Tiny Core v4.0 Alpha 1 Testing

[roberts]

Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce Tiny Core 4.0 Alpha1 is available for public testing.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/4.x/x86/alpha/

One of the primary reasons for an alpha release, is so that extension makers, are able to update their work for
the new environment.

This is an alpha level cut. If you decide to help test, then please test carefully. Please make a separate directory
for the new extensions.  We don't want anyone to lose data or otherwise corrupt a production system.

Although the team has 8 preview cuts this is still to be considered alpha level. As such we ask that only experienced users test.

This cut is not for general use. Expect bugs, anomalies, missing libraries, modules, and extensions.

The features in any alpha are not fixed and may change before a public release candidate is made available.

We appreciate testing and feedback. Please leave all feedback for this alpha here and not mixed in with the general forums.

Download the new iso, and test features and extensions via the desktop appbrowser.
If you use distribution files note that you need both a new vmlinuz and tinycore.gz.

Notice too, the kernel is now named vmlinuz, so adjustments will need to be made for your boot loader.

Do not mix Tiny Core 3.x with Tiny Core 4.x. They have different modules and major library changes.

Changelog for 4.0 alpha1:
* Updated kernel to 3.0.3
* Updated udev to 173
* Updated glibc to eglibc-2.13
* Updated e2fsprogs base libs to 1.41.14
* Updated gcc base libs to 4.6.1
* Updated util-linux base libs to 2.19.1
* Updated all the custom core utilities to use the new repository area:
   http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/x86/tcz/

alpha1 is based off of 3.8.3 so also included are the following recent changes:
* Updated mnttool to allow user to anchor widget position.
* New autolgin replaces rungetty.
* Updated inittab to use autologin.

Note:
* many kernel config changes, most visible ones are zcache enabled with zswap,
  and pc speaker beeps (blacklist=pcspkr for no beeps)
* faster boot to base.

[maro]

All right, let the "games" begin (I mean to say: here are my very initial observations):
(1) 'Xvesa' crashes with a segfault when using QEMU (v0.11.1 on WinXP with KQEMU)
(2) A library (i.e. '/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6.0.13') seems to be replaced by a newer version, but the old file is still around just wasting some space.

EDIT:
(3) The minimum memory requirement seems to have increased to 53 MBytes. But maybe addressing (2) will claw back a little bit of that.

[bmarkus]

Installed mc.tcz it works fine. Then tried to install compiletc.tcz and got error message in AppBrowser:

mount: mounting /dev/loop30 on /tmp/tcloop/compiletc failed: invalid argument

[bmarkus]

AppBrowser beeps on connection error via PC's speaker. Would be better to disable it by default and possibly enable via boot code, environment variable, etc.

[bmarkus]

Installed mc.tcz it works fine. Then tried to install compiletc.tcz and got error message in AppBrowser:

mount: mounting /dev/loop30 on /tmp/tcloop/compiletc failed: invalid argument

It happenes at the end, after compiletc.tcz loaded. So expected dependencies are loaded correctly. Tried to build two simple extensions with no dependencies, but configure failes in both cases with

gcc -V

invalid option error.

[curaga]

Installed mc.tcz it works fine. Then tried to install compiletc.tcz and got error message in AppBrowser:

mount: mounting /dev/loop30 on /tmp/tcloop/compiletc failed: invalid argument

Looks like the behavior with empty extensions has changed. Perhaps we need to change such to have the /usr dir or something similar.

[Juanito]

linux-3.0.1_api_headers.tcz was missing from the compiletc dep file and imlib2_base-dev.tcz was repeated - corrected now

[bmarkus]

linux-3.0.1_api_headers.tcz was missing from the compiletc dep file and imlib2_base-dev.tcz was repeated - corrected now

Now it works, I can build extensions. What is interesting resulted .tcz files are a bit larger then in 3.x environment.

[curaga]

Now it works, I can build extensions. What is interesting resulted .tcz files are a bit larger then in 3.x environment.

With the new gcc you can try -flto (to both cflags/cxxflags and ldflags), it should decrease binary size at the cost of compile time and linker memory use.

[bmarkus]

Applying -flto doesn't change the size. Maybe it is not gcc but squash?

[bmarkus]

Took alook on GCC 4.6.1 docs. -flto itself dosn't guarantee smaller code. Optimisitaion is much more complex issue and requres more attention

[bmarkus]

Just found this article:

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6509

Lets find the optimal compile options for TC extensions in TC 4.0 for extension makers as the old options seems to be far from optimal now.

Tried different proposed settings. Either no size reduction or internal compiler failure

[gerald_clark]

Fails to boot on Vortex86.
Looks like a library problem again.

Freeing unused kernel memory: 448k freed
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 3.0.3-tinycore #90210

[bmarkus]

Which compiler flags used to build base components?

[Juanito]

The standard tc ones, in the case of eglibc, gcc, e2fsprogs and util-linux