TCL working system?

[vinceASPECT]

hello there,

so how does TCL work then?

You have extensions you install which are always saved and re-appear on reboot regardless
of if you choose back-up or not during re-booting. (they are persistent across reboots/power off)

Tinycore also has another file that saves "certain" aspects of the TCL operating system when
you choose "backup" while shutting down. That file is called mydata.gz, right? You can also give
extra configs to that "filetool" process.......... which will save any EXTRA data such as your Documents in some folder location via "mydata.gz" file etc.

My questions is what is the "safe" feature in the TCL shutdown gui window?

Also why does the desktop "Backup/restore" button have a "restore" option? and also the "safe" option.?

I presume the "restore" option in the control panel is for a user to tell TCL to restore the "mydata.gz" file by getting it from such and such a location (restore=hdXY) which you specify. So on each boot, when it comes to finding and restoring the "mydata.gz" file, TCL knows where to get it from  ........without checking ALL the drives?

The "backup" option in control panel is simply telling TCL where it should produce the mydata.gz back-up file (often inside TCE folder). This positioning will happen each time TCL shuts down and a user has selected  "backup" in the shutdown options?. That location could be HDD or PEN drive or wherever.....?

is this understanding above correct?    (or is the control panel Backup/restore anything to do with LIVE work while tiny core is booted?

ALso what is "safe" because i don't know that one.

thanks very much

Vince.

[SamK]

Hi Vince,

so how does TCL work then?
...
is this understanding above correct?   

The wiki probably holds the answers.  There are a range of pages supplying information under the section headed "Persistence".
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/

These may be worthwhile:
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:persistence_for_dummies
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:backup
   

[curaga]

The safe option creates a backup of the previous mydata.tgz before creating a new one. Otherwise you're pretty much correct.

[Juanito]

You have extensions you install which are always saved and re-appear on reboot regardless of if you choose back-up or not during re-booting. (they are persistent across reboots/power off)

I'm not sure if you're mixing two separate issues here:

1. Extensions saved to /tce on permanent storage (hard disk, usb stick) will obviously be present after reboot, but not necessarily loaded "onboot" or placed "ondemand"

2. Extensions saved to /tce on permanent storage and listed as "onboot" will be loaded automatically after you re-boot.

[vinceASPECT]

ok

After doing some reading, i don't understand what Juanito means. He says that some extensions that you permanently saved on HDD or PEN don't have to be "on boot" or "on demand".

So what happens to those extensions? How are they used and what is the purpose?

Also after reading, i was further confused to read that a HDD install of TCL does not really
require the use of any back-up features at all.  (what does that really mean?)

The reason i am asking all this stuff is so that i can use TCL in  a certain fashion.

I would like to have a HDD install of TCL that can always be reverted back to it's pristine condition.
In other words, anything i do can be un-done and reversed. i would like the ability, with one stroke,
to just re-set this HDD install back to pristine state.

Is this possible, and how would you achieve it easily?...... or does it just mean -re-installing TCL.?

thanks,

Vince.

[curaga]

You could do that by keeping a backup of the desired state (mydata.tgz and onboot.lst) and copying them back whenever you need a revert.

[Juanito]

After doing some reading, i don't understand what Juanito means. He says that some extensions that you permanently saved on HDD or PEN don't have to be "on boot" or "on demand".

So what happens to those extensions? How are they used and what is the purpose?

These are extensions you use infrequently and load manually when required.

I would like to have a HDD install of TCL that can always be reverted back to it's pristine condition.
In other words, anything i do can be un-done and reversed. i would like the ability, with one stroke, to just re-set this HDD install back to pristine state.

If you do not use a persistent home/opt, but do use a backup, you can boot with "norestore" and tc will revert back to its pristine state.

You can also boot with "base norestore" and tc will not load any extensions and will also revert back to its pristine state

[Lee]

He says that some extensions that you permanently saved on HDD or PEN don't have to be "on boot" or "on demand".

So what happens to those extensions? How are they used and what is the purpose?

Extensions that are neither onboot nor ondemand just sit there until you explicitly load them either using the "Local" button on appsbrowser or with "tce-load -i <extname>" (or as a dependency of something else).  For instance, I use two enormous packages, libreoffice and gimp2, so rarely that I don't want them loaded onboot -nor- ondemand (*) but I surely don't want to have to download them every time I want to use them... So they just sit there on my pen drive until I decide to load them. (**)

*) Ondemand is a neat feature, but I don't use it. (AAUATOABH)

**) You -could- keep the entire repo on your pen drive, but it is generally considered a bad idea as A) it is a bit unwieldy (a 4GB drive will -not- be sufficient)  and B) you get into trying to keep it current etc.

[Rich]

Hi vinceASPECT

After doing some reading, i don't understand what Juanito means. He says that some extensions that you permanently saved on HDD or PEN don't have to be "on boot" or "on demand".

I'll start by saying that I usually leave the default setting of OnBoot. For most users and applications
there is no need to change this. Since I rarely use them, I do have alsamixergui and flash OnDemand.
Besides OnBoot and OnDemand there are a couple of Download options which will save applications
to your tce directory but not add them to the OnBoot or OnDemand menus. Why would I want that?
Lets say that once in a blue moon you need to compile a driver from source. The first time you do that
you would use the Download + Load option to get the compiletc application. The next time you found
yourself having to compile a driver you would use AppBrowser's Local mode to install compiletc from
your tce directory instead of downloading it again.

Also after reading, i was further confused to read that a HDD install of TCL does not really
require the use of any back-up features at all.  (what does that really mean?)

Backup is used to save data that is kept in RAM that will be needed the next time you boot. Examples
include your home directory which is where you should keep your documents, pictures, whatever, etc.
If you have your home directory on a hard drive then it is not in RAM and therefore will not be lost when
you reboot, so you do not have to include it in filetool.lst. If you are running Xorg for example, you may
want to backup  etc/X11/xorg.conf  so you don't lose Xorg's setup information. So while you still might
have to backup some setup files for applications, by putting  home  on the HDD your backups will be
much smaller and quicker.

I would like to have a HDD install of TCL that can always be reverted back to it's pristine condition.
In other words, anything i do can be un-done and reversed. i would like the ability, with one stroke,
to just re-set this HDD install back to pristine state.

"anything" is a pretty broad term in this context. What did you have in mind?

[vinceASPECT]

Hello,

This is all great advice. Lee, thanks for that advice because i didn't know even the basics of TCL.

Really i need to do some reading and limit my forum requests to "i'm stuck on understanding TCL principles" situations.

I feel very lucky indeed to have found Tiny Core Linux. The forum is important for me.

Tiny Core is really interesting. A diamond.   (ofcourse, you then realize it's all free and you have to significantly re-group your thinking.)

so thanks a lot,

Vince.