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Author Topic: Command-line wifi setup on grub2-looped Tinycore iso?  (Read 5263 times)

Offline tfj

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Command-line wifi setup on grub2-looped Tinycore iso?
« on: November 27, 2011, 03:42:52 PM »

Would you please suggest my next step to getting a wifi session in Tinycore? I'm an amateur,
 evaluating TC along with other distros. My only internet connection is wifi by booting another
distro; I can manually download tcz files from the TC4 repository.

Here's the setup:

I'm grub2-booting the recent TC multicore iso, via grub2's <loopback> command
(my preferred booting method). My grub2 kernel line is "linux (TC)/boot/vmlinuz cde showapps secure".

"cde" means, I think, that there's a bunch of wifi packages available (I can view them in the
shell-loop-mounted iso), but I don't yet know how to access them from within TC (actually I
can't seem to find them anywhere).

<dmesg> indicates that my Atheros wifi card has been detected (vendor ID 168c on pci bus 03),
but I don't know the interface name (<ifconfig> only shows lo).

TC has the directory "/mnt/sda1/tce/", with mostly empty subdirectories/files, on my flash SSD
 (main drive).

What could I do next (preferably using generic, command-line methods)? Tinycore's instructions are
pretty involved, and I've been working on this for hours.

Offline Rich

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Re: Command-line wifi setup on grub2-looped Tinycore iso?
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2011, 07:42:50 PM »
Hi tfj
Multicore is not meant to be a bootable distro, but an installation means for Tinycore or Microcore.

Offline roberts

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Re: Command-line wifi setup on grub2-looped Tinycore iso?
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2011, 09:57:38 PM »
Multicore is bootable, either as a CD or from a pendrive. Most users will have no issue when booting from a real device be either cdrom or pendrive.

But this case is different, as the user is not booting from a real device, instead "his perference" is loopback via grub2.

Such will certainly boot the initrd into memory but no scan is going to find the extensions embedded in the iso.
In fact after a booting an iso loopback nothing is mounted only the base initrd is loaded into memory.

Since there is not much detail given as to what version, or even what is on the grub2 menuentry initrd line, I can only explain the concept to access those embedded extensions.

For example, lets assume the real device holding the multicore.iso is sda1 and that this iso is located in /boot/iso directory, then perform the following:

1. mount /mnt/sda1
2. sudo mkdir /mnt/iso
3. sudo mount -o loop /mnt/sda1/boot/iso/multicore.iso /mnt/iso

You should then be able to load extensions from this iso by using

4. tce-load -i /mnt/iso/cde/optional/wifi.tcz

If your wifi card is supported then running the follwing command should work.

5. sudo wifi.sh

If wifi card requires firmware there are many  firmware extensions available in the iso.

ls  /mnt/iso/cde/optional

will display all the extensions included in the multicore.iso Which may be manually loaded as above.

This procdure is not normally needed.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2011, 11:37:52 PM by roberts »
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