boot from ntfs

[wysiwyg]

Good evening everyone!  I am trying to get TC booting from an NTFS partition and have read the following threads:

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,7416.msg39355.html#msg39355
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,6931.0.html

Both of which seem out dated (using TC 3.x) so I decided to give it a whirl.  I added ntfs-3g.tcz and fuse.tcz to a remastered image (ran ldconfig beforehand to grab the new libs), but I can seem to get TC to mount the NTFS partition during the boot cycle (where the tce directory is).  Any thoughts on what needs to be fixed?

Thanks,
Dave

[gerald_clark]

For tce on ntfs, remastering with ntfs-3g is sufficient.
Ezremaster works fine for this.

[Lee]

Isn't there still an ntfs-3g.gz file that can be loaded alongside core.gz to provide this functionality without even needing to remaster?

[wysiwyg]

Good morning everyone!

@gerald_clark I didn't use the remaster tool, but I followed the directions in the wiki to repackage with ntfs-3g so unless something was missing from there, I'm not sure what could be going on.  I can mount the drive once I get to a prompt without any issues.  The distro just doesn't seem to see the tce directory to load other extensions during bootup.  Additional thoughts?

@Lee I don't think this would be possible because you will run into an issue where Linux will need to mount the ntfs partition to load the ntfs-3g.tcz extension, but not have the tools to do so.  There does appear to be several ways to include ntfs-3g (or other extensions for that matter) into the gzipped cpio ramdisk though.  Check the wiki for details.

Dave

[bmarkus]

You do not need ntfs-3g to read ntfs partition, the Linux kernel fs driver can do the job if it is available at boot time (ntfs module is not in base).

[wysiwyg]

You do not need ntfs-3g to read ntfs partition, the Linux kernel fs driver can do the job if it is available at boot time (ntfs module is not in base).

It doesn't appear to be using the internal ntfs driver or the ntfs-3g driver to mount at boot time.  Any thoughts as to why not?

Thanks,
Dave

[wysiwyg]

BTW, the boot parameters being used are:

kernel (hd0,2)/xinix64/corepure64-vmlinuz quiet tce=LABEL=OS/xinix64 host=DEVICE1 settime

The partition where the files are located is /dev/sda3 so the line above matches correctly...

Dave

[gerald_clark]

LABELS may not be readable at that point.  Try specifying tce=sda3/xinix64 ( assuming you are using the directory xinix64 instead of tce ).

[wysiwyg]

Thanks for the help gerald_clark.  I adjusted the menu.lst file to use sda3 instead of using the partition label, but it is still exhibiting the same behavior...

I also noticed that the mount.ntfs and mount.ntfs-3g symlinks were missing from the ntfs-3g package, so I added them to a remastered cpio file.  I can see the sda3 partition being auto-mounted once I get to a prompt, but it still isn't installing the modules.  Again, once I'm at a prompt I can run "tce-load -i bash" and everything works as designed.  No idea why this isn't loading during bootup.

Dave

[wysiwyg]

Would there be a reason why the drive is getting mounted, but the tce directory wouldn't get processed?

Thanks,
Dave

[gerald_clark]

Show us the output of 'showbootcodes'.

[wysiwyg]

Show us the output of 'showbootcodes'.

quiet tce=sda3/xinix64 host=DEVICE1 settime

[wysiwyg]

Are there any logs or debug info I can see during the boot cycle to find out where things are going wrong?  I would imagine either the partition isn't getting mounted quickly enough to access the extension files or something is preventing the reading of those files.

Dave

[gerald_clark]

Remove 'quiet' from the boot options.
Then add a 'pause' option.
The system will then pause for the enter key before running login.
This gives you a chance to use shift and arrow/PG keys to scroll through output.

[wysiwyg]

Per your advice gerald_clark, I edited the menu.lst file and rebooted.  The only error messages I could see are similar to ones I posted from my 'by-id' thread:

udev[258]: failed to execute '/lib/udev/ata_id' 'ata_id --export /dev/sda': No such file or directory

udev[259]: failed to execute '/lib/udev/ata_id' 'ata_id --export /dev/sr0': No such file or directory

udev[279]: failed to execute '/lib/udev/scsi_id' 'scsi_id --export --whitelisted -d /dev/sda': No such file or directory

udev[311]: failed to execute '/lib/udev/scsi_id' 'scsi_id --export --whitelisted -d /dev/sr0': No such file or directory

The numbers are different, but the messages are the same.  Could this be the issue that is keeping things from working?  What I don't understand is, by the time I get to the cli, the Windows partition is mounted.

Also, right after the "Setting hostname..." line, I can see that squashfs module is being loaded so that should allow the mounting of the extensions.  No messages could be identified that prevents the partition from being used as the tce directory.  Any thoughts on something else to do to identify the problem?  Is there something I can edit to see debug output?

Thanks,
Dave