Booting TC 4.5.3 ISO Query

[SamK]

For a over year, I have included (and regularly updated) various versions of the TC ISO together with the ISOs of other distros on a USB flash drive.  Each of ther ISOs are booted directly using GRUB4DOS.  This has worked well upto now, but fails using TC 4.5.3.

All the ISOs are contiguous and held in the root partition (FAT32) of the flash drive. On my test machine this is seen as sdb1.

The last version of TC successfully used was 4.3.1 which booted using the following stanza:

Code: [Select]

title Tinycore Desktop (Cloud Mode, Transient Apps, /home, /opt)
root ()
map /tinycore_4.3.1.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz quiet vga=788 base norestore waitusb=10:UUID=231A-905B
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz
Adjusted for 4.5.3 as follows:

Code: [Select]

title Tinycore Desktop (Cloud Mode, Transient Apps, /home, /opt)
root ()
map /tinycore-4.5.3.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz quiet vga=788 norestore waitusb=10:UUID=231A-905B iso=sdb1
initrd /boot/core.gzThis boots to the TC command prompt rather than the GUI.

I have also been unsuccessful with

Code: [Select]

...
...iso=UUID=231A-905B
...
I have not previously used the iso= option so am not certain of the correct syntax and have taken guidance from: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,12786.0.html

[SamK]

After walking away from the problem for a few hours (rather than constantly banging my head against it) an idea occured which seems to work.

Code: [Select]

title Tinycore Desktop (Cloud Mode, Transient Apps, /home, /opt)
root ()
map /tinycore-4.5.3.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz quiet vga=788 base norestore waitusb=10:UUID=231A-905B iso=UUID=231A-905B/TinyCore-4.5.3.iso
initrd /boot/core.gzThis boots to the GUI.

I also had success with:

Code: [Select]

...
...iso=LABEL=BOOTZONE/TinyCore-4.5.3.iso
...and

Code: [Select]

...
...iso=/dev/sdb1/TinyCore-4.5.3.iso
...But this probably less portable than using the UUID or LABEL

[SamK]

Having got the cloud mode working the next step was to modify the now failing persistent stanza to incorporate the iso= bootcode.  This has been successfully done but generates an anomaly described below.

The USB flash drive has a second partition (ext2) which contains /home, /opt, /tce.  To avoid any configuration conflicts the entire contents including dot-directories and dot-files of /home/tc were first moved out to different location.  The machine was booted using the cloud stanza described previouly and the contents of the volatile /home/tc were copied to the empty persistent /home/tc.

The machine successfully boots the ISO directly via GRUB4DOS using:

Code: [Select]

title Tinycore Desktop (Mount Mode, Persistent Apps, /home, /opt)
root ()
map /tinycore-4.5.3.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz quiet vga=788 norestore waitusb=10:UUID=231A-905B iso=UUID=231A-905B/TinyCore-4.5.3.iso tce=UUID=59e7163f-df2c-49bb-8fdd-84a938bba5fe home=UUID=59e7163f-df2c-49bb-8fdd-84a938bba5fe opt=UUID=59e7163f-df2c-49bb-8fdd-84a938bba5fe
initrd /boot/core.gz
Both the file system label (DATAZONE) or sdb2 are also usable.


ANOMALY
Using the above stanza both the wbar and right-click-on-desktop-->System Tools are correctly populated.

Appending an additional boot code, desktop=jwm, the wbar remains fully populated however, the right-click-on-desktop-->System Tools is completely empty.