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Author Topic: A little history and Modificating TCVD/TCZTCE on FAT32/EXT3 USB-improvements.  (Read 3312 times)

Offline linus72

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Ok, so I've been playing with TC for about a month...and have wandered around asking questions and trying
to modificate things-not making anything new-just modificating.

So, a little background; I've been playing with Linux since late December 2008(6months ago) when I inadvertently told Unetbootin to install some distro, I don't even remember, to my USB blantantly/stupidly
not understanding what I was doing and ended up installing syslinux to my WinXP hd!

I have 3 years experience with computers in general, all with XP on the same PC.

At reboot I got a back screen with a blinking cursor!!
I rebooted 3 more times before freaking out....
Ok, I had a Ubuntu-8.04 livecd I got thru the mail as I had dial-up then.
I had only used it twice and couldn't get it to connect via dial-up and the "language" of Linux
in general seemed alien. "mount?"

Anyway, I didn't have a XP recovery disc, and didn't know about how to save it.
I retrieved my files from the HD with USB, installed Ubuntu-SE-8.04 'cause of the Bathory wallpaper and it's more compact installed apps.

I joined the Linuxquestions.org forums and started asking dumb questions like my first post
" help!
ok-newbie question---installed slack disk 1 only/booted up and stopped at b(me) login/ i entered name+password
came up with # cursor
typed startx
nothing what do i do??"

Duh? No snit.

Long story short, I have learned much since then.

Now, I started smashing distro's together and started learning how to modificate Linux while jammin
Metallica and Slayer,etc

Isolinux, syslinux, extlinux, cd's usb's, hundreds of distro's-floppies, hd installs,etc.

whew, I have like 100 cd's and 8+ partitions on my two workhorses; a HP Pavillion a810n AMD Athlon64
3300+ 2.4Ghz w/160GB filleted HD booting Slackware-12.2/Ubuntu-SE/Debian/TC-1.4.3/Mini-Slack(slimmed down slack w/JWM)/SuperOS/and DSL-4.4.10 HDinstall and a storage partition.
The other is a Emachines with AGP256MB card, AMD AthlonXP 2200+ 1.8Ghz w/180GB HD booting Ubuntu-8.04/Slackware-12.2(both are Labs).

I started a website named multidistro.com to share my knowledge and have a place to hopefully advance
the multidistro thing and the portable-OS-Qemu ideas.

I ask alot of questions.

So, the USB topic; I posted on here about running TC off USB and why was I getting chown error messages when booting(fat32).( http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=1683.0 )

The apps either wouldn't restore or gave an error but ran correctly otherwise.

At the suggestions of sensei Roberts, Juanito, Curaga and a helpful member here; Guy, I installed TC to a EXT3 formatted USB(2GB), and used the article here to install grub after dis-connecting my HD
( [removed due to policy violation]/instau.html )

So, very good@!

All went well and so i started tricking it out-
I transported a qemu-made vhd named hda to my usb, and also made a tclocal file with the tce's in the tce folder.
I then booted up TC-Portable-2.0rc2.1 which is the only one besides Okajima-2.0rc1 that works in Linux using portable qemu?sad.
I accessed the "hda" vhd with TC-portable (  ) and planted my tce's/mydata.gz to the vhd and used the bootcode to access it.
So, here's the TC USB grub menu off my 2GB EXT3 USB that I'm running off of now, jammin Slayer and banging out this post!

default 0
timeout 10
waitusb=5

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tce/restore-sda1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet restore=sda1 tce=sda1 waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tce/restore-sda1/tcvd)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sda1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tcvd-sdb1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sdb1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tcvd-sdc1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sdc1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tcvd-sdd1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sdd1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tcvd-sde1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sde1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tcvd-sdf1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sdf1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tcvd-sdg1)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet tcvd=sdg1/hda restore=tcvd tce=tcvd waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

title TinyCore-1.4.3 (tclocal-autofind)
kernel /boot/bzImage quiet waitusb=5
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz

Also, by using EXT3/Grub the USB is seen as the 1st HD(hd0,0), so you can boot off USB on Most PC's that won't boot off USB
by using the TC bootfloppy or a Plop BootManager bootfloppy/boot.iso ( http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html).
Most cool, as this works on a laptop which doesn't boot off USB and a PC (Emachines above) which won't boot a FAT32 USB even with bootfloppy.etc.

OK, part 2 FAT32 USB improvements-
I posted before that I was having issues with the tce's on my 4GB FAT32 USB with chown errors etc.
I did get it to work but would still get the chown errors even though everything seemed to work fine.
So, I tried using the tcvd option and now it boots fast and error-free from the FAT32 USB also!

Screenshot of EXT3 USB playing tc-2.0rc2.1 on portable qemu (why doesn't 1.4.3 work with portable qemu?) (  http://multidistro.com/shots/screenshot_05.27_20:37:39.png )

I am going to upload both versions to my site when done, as the 1.4.2 version there now is flawed.

Offline Guy

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Looks like you are having fun.

A Suggestion

You could put the last one: "autofind" first on the list, so if the user does not make a selection it will always work.


For the future

I see an opportunity for someone, either you if you are interested, or someone else, to make Tiny Core collections for different purposes.

For example there could be an office edition, a games edition, a multimedia edition, an educational edition, an edition for low performance computers, etc.

The next step is to learn to make modules, and make modules for good programs.
Many people see what is. Some people see what can be, and make a difference.

Offline linus72

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Yep, another member called it a "flavors" collection, where I could use the vhd's as different points to restore tce/setings,etc.

And yeah, that's just a freehand grub menu; I thought that the "autofind" was the best option on a strange computer.

So, today more stuuff to do.

Offline linus72

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 ::)
What's up?!
I made some TC "flavors" tcvd's and best thing is they run error free from a FAT16/32 USB!
( http://multidistro.com/downloads/tc_flavors/tc_flavors.html )
Goota make a compiler flavor today...

I also have made a couple Portable's DSL2vhd and MyDSL, both are installed to
a vhd(tcvd) which TC can mount.

( http://multidistro.com/downloads/portables/portables.html )