND:. At the dos prompt I entered the usb stick in the boot folder ran bootinst.bat. Seemed to work fine, but when you run bt3, it returns a Fatal Error while loading. When the changes=/dev/sdb3 line is removed from the syslinux.cfg file, it boots fine. here is the error returned:

. . .

*looking for data directory
*using BT3 data from mnt/sdb1/BT3
*setting up directory for changes
*/dev/sdb3
*testing the file system for posix compatibility
*setup union directory (using aufs, with udba=none)
mount: mounting aufs on union failed
Fatal Error occured - can't setup union (aufs)
*Something went wrong and we can't continue, This should never happen
*Please Reboot your computer with Ctrl+Alt+Del
#

and my current syslinux.cfg file looks like this:

PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 200
DEFAULT /boot/vesamenu.c32

LABEL kde
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (KDE)
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 autoexec=xconf;kdm

LABEL flux
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (Flux)
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 autoexec=xconf;flux

LABEL cubez
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (Compiz) - Experimental
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 load=cubez autoexec=xconf;cubez;startx

LABEL cubez
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (Compiz Nvidia) - Experimental
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 load=cubez autoexec=xconf;cubez;startx

LABEL pchanges
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode with Persistent Changes
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw changes=/slax/slaxsave.dat autoexec=xconf;kdm

LABEL copy2ram
MENU LABEL BT3 KDE Copy To RAM
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz APPEND vga=0x317  initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 copy2ram autoexec=xconf;kdm

LABEL startx
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics VESA mode (1024x768)
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 autoexec=kdm

LABEL Console Framebuffer
MENU LABEL BT3 Text mode FB
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw

LABEL Consolel Framebuffer no DHCP
MENU LABEL BT3 Text mode FB no DHCP
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw nodhcp

LABEL PXE Server
MENU LABEL BT3 PXE Server
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw load=pxe

LABEL safe
MENU LABEL BT3 Text mode
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=normal initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 chexpand=256 rw

LABEL memtest86
MENU LABEL Run Memtest utility
KERNEL /boot/mt86p

I tried many different configurations moving the changes=/dev/sdb3 line around. Whenever the line was present in the label that I loaded (e.g. startx)
the Error was returned, and vice versa. Whenever the line was removed BT3 loaded fine. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong or where to go from here, but I believe the problem lies in my syslinux.cfg file. I'm currently try to install bt2 on a similar USB stick(cruzer3 micro) to make sure there is no compatibility issues.
Thank you for your time Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

[balding_parrot]

As it is BT3, you need to manually make a folder called changes on the changes partition (sdb3) and then that error will go away.

[imported_pynstrom]

It works perfectly. The firmware works great and everything is up and running. Thank you for taking time away from your own projects to help me. You have my gratitude.

[balding_parrot]

Your welcome, and thank you for taking the time to report back that it fixed it for you and to say thanks.