Troubles installing 14.0

[nurbles]

If this is the wrong forum for this, please direct me to the correct one and accept my apologies.

It has been a few years since I last built up a new TinyCore system. I'm trying to use TC again because my previous experience was excellent, but sadly this time that is not the case...

First, my "new" hardware uses an Intel Atom E3845, Quad Core processor with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.  (The exact device is a DFI model EC200-BTA881 https://www.dfi.com/product/index/218.)  OK, here's what's been happening:

• Any time the SSD has a hint of a bootable partition, the system seems to start it when I choose to boot with the 'X/GUI + Installer Extension' option from the TC boot menu.  So I need to use a bootable GPartEd to delete the partition(s) on the SSD between every attempt to install.  Annoying, but do-able.
• When I can get the ISO image to boot from CD (not a guarantee), it does not ever start the GUI and dumps me at a $ prompt.  I'm hoping to use the graphical installer that I used in the past, so that's not good.
• When I boot the ISO from a USB stick (built with Rufus), I always get to the GUI and can start the GUI installer

When I run the GUI Installer, I also have some issues:

• The default location for the 'core*.gz' file(s) is a sort of a '^' char.  This was with both the CorePlus and TinyCore images.  I expected the installer to have the correct default built in, because I don't know what it should be.
• I have tried using /mnt/sdb1/boot with little success.
• When I try use the 'download' option, I've been choosing the 64-bit edition and it skips the questions about Install Type, WiFi, etc. that I get is I choose the local copy of core.gz from /mnt/sdb1/boot.
• The download option at least installs something bootable, but it only ever goes to a $ prompt and I don't know enough TinyCore to get the GUI and other things I want installed from there. (Yes, I'm a sad old man, sigh.)
• When installed using the /mnt/sdb1/boot/core.gz file, the system never actually boots.  Some of the BIOS messages appear, the screen goes dark, there's a 'click' and we're back to the BIOS messages coming out.  Repeat ad infinitum.

So, I'm sure this is something I'm doing wrong, but I'd swear that things worked much better in the past (valid defaults) and I don't think I ever needed to try to install TC more than once to get it working.  Sometimes I'd need to reinstall because I screwed it up by poking something I shouldn't have touched, but it always "just worked" until *I* broke it.  Now I can not even get it to start -- at least, not as it did in the past.

Can (will) anyone help me figure out what's wrong?  Is my hardware not supported?  Are there some specific requirements for booting from USB (or CD) that I'm not meeting?  Could me SSD model be a problem?  I'm at a loss here and praying for help!

[jazzbiker]

Hi nurbles,

Sad that You have no success yet with the fresh TinyCore. Have You tried the previous versions which worked ok for You on Your new hardware?

[curaga]

The installer is presumably confused by the emulation that rufus does. Can you try dd'ing the iso to the usb stick instead of rufus?

Alternatively, the command to install the default desktop on a 64-bit command line would be "tce-load -wi Xfbdev Xlibs Xprogs wbar flwm aterm".

[CardealRusso]

Unfortunately I'm unable to help you, but I leave my personal opinion that TinyCore works much better portable, USB - I assume that's standard.

Additionally, currently TinyCore's EFI boot simply doesn't work because of bootx64.efi. Something I managed to get around by following the tutorial: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Linux/TinycoreUSB_UEFI.shtml
TL;DR:

Format USB to FAT32
Extract Iso
Copy https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Linux/bootx64.efi to /EFI/BOOT/
Move /EFI/BOOT/grub/grub.cfg to /grub.cfg

[nurbles]

Thanks for the hints!  Some comments:

• I tried several older versions that I still had around with similar results.
• It never occurred to me that Rufus could be the problem.  I will try a dd, and perhals also UNetBootIn, and maybe the Universal-USB-Installer as well.
• Portable is fine, but not for a device embedded in a factory or things like that.  I've found TC to be great for simple embedded devices because, by default it gives me a linux core, networking and little else unless I want to add it.  The basic GUI is even fine because, while it costs very little when the device is operating "headless", if/when a customer needs to connect a monitor/keyboard/mouse it is much more familiar (and less daunting) to them.
• I'm not sure if this will have any effect, but the BIOS says it is configured for what it calls "dual boot" mode, supposedly supporting UEFI or legacy (or something like that.)  I will set it to legacy and see if that helps.

[jazzbiker]

Hi nurbles,

1. I propose to use dd only. No enhancements, no bonus tracks.
2. In Your previous post You named the core path as /mnt/sdb1/boot. Have You rechecked whether core.gz really is there? I use TinyCore in nomadic manner, so I can't recheck it by myself.
3. A few years ago when I was starting with TC I used installer, mostly text mode. If I am not mistaken one choice point - something like "would You use the whole disk" - leaded to not successful installations. Have You read the Corebook's chapter about installation process?
4. Very nice description of distribution files based installation - http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,19364.0.html. Have You read it? It describes dual boot mode for USB installation, but it can be easily applied to local hard drive, I guess.

PS
By the way I've booted CorePure64-14.0.iso in qemu and I was not able to find the path to core.gz ...

[jazzbiker]

By the way I've booted CorePure64-14.0.iso in qemu and I was not able to find the path to core.gz ...

Oops, I was to mount /dev/sr0 ... And in /mnt/sr0/boot the files were located.

[nurbles]

Well, thanks for the ideas, sadly I haven't gotten much farther.
Still working with current (14.0)...

• Rufus in 'dd' mode:  No new results
• Changed BIOS to boot in LEGACY mode only:  Same end results, but the USB boot 'looks' better and the GUI installer (from CorePlus) works as expected.  Unable to install to an existing partition because the USB boot locks the existing partition for some reason and I cannot figure out any way to un-mount it.
• Tried using UNetbootin instead of Rufus:  No new results
• Did internet search for 'corebook' and did not find what I expected.  Eventually found the "Book" link on the TC home page (yes, sometimes I'm a bit slow) and re-read the installing section.  I noticed that there is exactly ZERO help if something goes wrong.  Not a hint about how to determine and/or correct the problem.  Oh well.  Oh, FWIW, my most recent attempt, using a CorePlus image followed every step exactly as the book showed it ... except for the last one:  Instead of booting into TC, the machine boots to a black screen, then boots to a black screen, etc....
• I followed the link to the other forum discussion and read through (at least until it got contentious later on).  I'm not really interested in something that requires so much hands-on effort just to get installed.  That said, if a TC developer wants me to try a procedure of some sort, please let me know -- but be aware, I'm limited to using either a WSL Ubuntu 18 on Windows or reinstalling Ubuntu (or whatever) on my TC target machine if I need to use linux to build the stuff necessary.

Also FWIW, I tried installing Ubuntu on the same hardware and it worked flawlessly.  However it takes an eternity to boot, which I why I was trying to use TC as it boots quite quickly.  When it boots at all.

Sadly, I think I'm going to look at and try out some of the other minimal linux distros to see if I can any of them to work on my hardware.  I'll check back here just in case someone has an epiphany, but I need to make forward progress on this project (I have a deadline to meet, after all.) 

[jazzbiker]

Hi nurbles,

Prior to landing on TinyCore I was playing with Puppy Linux. Maybe it will be of interest for You. Nowadays the only minimalistic distro I know is Void Linux. If we are talking about using of some default installer and applying zero efforts. There are a plenty of others but kick-staring them may require some efforts applied.

Good luck!

[nurbles]

My problem isn't the work, it is that my installation will be "interesting", as in, "May you live in interesting times." That's why I prefer to have a standard installer & associated process that "just works."

Also, I tried Puppy, but apparently it is too complex for me as it, too, refused to boot after being installed to the SSD.  It also felt slow, at least compared to TC.  I tried Q40S, too, and it installed and booted fine, but it was the slowest option I've encountered so far (other than a full Ubuntu Server.)

I've currently got Proteus linux installed and it boots (and reboots) very quick, though it includes far more stuff than I have any need of or any use for.  That's the other reason I would prefer TC:  It can be installed with almost nothing included and that's just about everything I need!   

I'll probably spend another day trying various combinations and maybe I will come up with one that works for TC.  I need to codify the attempts I've made and compare that to all of the permutations I can imagine to ensure I've tried everything -- maybe I've missed the golden combination for my hardware.  Fingers crossed.

Thanks again to everyone for providing hints, ideas and suggestions!

[mocore]

hi *

idk how insightfull this might be ...

https://www.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/meta-intel/2015-September/003574.html#Atom-E3845: Grub auto start ?


wrt hw + tc

the implicet step is to install bootloader (pickone! ,.. examples afair exist in the wiki(if you can find a working link;) , ect )
then (with bldr installed) add an entry to the loader config to the corect drive/partition  & file paths ( eg in second link below)

the above could even bee done on disk image file and then dd to *whatever* device

see also :

isohybrid bios uefi .ISO mk/test script qemu
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,23490.msg147162.html#msg147162

+
example/script to copy tcl files to labled partition and create boot loader config (for grub2 in this case )
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,22546.msg141259.html#msg141259

[gadget42]

visited the specifications webpage for the hardware:
https://www.dfi.com/product/index/218#specification

under operating system support it says:
"Linux (Distribution available upon request)"

would be nice to know which one they offer/provide/recommend/support.

also, assuming your earlier post meant "Porteus" and not proteus
http://www.porteus.org/

20230720-0654am-cdt-usa-modified-added content

[nurbles]

Yes, "Porteus" not "Proteus", sorry.    My bad, as it most definitely is not the computer from the movie "Demon Seed" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075931/)!

I was reading some older posts about install/boot issues and came across a mention of the core2usb utility in the TC FAQ (pendrives). It sounded promising until I downloaded it and discovered:

• It is a python source file, apparently from 2012
• I needed to install python
• It is not syntactically valid python code, at least not for the python 3.11 that I found

So it won't help as it is slightly out of date. It also suggests that the FAQ might benefit from a review.

The BIOS has options for "Legacy", "UEFI", and "Dual" boot modes, so I switched it to "Legacy" for TC.  Unfortunately, that didn't help the image installed to the SSD to boot.

[jazzbiker]

Hi nurbles!
When You boot from DVD or USB drive, what is the name of the SSD on which You want to install TinyCore? Something like /dev/sda. Is it partitioned? For example what is the output of

Code: [Select]

fdisk -l /dev/sda
?
My guess is that it is already partitioned by Your previous pretenders (Ubuntu, Porteus, etc) and the way they partitioned it is not compatible with TC installer.
Maybe destroying all partitions present will help, but of course it is not for sure and Your SSD may already contain the data important for You.

PS: By the way, Windows was already installed on Your box earlier?

[aus9]

Hi nurbles

I suggest if you are distro shopping have a look at
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz
http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/

I have not used it recently,  they have moved to a rolling release model which is the model for arch linux/ debian sid etc

In addition you can install a 32 bit distro on 64 bit hardware.

2) if you are still interested in Tinycore, you do not have to use dd or rufus etc to install it.
You can do something similar to what I wrote a long time ago showing here
https://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/doku.php?id=wiki:install_wo_optical_grub2

I did something similar RECENTLY on TC64 using legacy bios  with my TC on sda3

If interested I will need to know if your SSD can be connected to another PC--- what OS you have on a working PC.
I can not help if your answer is Windows.....as I have no experience running the linux terminal on Windows