filesystems support

[candinico]

Hi,
how to mount tinycore in a filesystem not supported from the official iso ? e.g it's possible to flash a new installation with jffs2 or ZFS in a hard drive

Thanks in advance

Nico

[theYinYeti]

For this purpose, you need to change TinyCore's ramfs. See here for an example:
http://yeti.selfip.net/cms/index.php/post/2013/05/12/NTFS-and-modular-boot-for-TinyCore-Linux

This example is for adding support for booting TinyCore on NTFS (NTFS-3G).

[Juanito]

If you load the filesystems-3.0.21-tinycore extension, it contains jffs2, but not zfs.

As a general comment, you can use the "provides" function in the apps browser gui to search the extension repo.

[theYinYeti]

Also, for ZFS, you'll have to compile the ZFS kernel module for the exact version of TinyCore's kernel that you use, if you choose the kernel module solution. And you should: this version of ZFS is better than the Fuse-based one.
For documentation on how to compile the kernel module, you may want to look at Arch's Wiki.

[tinypoodle]

Also note that if you mean to boot from zfs or jffs2, not every common bootloader would just work out of the box.

[theYinYeti]

Upon further thinking, in order to boot from a ZFS partition, I think the ZFS "module" would have to be actually included into TinyCore's kernel, not be left as a separate module.
And tinypoodle is right: booting from "unusual" filesystems is not a given. The best bet would be Grub2, I guess; that's the bootloader I use, but I never looked into this topic…

[edit: Grub2 version 2.0 and up indeed have support for ZFS; apparently not JFFS2, though.]

[bmarkus]

You need a remastered version with the necessary fs kernel driver added.

[candinico]

in this moment , my focus is on a new installation with a jffs2 filesystem. The OS need to run ( and operate ) in a SD card or a DOM module.

[Juanito]

I think you'd need to remaster tinycore to do that.

[tinypoodle]

The OS always operates in rootfs (tmpfs), while extensions could optionally be mounted from a file system residing on persistent storage.

How you boot is exclusively a matter of bootloader, regardless of OS.

[theYinYeti]

That's right! I assumed the extensions would reside on the same partition where the boot files are, but tinypoodle is right: they need not be!
So:
1- Make sure your boot-loader has support for the kind of partition where the boot files are (core.gz and vmlinuz).
2- Make sure your kernel has support for the kind of partition where the extensions are.

Also, I think there's a directory inside the initramfs (don't remember where, though) where you can put extensions that will get pre-loaded before attempting to load "normal" extensions. IIRC, this pre-loading unfortunately happens before the /etc/fstab file is created.

[candinico]

 @theYinYeti: how to modify the script to import the jffs2 filesystem in tinycore? I talkin about the script that install tiny on a ntfs   partition: it's not trivial , i think: caus tiny not provide the support for some filesystems ( i rember that have downloaded only the jfs-utils)

 

[theYinYeti]

@candinico: I can’t help you with the script you talk about because I don’t use it, nor any “official” install script. As you say, TC only supports a few filesystems, and that’s OK, since it has to be tiny. We’re just supposed to customize it, and that’s fine

In my first post, I gave you the link where I explain how to do things for NTFS-3G; just adapt it to your filesystem. Basically, there are two things to do:
1— incorporate the extension that brings this filesystem’s support to TC into the initramfs (core.gz);
2— check that the default filesystem “driver” for your filesystem is the right one.
Step 2 may very well be unnecessary for you. In my case, I had to do this because the default “driver” is the in-kernel “ntfs”, whereas I wanted “ntfs-3g” to be used. It’s rather rare that there are two “drivers” for the same filesystem.

[candinico]

@theYinYeti ok , my question concerning the use of filrsystem utility to flash the installation and boot from the same filesystem: for example, make a new installation ON a filesystem type JFFS2 or NTFS. I runned the script , that's good , but dont'solve my problem. I think to recompile the kernel and perform more operation. My need is to launch Tiny on a SD with a JFFS2 filesystem.

[bmarkus]

Why do you want to recompile kernel? Everything you need is already available. Just asking...