First times: TCB and eeePC 1005HA

[siddartha]

Long time Linux user, but I renounced Linux when I just realised the new distributions were about as large as Windows, needed often updates, yet beyond network admin the tools are lacking or working under emulation with bugs and performance penalty.

Recently I have discovered puppeee, than puppy linux, than tiny core. And tiny core seems to be so much what I want and need from a Linux machine to compensate for its shortcomings. Sadly, after a few days of attempts, this remains a dream so I badly need your help to tailor this distribution which promises to be the closest to my ideal.

I like the idea of having everything in memory, although I have a hard drive in my netbook (1005HA) as I plan to upgrade when possible to a SSD alternative. Also, there's an Acer around which besides the large screen is a pain to work with - 0.5GB RAM and very slow hard drive. It came with Vista preinstalled and it takes a few good minutes to reach the log on screen. Another few minutes to open the account and finally a few minutes to start a browser or some office app. Now, with something like Gparted Magic the whole thing starts to fly and I would love to have something like this with my choice of apps.

Given all that I started trying to make tiny core work on my base machine, the eeePC. I have downloaded the iso, I have used unetbootin tool in XP to make a flash drive bootable, I have added /tce and /tce/optional to the root. The idea would be to have a networthy client (two browsers, each with its own config) and a book reader (light html engine, epub, pdf and djvu mostly).

Now, is it possible to tweak grub4dos to have more custom versions of tiny core on the same partition? Or syslinux as used by unetbootin. Same core, thus only one /boot, yet two or more /tce, say /tce1 and /tce2 meaning /tce1 loading on boot the eeePC tweaks and /tce2 being more generic (say able to be tweaked for the Acer machine?).

Because I am not sure what the final configuration would be I have downloaded to have offline the whole tcz folder. In my case, having a network cable is quite painful, yet wifi is readily available. I have worked with wicd before and I find it a nice option. I thought to myself I can read the .dep files and gather all that. It proved to be a chore and I am not quite sure I nailed them all, even if I kept a written list of dependencies.

What files are relevant to keep from the whole tcz? So far I have copied everything starting with name.tcz. So the name.tcz is the pack. The name.tcz.dep should help the tiny core apps keep the dependency in line. The md5 should help with the updates and the .info is for my own pleasure of reading the descriptions. What about the rest?

I renounced the path of getting by hand the needed apps and wanted to rely on the distribution tools. The whole /tcz folder was renamed /tce/optional. Surprise! It was not accessible. Well, I figgured it out to be because of the NTFS formatted partition. No need to panic. The 6GB of data was quickly trimmed by renouncing libreoffice and other large packs to 4GB and copied to an ext4 partition belonging to a slimmed down Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook edition. This one was seen and made tiny core happy. I was able to tweak it to reach the less usual screen resolution of 1024x600. But on the way of loading more complex files with dependencies it failed. Opera 9 and Opera 10 were loaded, yet without the truetype fonts although the recomended pack (from the .info) was also loaded.

Wicd failed this time telling me that wireless-KERNEL was not available. Of course wireless-KERNEL was not available as the KERNEL should have been replaced by another string. Loading that pack by hand lead to no results, the error is still there. This being with an offline folder. Should I edit the .dep file to reflect the realities in the field or is there a more elegant path?

Finally, after tweaking enough and hitting the limitations I decided it could be worth the effort to get an ethernet cable.

Cable installed, everything works as expected out of the box. With the tweak for the 1024x600 resolution the desktop was already better looking. And Opera 9, aside for complaining to the old version, works well and with low resource consumption. The given tool connects to the net and it can do some simple packs - say using the mirrors.tcz

Only that the app tool does not look or act like in the tiny core wiki. There is no install/download. Instead of three options, there are other four about on boot, on demand  or download and go. As on boot and on demand don't seem to do anything to the current loaded system and only download and go works. Again, it works for the simple packs. Wicd fails again, this time not loading any dependency - there's no python 2.6 installed either. Wasn't it supposed to resolve the depencencies as well? I mean am I back to sqare one and have to read each .dep file and solve the issues?

At the same time the other app tool can work with the local tce with no problems besides the already mentioned ones. Also its interface, although obvious in most aspects at first sight, is different from the one in the help files. I assumed the OnBoot would generate a file that would load modules on boot (always in memory) and OnDemand would make a symilar file with the on demand apps. And it seems to work well over reboot.

What is the life of the OnDemand packs? From where I stand it sure looks the only difference from other ones residing in the offline repository I have improvised is that they are in the OnDemand menus both in that /tce file and on the desktop right click menu. Do they have other attributes? Are they and their dependencies only loaded when demanded? What happens when I close the app listed as OnDemand? Does it unload? Does it unload the unused dependencies as well?

I have noticed that although the dependency side can be broken on the install side, the tool does present the list in a nice indented view and can also calculate the total final size.

What can I do to make the provided app managers select only the needed packages? I have the online repository. I have my lightly trimmed 4GB offline repository. How can I make the tools generate me a /tce and /tce/optional only with the apps I need and their dependencies and nothing more?

Also, does tiny core has /tce and /boot hardcoded somehow? I might end up putting a version of tiny core along with the Ubuntu so I'd need at least a /tc-boot instead of the /boot.

Edit: PS: I have a regular tochpad recognised well as a mouse. But can I make it scroll for example?

Cheers,
Sidd

[maro]

Well, those are quite a few questions and a bit too much for me to attempt to answer all of them, so I'm just going to pick a few:

(1) The 'tce=...' boot code is quite flexible and in the most simplistic case (e.g. 'tce=sda1') might not be required, if one would have only one 'tce' directory in the root accross all of the attached file systems (of supported types, e.g. EXT[2-4], FAT, VFAT). But if you want to use multiple setups (e.g. '/path/to/tce1' and '/path/to/tce2') you'll need to be rather specific (e.g. 'tce=sda1/path/to/tce1'). Please note that in the case of a USB device it would be much better to use 'tce=LABEL=.../path/to/tce1' or 'tce=UUID=.../path/to/tce1' as the device name is somewhat "flexible" from system to system. Furthermore the use of the 'waitusb=...' boot code is quite important in this case (check out the FAQ). In any case I'm not aware that you can instruct a boot loader to default to a certain boot stanza on one system and a different one on another system automatically (unless one would use PXE which you don't seem to plan to do). So the human is left to make that choice at each boot time.

(2) The choice of '/boot' (to store the kernel and the initrd) is not absolutely mandatory and AFAIK not hardcoded anywhere in Core (apart from it's use in 'usbinstall'). But IIRC it is a widely held convention, that might even be more strongly "suggested" in some form or another. Nevertheless I'm not aware of any real reason why you should not adjust the storage directory for kernel and initrd according to your liking, provided the boot loader configuration is adjusted accordingly.

(3) On the problems with '*-KERNEL.tcz' extensions I'd like to direct your attention to some other message covering this very subject.

(4) As you can imagine for a still rather quickly developing distribution like TC it's difficult to keep the code and the documentation always in sync with each other. It is therefore quite possible that screenshots are not always reflecting the latest look of things. I'd like to suggest you create a more specific new thread for those cases you've observed. If the issue is in the Wiki please note that you should be able to make a change yourself. I've come to the conclusion that Robert (and the Core team) are not managing the Wiki content themselves, but rather let the users do this.

[siddartha]

Oh, thank you Maro. You realy shed some light over here. I'm aware that the message was quite large, but, as a newcomer, I was afraid not to disturb the forums by splitting it into sepparate issues. Also a few things overlap.

I have missed that part with the path and now things are a lot better. You are right, the label can change (quite a few apps have the bad habbit of signing a label on a removable drive), yet the UUID should stay the same. I also have missed (although I have read the FAQ - surely not close enough) the timeout advice. That would explain why the hard drive partition is mounted with tce=sdax, yet the USB doesn't. Also, being specific is not an issue. It's more about making certain configurations to go with different machines. And, in the end, the effort is made just once and saved to the boot configuration as different menu items. And yes, PXE is not needed at the moment.

So the /boot is up to the booting config. Good. That means that I can host a copy of TCB on the same partition as the Ubuntu without messing with their configs.

Ok. I'll search the forums more careful about the -KERNEL.tcz issue.

And it makes a lot of sense what are you saying about updating the wiki. Only problem here is that I'm not clear about these things.

Thank you again. I'll be back with a trimmed down list of the remaining dillemas.

[siddartha]

.zsync files are needed by the Apps tool? Or they are only for distro mirrors?

I see, the -KERNEL dependency should be edited by hand. This is easy in my case with most of the files downloaded, but how can this be solved for those who are using the App manager and download it from online?

How and with what tool can I convince Tiny Core to take all the files it needs for a certain configuration from http or sda1/tce to sdb1/tce and only those files?

What is the life of the OnDemand packs? From where I stand it sure looks the only difference from other ones residing in the offline repository I have improvised is that they are in the OnDemand menus both in that /tce file and on the desktop right click menu. Do they have other attributes? Are they and their dependencies only loaded when demanded? What happens when I close the app listed as OnDemand? Does it unload? Does it unload the unused dependencies as well?

[curaga]

.zsync files are needed by the Apps tool? Or they are only for distro mirrors?

Those are server-side files only.

I see, the -KERNEL dependency should be edited by hand. This is easy in my case with most of the files downloaded, but how can this be solved for those who are using the App manager and download it from online?

appsaudit -> update deps

edit: If you use the appbrowser, the KERNEL deps are taken care of automatically.

[siddartha]

Thank you curaga. About convincing Tiny Core to take all the files it needs for a certain configuration from http or sda1/tce to sdb1/tce and only those files is it more appropiate to ask in another section?