How do I remaster a Tinycore iso to include applications?

[kevkid]

I am trying to remaster an iso to have firefox and a few other applications; How do i do it manually? Do I use the .tcz files in the iso, or do i put them into tinycore.gz? I tried using tc_remaster but I kept getting an error..
--Thanks,
--Kevin

[Juanito]

Did you have a look at the wiki section on this?

[ixbrian]

You have 3 main options if you want to remaster an ISO with additional applications:

1.  Add them to the /tce/optional directory in the ISO image, and list them in the /tce/onboot.lst startup list.   See http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Integrating+Extensions for how to do this.    This is relatively easy to do, and should have good bootup times, however you won't be able to remove the CD once the system is booted, and applications will load a little slower than with methods 2 and 3 because they have to be read off the CD when you start them. 

2.  Remaster the tinycore.gz and add the extensions to /opt/tce/optional directory and list them in the /opt/tce/onboot.lst startup list.  See http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Remastering for how to remaster the tinycore.gz.  This will result in longer bootup times than method 1 and more memory usage, however the system will respond more quickly once booted (everything is in RAM), and you can remove the CD once the system is booted and use the drive for other things. 

3.  Remaster the tinycore.gz and extract the extensions directly in to the tinycore.gz.   With this method, you follow the directions to remaster tinycore.gz on the wiki, and you then mount each extension and copy the contents of the extension in to the extracted tinycore.gz.   You also need to run any startup scripts that go along with the applications (check /usr/local/tce.installed for the startup scripts).   This has all the benefits of method #2 and will bootup more quickly than method #2. 

You can either manually remaster, or the tc_remaster application automates any of the 3 methods.   What error message are you getting with tc_remaster?   You might want to check tc_remaster.log to see if it is logging what the problem is.   

Brian

[tinypoodle]

2.  Remaster the tinycore.gz and add the extensions to /opt/tce/optional directory and list them in the /opt/tce/onboot.lst startup list.  See http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Remastering for how to remaster the tinycore.gz.  This will result in longer bootup times than method 1 and more memory usage, however the system will respond more quickly once booted (everything is in RAM), and you can remove the CD once the system is booted and use the drive for other things.

A possible variant could be dynamic remastering, according to http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php?page=Dynamic+root+filesystem+remastering

3.  Remaster the tinycore.gz and extract the extensions directly in to the tinycore.gz.   With this method, you follow the directions to remaster tinycore.gz on the wiki, and you then mount each extension and copy the contents of the extension in to the extracted tinycore.gz.   You also need to run any startup scripts that go along with the applications (check /usr/local/tce.installed for the startup scripts).   This has all the benefits of method #2 and will bootup more quickly than method #2.

If i understand right, this would result in increased memory usage, in comparison to method 2.

[ixbrian]

2.  Remaster the tinycore.gz and add the extensions to /opt/tce/optional directory and list them in the /opt/tce/onboot.lst startup list.  See http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Remastering for how to remaster the tinycore.gz.  This will result in longer bootup times than method 1 and more memory usage, however the system will respond more quickly once booted (everything is in RAM), and you can remove the CD once the system is booted and use the drive for other things.

A possible variant could be dynamic remastering, according to http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php?page=Dynamic+root+filesystem+remastering

3.  Remaster the tinycore.gz and extract the extensions directly in to the tinycore.gz.   With this method, you follow the directions to remaster tinycore.gz on the wiki, and you then mount each extension and copy the contents of the extension in to the extracted tinycore.gz.   You also need to run any startup scripts that go along with the applications (check /usr/local/tce.installed for the startup scripts).   This has all the benefits of method #2 and will bootup more quickly than method #2.

If i understand right, this would result in increased memory usage, in comparison to method 2.

You're right, the Dymanic Root Filesystem is another good option to remaster.  

I did a quick test to compare methods 2 and 3..   I remastered Tiny Core 3.1rc1 and added in Firefox (+dependencies) and the kmap extension and remastered an ISO using both methods 2 and 3..   Here is what I found:

Method 2: (Adding extensions to initrd):   ISO ended up being 33 MB, Bootup time was 24 seconds, Memory use (according to "free") was 67,148 KB

Method 3:  (Extracting extensions to initrd):  ISO ended up being 29 MB, Bootup time was 21 seconds, Memory use (according to "free") was 82,864 KB

It looks like method 3 takes additional memory because with method 2 the extensions are still compressed in memory (mounted squashfs) and with method 3 the extensions are in memory uncompressed (part of the uncompressed initrd).     Method 3 definitely boots faster (about  14% faster in my test), and probably performs slightly better than method 2 because the extensions don't have to be uncompressed when accessed.  

Brian

[tinypoodle]

Interesting, but rather surprised that the iso with extensions extracted gets significantly smaller...
Perhaps gzip can achieve a much better compression ratio with data of extension unsquashed than when contained in many seperate squash filesystems??
Did you use advdef ?

Note: busybox free includes cache under "used" and is therefore unreliable to measure used mem unless doing immediately first a

Code: [Select]

sudo cache-clear


[ixbrian]

Interesting, but rather surprised that the iso with extensions extracted gets significantly smaller...
Perhaps gzip can achieve a much better compression ratio with data of extension unsquashed than when contained in many seperate squash filesystems??
Did you use advdef ?

Note: busybox free includes cache under "used" and is therefore unreliable to measure used mem unless doing immediately first a

Code: [Select]

sudo cache-clear


I was surprised at the ISO size difference as well.   Yes, I used advdef. 

Thanks for the tip on cache-clear when using busybox free. 

Brian

[tinypoodle]

On second thought, a comparison could be made with:

Code: [Select]

df |grep tmpfs


[kevkid]

Thank You so much, The manual installation of tcz worked perfectly, and for the issue with TC_remaster I have posted a video of what happens, Windows keep popping up after it tries to open the iso and the next part of the process(sorry for the TERRIBLE description)

Code: [Select]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKHjm7TFS0cHas anyone seen this before?
Again thanks you all very much for the help!

-Kevin

[ixbrian]

Thank You so much, The manual installation of tcz worked perfectly, and for the issue with TC_remaster I have posted a video of what happens, Windows keep popping up after it tries to open the iso and the next part of the process(sorry for the TERRIBLE description)

Code: [Select]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKHjm7TFS0cHas anyone seen this before?
Again thanks you all very much for the help!

-Kevin

Somehow your remaster.sh got overwritten with the contents of tc_remaster.   Try deleting your current tc_remaster and remaster.sh, and then do this:

Download tc_remaster and remaster.sh again
sudo cp tc_remaster /usr/local/bin
sudo cp remaster.sh /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/tc_remaster
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/remaster.sh
Then run tc_remaster. 

Let me know if this doesn't work. 

Brian

[^thehatsrule^]

Please keep specific script discussion in its own dedicated thread, thanks.