Tiny Core Linux
Tiny Core Base => TCB Talk => Topic started by: KingBongo on March 08, 2011, 05:15:17 AM
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Hi. As some of you know I had some serious problems connecting to network with TinyCore, http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=8893.0 (http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=8893.0). The issue is now resolved so it is time to move on with an installation to hard drive. Of course I am having some issues already :)
Hard drive setup -
hda : Appr. 1.3Gb, 5400rpm
hdb : Appr. 30Gb, 7200rpm
I would like to do the following -
1. Install TinyCore 3.5 to hdb instead of hda - Faster
2. Use Ext4 instead of Ext3 - Faster (I believe)
3. Grub2 - Might be able to circumvent BIOS limitations. Not absolutely necessary.
The problem is that BIOS doesn't seem to accept hard drives bigger than 1.3Gb as boot drives. Believe me, I tried! A lot! I have tried 16Gb and 30Gb drives. And yes, I tried placing the bigger disks as master on the bus and setting the jumpers correctly. I tried playing around with the settings in BIOS a.s.o. The BIOS doesn't like them no matter what!
In Puppy and Debian/Ubuntu have been able to find working solutions to the booting problem just mentioned,
Puppy - Grub on MBR of hda, small partition on hda (hda1) with "grub files", the rest on hdb (hdb1: Puppy, MAXIMUM 1.3Gb size (else error), hdb2: data, hdb3: swap)
Debian/Ubuntu - Grub on MBR of hda, small partition on hda (hda1) with /boot, the rest on hdb (hdb1: /boot, ARBITRARY size, hdb2: /home, hdb3: swap)
Tricking the BIOS to boot into hda and then redirecting to hdb actually improves boot times and more importantly makes the system notably snappier when running. I would like to do the same with TinyCore. I would also like to use Ext4 because I believe I have read that it is faster than Ext2/Ext3 on average, which can only do good on a Pentium 1. Finally, I do not know if it will help any or not, but I have read that Grub2 has some drivers built in which might be good when having an old and buggy BIOS. So it might be a good idea to install Grub2 as well.
This is what I have done so far. I have been following the instructions here, http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html (http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html), which is nothing complicated at all. Yes, it works. The problem is that it doesn't do what I want it to do. I know for you guys the instructions are pretty easy to modify to your likings, but I haven't been successful so far. The biggest problem (I believe) is how to handle the grub files and how to set up grub.
The partitioning scheme I intend to use is,
hda1 : 50Mb, boot partition for TinyCore. I believe it is needed.
hda2 : Rest, not used / data
hdb1 : 200Mb, system partition for TinyCore
hdb2 : Rest, data
hdb3 : 500Mb, swap
Can anybody help me out here? This is not a very hard problem for a lot of you guys.
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I wouldn't place the kernel and tinycore.gz on the second HD, as bootloaders use the bios calls to read files. Ie, install as normal to hda1, placing all of grub and TC there, but specify hdb2 as your tce drive (+ other persistency options if you like).
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curaga:
Ok. I guess that TinyCore is a bit more "contracted" than other distros, so the same tricks cannot be applied to it.
Sorry, have to go. I will write more in a couple of hours.
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Not really, you could do that setting too, but it would be gambling IMHO. Whether the bios allows you to read your boot files.
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curaga:
Hahaha. Ok, that might explain why my Puppy installations sometimes refused to boot from the second disk :) They would just randomly quit doing it. Each time I had to do random combinations of switching the computer on and off, booting any CD of choice, and cursing like SOB before it worked again :P Stupid old computers, stupid old BIOSes. Did I mention that the BIOS doesn't let me boot from CDs although it should? No? I have to kickstart each CD with PLoP Boot Manager. Talk about buggy. I still don't understand why it shouldn't always work to just have a small set of files on hda, just the bare minimum to trick the BIOS and then continue booting into hdb, but I accept what you are saying.
I really would like to speed this computer up as much as possible though, one important part of it seems to direct as much activity as possible to the 7200rpm hard drive. But how does TC work? Does it load every application that is active into RAM, even for a frugal install? If that is the case, it doesn't matter much where all files are placed. At least I think so.
I understand (I think) that "TCE" is the extra stuff you install additionally to the base install, music players and such, but what do you mean by "other persistency options"?
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You could try the plop boot manager.
You could install it on hda, to boot operating systems on hdb.
I have not done this myself, but it is worth looking into.
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html
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Stupid old computers, stupid old BIOSes.
I have such a computer. Year 1999. Originally my BIOS was from year 1999. I found a newer BIOS on the www.dfi.com internet page (year 2001) solving different issues (DFI = my MoBo manufacturer). Then, I had a look at http://www.biosflash.com. My BIOS-Chip was not listed there. I contacted them by e-mail with the chip reference and with sending the BIOS file: they had such a chip, even this was not listed in the internet page. I got an offer by mail for approx 6 Euros ( if I remember ) for a new reprogrammed chip (I dont wanted to reprogramm it by myself).
I got the chip 2 week later.
So, perhaps you could try to find a new BIOS (+chip?). Nothing is too old. In year 2011, I made an update of my PC with a BIOS year 2001. And I am proud of it .. :P
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Guy:
You might have missed it, but I just wrote that I am using PLoP all the time :) I did not try installing it to hard drive though. BUT I am very skeptical, because I tried booting stuff I already installed to hard drive using a PLoP floppy. And guess what, it FAILS most of the time! It has been successful a few times though, but no consistent behavior. So, to conclude, PLoP doesn't seem to solve anything. The most consistent behavior has been to install everything to hda, exactly as curaga suggests. I cannot remember that it has ever failed then. That guy seems to know what he is talking about :)
floppy:
I have actually been trying to hunt down a newer or even a hacked BIOS version for this motherboard, with some help from a great guy in the Puppy forums, but with no success. I looked at Wim's BIOS page and sites like that. I have even been emailing a few guys. One actually seemed to have had one once, but he answered me in a non-polite way. I guess he was tired of BIOS questions, lol. I have since then given up. I have the newest official BIOS version. I will just try to circumvent the bugs, and that's that.
And by the way, why are you using such new computers, lol? 1999, that should be an i686 architecture and as such most everything can be installed onto it :)
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why are you using such new computers, lol? 1999, that should be an i686 architecture and as such most everything can be installed onto it
the asus with athlon xCore yGHz zBoost and 3GB ram + 320 GB HDD is for my wife.
I stay married with my old pc, too. ;-)
And: if you cannot install puppy and TCL on the same drive... I already tried puppy on my old pc. Not so good (fat). So, I deleted it and installed TCL. This was a good choice (still some improvements to be made: running skype and recover the mess done to "links" by install of Xorg7-5, quicker HDD access with hdparm, pdf printer install.. but it is already running productively).
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I really would like to speed this computer up as much as possible though, one important part of it seems to direct as much activity as possible to the 7200rpm hard drive. But how does TC work? Does it load every application that is active into RAM, even for a frugal install? If that is the case, it doesn't matter much where all files are placed. At least I think so.
If you place the 10mb base of TC to the slower drive, it will only be active on boot, after that everything else would be on the faster one.
Apps are mounted by default, but you can select which to load to ram (or all). It's a decision between boot time, ram use, and app speed.
By other persistency options I meant things like home= that you might also want to use (on the faster drive).
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floppy:
I never tried to install two distros at once on this computer, so that is a non-issue :)
curaga:
I know it is all obvious to you, but I don't know exactly how to alter the paths and stuff so it'll work in the end :( I tried a few things, only to end up with something non-working or something neglecting the paths I thought I had set :P
Not that it does matter anyway, since the only thing I will install on this computer is Audacious, and I will load it into RAM directly (OnBoot) so I decided it would not make much of a difference running it all on the slow drive. Am I off here? I am also wondering how much I will lose performance-wise by using ext3 instead of ext4 as a partition scheme? Finally, is it possible that booting from hard drive is slower than booting from CD? It feels that way.
I need help with the following:
1a. set xvesa resolution to 800x600x24 during boot
1b. set mouse to serial mouse COM1, 2Button, during boot
2. mount hdb1 automatically during boot
3. set up sound (ALSA) automatically during boot
In order to resolve 1a and 1b I have now a line in menu.lst like "kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tinycore xsetup" which forces me to setup the screen resolution and mouse each and every time. Annoying. 2 is also annoying, since I have to mount it manually all the time (I have the music files on that disk). 3 is as annoying as can be :P I have to run "alsaconf" every time before I can use Audacious.
If possible, I would also like to do the following during boot,
4. Setting swedish keyboard, i.e. SE
5. Start Audacious, not just load/mount it
6. LEFT-BUTTON MOUSE ;)
PS. Just got a kernel panic when trying to boot. Something is not good with this computer :P
EDIT: Ok, I don't know, but it seems there is something wrong with TinyCore. After playing music for a while, Tiny Core completely freezes. Then, after hard-resetting the computer, there is a kernel panic when trying to boot. It takes a hell lot of effort getting it to boot again. You know, turning the computer on and off, booting any CD, screaming words that shouldn't be spoken :P, a.s.o.
EDIT 2: The freezing problem mentioned above in "EDIT" seems to be related to Audacious or any/some of its dependencies. Playing music with XMMS works like a charm.
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Another approach would be to install FreeDOS on hda and use a DOS based Linux loader.
This should work, if the FreeDOS kernel is able to access a FAT* partition on hdb.
In the same way FreeDOS on a floppy instead of hda could work.
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tinypoodle:
Thank you, but that seems like more of the same :P I am getting tired. I have been trying sooooo many things on this Pentium Devil you wouldn't believe.
What I would like to know right now is if the complete base system is always loaded into RAM, as well as the OnBoot applications (and OnDemand if they are launched). If that is the case, it seems to me that the only thing that will be affected when using a slow hard drive is the boot time. I can live with that :)
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Base is loaded to tmpfs (shared memory).
In order to mount extensions from tmpfs you could boot with 'base' and then copy extensions to /tmp/tce/optional.
Of course you could use cp2fs but that sounds like a waste of memory on an older PC.
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tinypoodle:
Ok. I hope you guys understand that you are waaaaaay ahead of me and possibly a lot of others :) I am trying to keep up, but it is not easy.
Ok. I understand that base (the "system") is loaded to tmpfs. I even read briefly what shared memory actually is :) Now, what is the difference in having the extensions in, for example, /mnt/hda1/tce/optional (those are the extensions, right?) and copying them to /tmp/etc/optional ? Or am I way off here?
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Hi KingBongo
The difference is /mnt/hda1/tce/optional is on your hard drive and /tmp/tce/optional is in RAM.
As far as the BIOS is concerned try telling it the 30Gb drive is 500Mb, the kernel will figure out
the correct size on it's own. I'm running a machine from 1997 with a 320Gb drive. The machine
didn't like it so I either lied to the bios or disabled it, and let the kernel figure it out since it is
used for file serving.
[Corrected my copy of tinypoodle's typo]
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Oomph, that should have read /tmp/tce/optional (instead of /tmp/etc/optional
A typo not free of symantics of context... ::)
[Original post corrected]
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tinypoodle:
Thank you, but that seems like more of the same :P I am getting tired. I have been trying sooooo many things on this Pentium Devil you wouldn't believe.
Well, the rationale to it is similar to what curaga mentioned in Reply #1, to rely on an OS kernel to correctly recognize a partition which can not be recognized by BIOS.
Basic difference that FreeDOS kernel is much smaller in size and much faster to boot in comparison to Linux kernel.
This would e.g. work for me when having kernel and initrd on USB device with BIOS lacking capability to boot from USB.
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Now, what is the difference in having the extensions in, for example, /mnt/hda1/tce/optional (those are the extensions, right?) and copying them to /tmp/tce/optional ? Or am I way off here?
One significant difference is that it is more important that you have swap on when you copy extensions to tmpfs ;)
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Rich:
Yes, I am doing exactly that right now. I figured out myself it should work. I disabled the second hard drive in BIOS, installed a HUGE 80Gb drive, and the Linux kernel does the rest :) Unfortunately (of course), I also had to install everything on the small and slow primary disk then. In the past, I had the most luck with installs on the primary drive, because as I mentioned I have had serious problems with booting. This computer should just work, so I decided to stop playing around and go for the primary drive.
1997 still is too new for my likings :P
tinypoodle:
Ok, but even if I install FreeDOS (or something similar), the Linux kernel still has to be loaded sooner or later if I intend to use Tiny Core. Or? If the only purpose is to boot into the second hard drive, I think I will skip that for now. But thank you SO much anyway :) I think it now boots quickly enough to make me happy. I could not measure the time accurately because I have to set up the mouse each time, but I believe it should be under a minute. As a side-note I can mention that when playing around with Puppy, I noticed that booting into hdb instead of hda decreased the boot time with around 20%. Nothing to really care about.
My main concern now is to make it snappy when running, which I think means loading all the important stuff into RAM. As Rich points out "/mnt/hda1/tce/optional" is on hard drive and "/tmp/tce/optional" is loaded into RAM. Here is my question: "/tmp/tce/optional" is also a directory on the hard drive, but one that gets loaded into RAM/tmpfs automatically when Tiny Core boots up, right? Am I understanding it correctly? Does it have anything to do with the choices of "OnBoot" and "OnDemand"? If you set applications as "OnBoot" are they in "/tmp/tce/optional" already or what?
Don't worry about the swap, I have more than 1Gb of it ;)
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Hi KingBongo
Actually, what I had in mind was put the big drive on IDE0:Master and tell the BIOS it's about 500Mb
in size. As long as the files required for booting are in the first 500Mb they will be found. Once
the kernel probes the drive it will figure out the correct size.
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Rich:
Ah! Man! Never thought about that! I will try it at once. If it works I will get size AND speed :)
How do I create ext4 partitions instead of ext3? I tried the following two things simultaneously,
1. When creating partitions using "cfdisk" I changed "Type" to "85".
2. I changed the line
"mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda1"
in the installation instructions (http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html (http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html)) to
"mkfs.ext4 -I 256 /dev/hda1"
when formatting.
I get no complaints no nothing. Does this create an ext4 partition for me?
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Actually, what I had in mind was put the big drive on IDE0:Master and tell the BIOS it's about 500Mb
in size.
How exactly would you go about "telling" the BIOS so?
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Hi tinypoodle
On a machine that old the BIOS setup page let's you specify the size of the hard drive.
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Ah ok, if such specific BIOS options exist of course that could be a good idea.
Just that personally I have never happened to stumble upon any similar BIOS options, not even in BIOS older than that.
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Hi tinypoodle
Most of them would give you a choice of about 30 horribly outdated drive sizes and a choice of
user defined. The best bet is to read the CHS information from the label of the drive and use the
same number of heads and sectors and lie about the number of cylinders using user defined.
@KingBongo: For what it's worth, I've been using EXT3 for the last couple years and despite the
20-30 power glitches/outages I get every year it's performed flawlessly. The mkfs utility may be
one of those programs that completes silently unless you use a command line switch to tell it
otherwise. Type mkfs.ext3 --help and it should list it's options.
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Rich:
OH MAN! IT WORKS SOOOO GOOD! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!
I installed directly to an 30Gb drive. I left the parameters in BIOS the same as for the 1.3Gb drive, and IT WORKS! I will do it again for the 80Gb drive later.
By the way, do NOT try the shit I did when trying to create ext4 partitions. At least Grub Legacy doesn't understand wtf I did, hahaha. It probably went all wrong. Actually I don't want to use ext4 just because it is more modern or something. I want to use it because I seem to remember that on average it is actually faster than ext2/ext3.
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Hi KingBongo
Glad I could help.
I used grub legacy to dual boot a laptop with Tinycore. Initially I couldn't boot into the XP partition
anymore. The problem was a missing space on one of the parameters, which grub silently failed on.
I told it
root(hd0,0)
instead of
root (hd0,0)
Drove me nuts trying to figure out what was wrong.
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Our grub does have ext4 support, so unless your drive had grub from elsewhere, it should just work.
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curaga:
Thank you. But I still don't understand how to create ext4 partitions to begin with. The TC documentation really is slim at times. I also would like to install GRUB2 just because I can, but same thing there, slim documentation :P
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Hi KingBongo
Try installing gparted.tcz, It will let you set up and format partitions plus it has a really nice GUI.
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Rich:
Hahaha. Of course! I was just playing around with other distros just to be able to use "gparted", System Rescue CD being one of them. It never struck me that it might be available in TCs repos. Duh! Sometimes I feel really stupid :)
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Hi KingBongo
Yeah, well, you had a uncooperative PC distracting you.
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I don't know how I did it, but I have now an ext4 partitions scheme AND I have Grub2 installed and set up :D And it works! Come on now, congratulate me! ;)
I am really taking the Linux crash course here, lol.
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:) Congratulations ! :)
Now, for extra credit points, you have to figure out how you did it.
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Lee:
It is not hard to follow instructions :) For those who are as behind as I am and want to know how,
- Create ext4 partitions - Use "gparted". Install "gparted.tcz" at first.
- Install and set up Grub2 - Install "grub2.tcz", then follow the info on how to set up Grub2.
After that I actually managed the following,
- Set timeout=5 for the Grub2 boot menu - Add "set timeout=5" directly after "##begin file" in the configuration file "grub.cfg".
- Setting up ALSA, autostart ALSA, and keeping all settings for ALSA - Use "alsaconf" to set up ALSA. Then follow the info for "alsa.tcz". Don't forget to add "/usr/local/etc/init.d/alsasound start", "/opt/alsa/", and "/etc/modprobe.conf" to your "/mnt/hda1/tce/mydata.tgz" file (if you followed the instructions here when installing, http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html (http://www.tinycorelinux.com/install.html), and use the default backup option when shutting down.). I think you also have to add "alsa.tcz" to the onboot list.
That's it! Can somebody of the skilled guys check that what I wrote is not too much of a lie? My stuff-to-do list is getting shorter ;)
One question at this point. When autostarting ALSA the boot times seem to be much longer! Is that correct or did I do something wrong?
PS. I have to say that Tiny Core Linux is VERY hard to use compared to most other distros. You have to set up almost everything yourself, even the "grub.cfg" file. Since the goal for Tiny Core is minimalism I don't see it as something bad. What IS bad though is the lack of documentation. I think the figure-it-out-for-yourself approach scares away a lot of people. It doesn't have to be that way!
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These are things left on my to-do list
1a. Set xvesa resolution to 800x600x24
1b. Set mouse to serial mouse COM1, 2Button
1c. Set mouse to left-handed mouse
2. Setting swedish keyboard, i.e. SE
3. Mount hda2
4. Start XMMS/Audacious, not just load/mount it
These things should all happen automatically during boot.
1a/1b/1c: I really need some help here! I can probably solve "1a" by setting a boot parameter. I didn't try it though since it isnt of much use if I cannot solve "1b". How do I do that? From my experiments with (older) Debian/Ubuntu versions I know you can modify the "xorg.conf" file to make it happen. But how to do it in Tiny Core? TC doesn't use X11+HAL as far as I know. 1c shouldn't be to hard if you know how to solve 1b, or?
2. Although I have installed "kmaps.tcs" and tried setting "kmap=se" as a boot parameter, I don't end up with a Swedish keyboard. In fact, I haven't been able to set the keyboard at all, not even with the system running. What am I doing wrong?
3. This is hell! I have been trying to find info on this. The info I can find is that I should change the rules for UDEV, but not how. If I open up one of the ".rules" files I almost get a heart attack, hahaha. What is that? Is there some application that can help one change the rules automatically? Help would be much appreciated.
4. This would be nice, since this machine is mainly going to be used as a music player. How do you autostart apps in Tiny Core? In Ubuntu/Gnome it is really easy.
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4. This would be nice, since this machine is mainly going to be used as a music player. How do you autostart apps in Tiny Core? In Ubuntu/Gnome it is really easy.
If it is an X application, you can create a file something like this: $ cat ~/.X.d/xmms
xmms &
..then it will start each time you start X
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Juanito:
Well, I didn't solve exactly that problem yet, but while looking for a solution I ran into the file "/home/tc/.xsession". I opened it, and what did I see: All my current settings for screen resolution and mouse. I specified the file in "mydata.tgz", rebooted, and VOILA correct resolution and mouse settings (but it STILL is right-handed). :D
What is happening here? When I open the file "mydata.tgz" again, everything I have written in there is gone, but still everything is set up correctly??? Can somebody explain that to me?
Question: Is there an option "left-handed" or similar that I can specify in ".xsession" in order to get a left-handed mouse?
EDIT: I don't have the slightest clue why most everything I do works, but it does. I put "xmms &" at the end of the ".xsession" file mentioned earlier, saved the path in "mydata.tgz", rebooted, and xmms started automatically. It seems like black magic to me. ??? Please, pretty please, explain!
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Now there are only a few things left to sort out,
1c. Setting mouse to left-handed mouse
2. Setting keyboard to Swedish, i.e. SE
3. Mount hda2
during boot. I think that out of these #3 is the worst by far! The one I really would like to solve is #2, because having to find the right keys all the time is annoying. Help please!
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Juanito:
What is happening here? When I open the file "mydata.tgz" again, everything I have written in there is gone, but still everything is set up correctly??? Can somebody explain that to me?
If you want to add addional files to your back-up (mydata.tgz), you need to specify them in /opt/.filetool.lst - in the case of files in /home/tc, they are specified in the default filetool.lst so if you use Panel/Back Up/Restore/Back Up and make a backup, .xsession will be added to your backup
Question: Is there an option "left-handed" or similar that I can specify in ".xsession" in order to get a left-handed mouse?
I don't think you can specify a left-handed mouse with Xvesa, you might need to use the Xorg-7.5 extension instead
EDIT: I don't have the slightest clue why most everything I do works, but it does. I put "xmms &" at the end of the ".xsession" file mentioned earlier, saved the path in "mydata.tgz", rebooted, and xmms started automatically. It seems like black magic to me. ??? Please, pretty please, explain!
.xsession executes when you start the X windows system, hence xmms is executed - you could try reading the wiki for more details.
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Another one down and out! :D
I managed to mount hda2 automatically during boot. I just did the same as when I set up "xmms" to start automatically,
I put "mount /dev/hda2 &" almost at the end of the file ".xsession", just before "xmms &" from earlier, saved the path in "mydata.tgz", rebooted and VOILA.
I really don't know exactly what happens when it is done like that ??? I also know it will only work when X is started, but I couldn't care less :P
EDIT: Thanks for your explanation Juanito. I have been doing it all wong then, but it still works! WTF?
Regarding the left-handed mouse issue: I think that Xorg is much bulkier than Xvesa, isn't it? I am not sure that I want to increase boot times further, it already takes 2 minutes to boot. I think I will either run the mouse as right-handed with Xvesa or simply modify the mouse physically :)
The only thing that is left to do before I am completely happy with the setup is specifying the keyboard layout to Swedish during boot, i.e. SE. Can somebody help me with that?
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The only thing that is left to do before I am completely happy with the setup is specifying the keyboard layout to Swedish during boot, i.e. SE. Can somebody help me with that?
Read FAQ http://www.tinycorelinux.com/faq.html#keyboard
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Xvesa and left handed 2-button mouse. Add:
xmodmap -e 'pointer 3 2 1' to your .mouse_config file as specified in .xsession.
This assumes that you have initially used xsetup to set screen resolution and mouse port & type.
The GUI mousetool works for left handed 3 button. I will fix it for 2 button. It is not too often that one thinks to test a left handed 2 button serial mouse in Xvesa. You may use the GUI mousetool and then edit .mouse_config as shown above.
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bmarkus:
Thank you! It works great :)
I think I am happy now function-wise, except for the left-handed mouse issue, ;) The only thing I could do now is to improve the performance once up and running. I am thinking about using copy mode (copyfs) on a few selected applications. This is what OnBoot and OnDemand looks like right now,
OnBoot - xmms, alsa, kmaps
OnDemand - audacious
Would it be a good idea to use copyfs on all of them or just on, say, xmms? Would it improve "snappiness" much? Are their dependencies loaded into RAM as well? What do you think?
Also, what is Xfbdev? Is it another server for X, even more lightweight than Xvesa, or what? If that is the case, would it improve performance much to switch to Xfbdev?
My thoughts:
- The documentation for Tiny Core could be improved a lot, trust me :)
- I would like to use audacious instead of xmms, but it seems to crash my computer. Please fix that.
- I am not overly impressed with the boot performance of Tiny Core 3.5. Adding "alsa" to "OnBoot" and setting it up during boot seems to increase the boot time a lot. Booting now takes almost precisely 2 minutes on this machine. There are versions of Puppy that are as fast, or faster than that. For example,
- Puppy 2.14X works great on old hardware (i586), has a modern feel to it, and is actively developed. It boots almost as fast as Tiny Core 3.5 on this machine while having a lot of apps pre-installed. Not quite as snappy when running though, but that is no surprise.
- PULP 0.10, a puplet for Puppy. It is extremely fast both with regards to booting and running. It mainly has a lot of older, but extremely lightweight apps. It looks like shit, but it boots in about 60s on this machine. How about that for an old Pentium 1, 200MHz? :)
My comments are not meant as something bad, but as something constructive. I am in love with Tiny Core already :)
EDIT: Thank you roberts! Thank you THANK YOU! Now I even have a left-handed serial mouse.
I am overly happy with Tiny Core. But I am also proud of myself :D A few days ago I did barely know about Tiny Core, and now I have set up a fairly complex installation on a really old computer, a Pentium 1. I cannot be too stupid, hahaha. But that is NOTHING compared to the guys behind Tiny Core. Keep up the good work!
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I have found the issue with mousetool regarding left handed 2 button serial mouse and fixed it for next cut.
KingBongo, glad to hear you are up and running. You even contributed to finding a bug. ;)
Now, I have to set my mouse back to a righty, as this left handedness is driving me crazy. Even though it is probably a good exercise for the mind.
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Now, I have to set my mouse back to a righty, as this left handedness is driving me crazy. Even though it is probably a good exercise for the mind.
..reminds me of when one of my kids turned a mouse thru' 90 degrees and clicked with their thumb because it was too big for their hands - just try it...
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Now, I have to set my mouse back to a righty, as this left handedness is driving me crazy. Even though it is probably a good exercise for the mind.
Hmm, perhaps that exercise could be more complete by using 'xrandr -o 2' in addition ;D
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Would it be a good idea to use copyfs on all of them or just on, say, xmms? Would it improve "snappiness" much?
Theoretically that would be the absolutely fastest mode, under the condition that you have infinite RAM...
However, as soon as your RAM fills up, you will have less RAM available for cache.
Besides from that I refer to what I had stated already in Reply #13.
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Thank you guys for helping me out! Now I just gotta find something else to install this on, lol. Hmm, maybe I should try it on my main computer.
EDIT: OOOOOOH! I tried putting everything that is in "onboot.lst" into "copy2fs.lst" as well, i.e xmms, alsa, and kmaps. Guess what, the boot time only increased with 1-2s :D Before: 2.07min, Now, 2.09min. I guess these apps are small enough not to make any notable difference. I now have a TURBO machine ;)
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Hi KingBongo
I have a machine similar to your's, Pentium MMX 233Mhz, 256Mb Ram. While it's a bit sluggish for a
web browser or for compiling, it's more than adequate for a file server. I boot from a CD, have the
apps on a USB memory stick, and share the entire hard drive. Since your CD is failing and you don't
have USB, you could set up a small partition for Tinycore and it's apps and a second partition for
sharing files, assuming of course you have use for a file server. Plus, if you have other hard drives
lying around, you could install them for even more storage.
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Rich:
Good idea, but this computer already found a new home in our garage/work shop :) It is to be used as a music player only. It is far away from any kind of net connection and safe from all kinds of hacker attacks :P
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Hi. Back again with some more stupid questions ;)
As I understand it, I now have a "frugal" install of TC. How do I install it in a "native" way, i.e. uncompressed? Would it improve performance much? Sure as hell I couldn't find any information about this anywhere ;)
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Unsupported, may break, and no, it would not improve performance. It would leave some 20mb more free ram.
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curaga:
Thank you! Good to know. I was thinking that since the kernel and other files have to be uncompressed when booting (don't they?), a "frugal" install would be slower. But I guess that part is insignificant compared to the rest of the booting process.
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It depends. You might win in boot time, but lose in runtime performance. And it may break ;)
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Or lose in boot time, unless the CPU would be extraslow and the medium extrafast...
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curaga/tinypoodle:
Well, what I was thinking was having the stuff uncompressed on the hard drive, but still load it into RAM. That would work, wouldn't it? ;) But I guess it might still be like tinypoodle says.