Tiny Core Linux

Tiny Core Base => Raspberry Pi => Topic started by: bmarkus on November 19, 2012, 05:41:06 AM

Title: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on November 19, 2012, 05:41:06 AM
Hi,

I'm happy to announce first public beta of TC for Raspberry Pi, codename PiCore-X which is the equivalent of TC on x86. Extensions are built native in piCore, no alien packages used.

Intallation

Download compressed SD card image:

http://www.hasix.org/tc/piCore-X-beta121119a.img.xz

piCore-X addition is 10.5M which means it is still a lite system even if it comes with a full Xorg.

It is for a 4G card, based on Robert's latest piCore base 4.7 system. Uncompressed image size is the same, as extensions are using free space in the original partition.

Insert SD card, uncompress image and copy to the SD card with dd. On most Linux sytem SD card is identified as mmcblk0:

dd if=piCore-X-beta121119a.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M

Now it is ready to boot. Depending on your monitor, editing of boot config file may be required.

Please note, it is a first beta release. Extensions will be submitted soon to repository as well as a QEMU disk image.

As booting x86 TC from CD /tce direcory is in /tmp, no persistence in this cloud mode.

Advanced installation

If piCore-X boots OK, you can create a new linuxpartition (mmcblk0p2) on the SD card with fdisk in size up to your wish. Reboot to make new partition table effective, than format with mkfs.ext4, mount it and move /mnt/mmcblk0p1/cde to the newly created partition  /mnt/mmcblk0p2 and rename cde to tce.

It is also adviced to create a 256M swap partition on the SD card. Use fdisk to create swap partition (mmcblk0p3),  and format it with 'mkswap /dev/mmcblk0p3' command as root.

Reboot your Pi. Check installation. Open a terminal. 'free' must show swap size; 'ls -l /etc/sysconfig' must show a tcedir symlink to the SD card partition instead of /tmp.

Notes

piCore-X is using x86 scripts without any modification. It proves usability of Robert's Core concept again!
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on November 21, 2012, 05:35:56 PM
Hello

Markus

Does this ARM version of TC for the Rasberry Pi contain "sound" of have the ability ready to load
the sound up?

thanks

Vince.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on November 21, 2012, 06:15:09 PM
No sound yet.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on November 23, 2012, 06:05:26 PM
oh right

thx


V
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: Joeledmund on November 29, 2012, 09:42:13 PM
thanks for the help on the Raspberry pi forum too :)
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on November 30, 2012, 12:05:40 AM
thanks for the help on the Raspberry pi forum too :)

You are welcome! :(
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: gagutierrez on December 03, 2012, 07:00:16 PM
Hi Markus,
I'm new at this.
I followed your instructions but achieved nothing. The monitor remains black. I edited the config.txt file but I can not results.
to energize, and LNK LEDs flash OK, so I'll keep trying.
Greetings and thank you for the effort.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 03, 2012, 10:01:41 PM
Hi Markus,
I'm new at this.
I followed your instructions but achieved nothing. The monitor remains black. I edited the config.txt file but I can not results.
to energize, and LNK LEDs flash OK, so I'll keep trying.
Greetings and thank you for the effort.

Do you see boot messages ot nothing at all?

Is it analog or digital (HDMI ot DVI) monitor? Did you try Raspbian, does it work?
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on December 06, 2012, 06:06:45 AM
M,

strangely on the official LIST of Rasberry Pi operating systems, of which there are over 23 OS's. tinycore has not been listed. Yet it's easily the best.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Distributions

they also don't mention Angstrom Linux...which should work real well on the Pi...

Vince.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 06, 2012, 06:10:18 AM
You are right. But timing is important. Actually I'm working on the reopositrory and the support WEB site for newbies. The worst thing can happen is to announce a sytem without proper documentation and repository!

It will happen. Thanks for mentioning :)
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on December 06, 2012, 07:29:48 AM
Hell Markus

oh absolutely yes.  I mean perhaps many people will also like the addition of sound capability....to the ARM tcl version.

but yes...the repository of apps is real important.....i mean what good is an Arm OS with apps right?

(they also don't list "cockroach Puppy" and a few others

V.

Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: tinypoodle on December 06, 2012, 07:56:41 AM
Appears to be a wiki ;)
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 06, 2012, 08:23:53 AM
Yes, you can edit. But please, do not add piCore yet!
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on December 06, 2012, 09:17:25 AM
Hell Markus

oh absolutely yes.  I mean perhaps many people will also like the addition of sound capability....to the ARM tcl version.

but yes...the repository of apps is real important.....i mean what good is an Arm OS without apps right?

(they also don't list "cockroach Puppy" and a few others

V.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on December 06, 2012, 09:23:23 AM
Hello

sorry my last post contains a correction

DId anybopdy see this and try it?

http://arm.balinor.net/slitaz/armhf/

V.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 06, 2012, 09:26:26 AM
Please, do not post it here in the piCore-X beta topic! Keep Forum organized.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on December 06, 2012, 09:27:52 AM
ok
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: gagutierrez on December 06, 2012, 07:34:35 PM
Hi Markus,
I'm new at this.
I followed your instructions but achieved nothing. The monitor remains black. I edited the config.txt file but I can not results.
to energize, and LNK LEDs flash OK, so I'll keep trying.
Greetings and thank you for the effort.

Do you see boot messages ot nothing at all?

Is it analog or digital (HDMI ot DVI) monitor? Did you try Raspbian, does it work?

My SD card is 8GB
My system ubuntu 10.04 lucid - core 2.6.32-42-generic
monitor: analog

gaston@gaston-nb:~$ sudo dd if=/media/G2J-PEN001/piCore-X-beta121119a.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
40+0 registros de entrada                                                    //->input records
40+0 registros de salida                                                     //->output records
41943040 bytes (42 MB) copiados, 6,28473 s, 6,7 MB/s                         //->42MB copied

Remove and reinsert SD card

gaston@gaston-nb:~$ df -h
S.ficheros            Tamaño Usado  Disp Uso% Montado en
/dev/sda1              36G   18G   16G  54% /
none                  241M  340K  241M   1% /dev
none                  245M  332K  245M   1% /dev/shm
none                  245M   84K  245M   1% /var/run
none                  245M     0  245M   0% /var/lock
none                  245M     0  245M   0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sdb1             7,5G  5,8G  1,8G  78% /media/G2J-PEN001
/dev/mmcblk0p1         38M   30M  8,0M  79% /media/A0D5-E528                 //38M is OK?

At boot in RPI, the display is black all time.
what is wrong?

Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 06, 2012, 10:49:45 PM
Yes 38M is correct. Check config.txt settings and compare with settings of you working other distro.

BTW, is it a 256 or 512M RAM Pi?
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 07, 2012, 12:09:16 AM
New compressed SD card image is available, updated to base 20121202, 4.7.1 :

http://www.hasix.org/tc/piCore-X-beta121207a.img.xz

MD5:

http://www.hasix.org/tc/piCore-X-beta121207a.img.xz.md5.txt
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bricolodu13 on December 13, 2012, 06:40:15 AM
Hello Markus,

Sorry I'm absolutely newbie to linux   :-[
I have successfully installed squeezelite to the Raspbian distro.
I also succeeded in installing piCore-X beta
My wish is to make a very minimalist squeezelite only system.
That is why I would like to install squeezelite in piCore.

Trying to do so, I'm facing different problems.
1/ I don't know should I install different directory and don't know how to proceed.
2/ I don't know how to create disk partition if necessary (as my disk looks like not fully partitioned)
3/ don't know how to load french keyboard and save the option
4/ don't know anything :'(

best regards,
Jean

Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bricolodu13 on December 13, 2012, 07:01:06 AM
Another thing that is not working for me : sudo apt-get

You'll find the howto for squeezelite installation on the Raspberry pi forum at the "Installing Squeezelite" topic

Best regards,
Jean
Title: Re: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 13, 2012, 07:22:20 AM
Another thing that is not working for me : sudo apt-get

You'll find the howto for squeezelite installation on the Raspberry pi forum at the "Installing Squeezelite" topic

Best regards,
Jean

It is not Raspbian nor a Debian clone. It has its own package management.
Title: Re: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on December 13, 2012, 07:26:30 AM
Hello Markus,

Sorry I'm absolutely newbie to linux   :-[
I have successfully installed squeezelite to the Raspbian distro.
I also succeeded in installing piCore-X beta
My wish is to make a very minimalist squeezelite only system.
That is why I would like to install squeezelite in piCore.

Trying to do so, I'm facing different problems.
1/ I don't know should I install different directory and don't know how to proceed.
2/ I don't know how to create disk partition if necessary (as my disk looks like not fully partitioned)
3/ don't know how to load french keyboard and save the option
4/ don't know anything :'(

best regards,
Jean

Jean

It is too early for your application, e.g. Alsa is not yet available. Check back later. Till you can read core concept and play with core on x86 platform to get familiar with it.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: tinypoodle on December 13, 2012, 07:38:46 AM
See also:

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,14130.0.html
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 06, 2013, 11:35:57 PM
New version piCore-X beta released. Changes:


Download:

http://www.hasix.org/tc/piCore-X-beta130107a.img.xz

Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 14, 2013, 11:58:34 AM
New version of piCore-X beta available:

http://www.hasix.org/tc/piCore-X-beta130114a.img.xz

Identical to the previous version except boot loader which now identifies both 256M and 512M RAM board variants properly.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 16, 2013, 03:20:20 PM
New version of piCore-X available:

http://www.hasix.org/tc/piCore-X-beta130116a.img.gz

flwm_topside.tcz updated to be compatible with WM/DE extensions.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: Cloudcentric on January 17, 2013, 05:48:41 AM
Hi, just a quick question as you appreciate I am still learning..

Why is there two versions of piCore ?

I use the standard version and added the Desktop Environment manually, or should I just the the X version ?
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 17, 2013, 06:38:09 AM
Hi, just a quick question as you appreciate I am still learning..

Why is there two versions of piCore ?

I use the standard version and added the Desktop Environment manually, or should I just the the X version ?

piCore is the base version and let's say the only version.

piCore-X is piCore + preloaded extensions, an example use of piCore and extensions

Installing the necessary extensions on stock piCore you get piCore-X except the preloaded extensions in piCore-X are in a cde directory of mmcblk0p1 instead of a tce directory in another partion, which makes image distribution smaller and easier.

Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: Cloudcentric on January 17, 2013, 07:12:36 AM

OK like Core & Tiny Core, makes sense, thanks for prompt reply, I will continue with piCore then.....
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 17, 2013, 07:17:32 AM

OK like Core & Tiny Core, makes sense, thanks for prompt reply, I will continue with piCore then.....

Yes, I'm trying to make piCore as much close to x86 as possible. There are only miner differences, but philosohpy is the same.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: roberts on January 17, 2013, 09:16:08 AM

OK like Core & Tiny Core, makes sense, thanks for prompt reply, I will continue with piCore then.....

Yes, I'm trying to make piCore as much close to x86 as possible. There are only miner differences, but philosohpy is the same.
I think bmarkus meant to say the prebuilt extensions in piCore-X, aka TinyCore for Raspberry Pi, as I made and offered Core on the Raspberry Pi before he had one. I was asked by him to also make Core that would emulate raspberry pi on Qemu, as he did not have a pi. Compiling the kernel and libs on raspberry pi was a 12 hour endeavour. My plan was to address all new SoCs with import. It was bmarkus that decided to take the route of re-compiling extensions. And for that he deserves much credit.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: Cloudcentric on January 17, 2013, 10:00:26 AM
Thank you both for replies and think I understand the ideas behind each version and am pleased for all the hard work you have undertaken.


I am now running X86 TC Plus as my second O/S and learning, as said before will stick with the ARMv6 piCore version as I have it running satifactorily.


http://tinycorearm.blogspot.co.uk
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 24, 2013, 02:36:48 PM
Picore-X is updated to 4.7.4, current version is piCore-X-beta130124a

Download link:

www.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/piCore-X-beta130124a.img.gz

Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: str4ng3r on January 25, 2013, 01:45:04 PM
Picore-X is updated to 4.7.4, current version is piCore-X-beta130124a

Download link:

www.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/piCore-X-beta130124a.img.gz

Markus, what changed from version beta130123?
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 25, 2013, 02:03:22 PM
Base updated from 4.7.3 to 4.7.4, preinstalled extensions are the same.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 29, 2013, 03:17:54 AM
piCore-X-beta130129a is available. Changes:


Download link:

www.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/piCore-X-beta130129a.img.gz
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: cast-fish on January 29, 2013, 01:26:16 PM
Hello

was just reading the threads a little...

so is Pi Core X coming with just a few GUI apps ready to go + sound.

What apps are they. One would assume there is a web surfer and such

thankyou

Vi.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on January 29, 2013, 01:36:00 PM
Web browsers in the repo:

- lynx
- elinks
- dillo3

Email client:

- alpine
- claws-mail built, will be in repo soon

And a GCC toolchain, you are welcome to contribute with tcz's.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on February 27, 2013, 12:03:47 AM
piCore-X updated to 4.7.5

Dowload:

piCore-X-beta130226.img.gz (http://www.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/piCore-X-beta130226.img.gz)
piCore-X-beta130226.img.gz.md5.txt (http://www.tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv6/piCore-X-beta130226.img.gz.md5.txt)
Title: Thank you for piCore-X and...
Post by: roborob on April 28, 2013, 12:55:01 PM
Hi Béla,

Thank you for piCore-X.  I have it running on a Raspberry Model B, with an old 128MB miniSD.  No modifications, just pure piCore-X.

The and... part is this:  Is there a way to boot from the SD card, then install piCore-X to a USB drive? 

I admit I haven't done much footwork at this point.  I am asking mainly to make sure I don't waste a bunch of time on something that will ultimately not work, or may not be a good idea.  I am also guessing the SD boot is hard coded into the Raspberry BIOS otherwise everyone would be booting from a USB drive and not even bothering with the SD card.  The ultimate use case would be to install from SD and boot natively from from HD, following the TC paradigm of booting from CD and installing (frugal) to the HD of a PC (or VM in my case).  However the reality may be that I will always need the SD card for the bootstrap, which I am OK with at this point.  I am hoping to use an old 250GB laptop HD in a USB enclosure on powered USB hub.  Or perhaps a 128GB SSD via powered USB. 

Is there a way to install piCore-X to a USB HD currently?  Could it be as simple as mounting, copying, then editing the cmdline.txt?
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on April 28, 2013, 01:31:00 PM
Hi Roborob

you can boot RPi only from SD card. It contains not only the operating system components but also firware for the RPi's SoC, system configuration, etc.

Tiny Core Linux (TC) is not installed as ordinary Linux systems. It mounts extensions (packages with .tcz file name) which are stored in a /tce directory. In most cases this directory resides on the second partition of the SD card formatted as Linux ext/ext4 partion and big enough to accomodate extensions. This directory is also used to keep backups. But it is just a convention.

During boot TC is checking all available partitions (FAT/ext2/ext3/ext4) for /tce and will use the first found. It means, you can have an USB stick with /tce on ext4 partition. If no /tce on the SD card, system will use the USB stick. Same with HDD's or any other connected storage.

Notes:

External device must be ready during boot, otherwise TC will not find /tce. Use waitusb command line option. Start with waitusb=5 wich means 5 sec waiting for the USB. Increase it if necessary. Alternatively you can use UUID. Search Forum for details, it is not piCore specific.

HDD can consume high current during spinning up even if they are consuming much less during operation. HDD may require special USB cable, othervise you will loose voltage due to high current which may cause issues for the HDD. Considere that RPi's USB implementation is lets say poor, so I would not recommend to use an USB HDD. But it may work.

Just a private note, I do not see much reason to use USB stick or to play with extra power supplies, hubs, cables and loose an USB connector when 4G/8GB SD cards are cheap now and for the same price in few month you will get 16GB.



Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: roborob on April 28, 2013, 02:07:41 PM
Hi Béla,

Thank you for the information. 

The whole idea behind using a USB drive mass storage.  I really like how TC is super small and efficient, however some use cases may include large (relatively) data storage requirements.  I know, not typical, but I have a need.  External devices and power are acceptable in this case as well. 

Thanks also for the mention about current draw.  The USB drive enclosure came with a Y cable, one for data and the other for additional power.  I also use a powered USB hub to reduce the load on RPi. 

One thing you mention has me curious though: "RPi's USB implementation is lets say poor".  What would you consider are the shortcommings? Buffering, limited or slow transfer?  One use case I was considering included a USB camera and USB HD for local video capture and storage.

Another use case is the ability to store user configurations on USB.  This would allow students to save "their profile" to USB, allowing the RPi to be shared, yet remain configured for each individual.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: bmarkus on April 28, 2013, 02:35:15 PM

One thing you mention has me curious though: "RPi's USB implementation is lets say poor".  What would you consider are the shortcommings? Buffering, limited or slow transfer?  One use case I was considering included a USB camera and USB HD for local video capture and storage.


According to articles it's about 100Mbit/s, but I didn't test it. But it is a general opinion it's a sh...  Or it was. Maybe latest firmware and/or kernel behaves a bit better. Must be tested.

OK, I see the USB case in an educational environment where you must hide the box from touching; an external USB connector is much safer :) It works fine, just put /tce to the USB.
Title: Re: piCore-X beta available
Post by: roborob on April 28, 2013, 02:58:50 PM
Hi Béla,

I tested and it works great.


Thank you again!