Stuck at tc@box:$

[john11]

Hi. Thanks for the replies.

Curaga: The drive is formatted as gpt, is this a problem.
It is a 3tb 3.5 inch drive, it would only work under gpt partitioning, i tried mbr but mbr is only good up to 2tb drives.

TTZ: I am afraid i only have tinycore. Tinycore works fine when booted from an sd card, i downloaded core2usb and the 65mb tinycore iso from here:   http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html#pendrives   and installed to sd card and it worked first time without a problem.

I still have not tried out gparted to mark the tinycore partition as active, that juanito suggested, but i noticed within tc_install there is an option to mark the partition as active, i have tried tinycore both ways marked and unmarked but it still would not boot.

I set the bios to boot into the tinycore partiton but it ignores it and goes into windows, there is no message or indication why it does this.

Many thanks.

[Juanito]

It is a 3tb 3.5 inch drive, it would only work under gpt partitioning, i tried mbr but mbr is only good up to 2tb drives.

What does "fdisk -l /dev/sdx" for the esata drive give (substitute a, b, c as appropriate for x)?

I set the bios to boot into the tinycore partiton but it ignores it and goes into windows, there is no message or indication why it does this.

Like Curaga, I'd guess your laptop is using uefi boot rather than legacy bios - how did you set it to boot the tinycore partition - normally uefi would list the partition if it recognised it as bootable anyway?

Note also that your laptop uefi might require you to add a tinycore entry to the boot config file that loads windows or the use of a 64-bit uefi boot loader in the tinycore partition.

Finally, with an mbr formatted usb stick, I've found that the uefi partition does not need to be set to active/bootable for it to be able to boot so I'd guess, but I didn't try, that the same would be true of a gpt drive.

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=19364.msg119228#msg119228

[john11]

Hi. Thanks for the replies.

Finally gettting somewhere with this problem.

I got a second 3tb hard drive and managed to format it as mbr, needed a specialist tool. 

Tinycore finally boots now but it does not go into any of the desktop managers, a whole load of writing comes up, too fast to read properly, then stops with the message tc@box:$   And i am stuck there.

I went into tc_install>frugal>selected partition>checked mark partition active and install boot loader>seemed to install ok, but stuck at tc@box:$ when booted.

I also tried usb hard drive option and usb zip option also and frugal install to whole disk, but in each case i am stuck at tc@box:$

I did notice a message at boot up saying " failed to enable msi-x "

What should i do.

[Juanito]

What does your boot loader config file contain?

Did you try to load extensions (Xvesa Xprogs flwm aterm wbar) manually from the console prompt?

[john11]

Thanks for the reply.

I booted tinycore from an sd card, the size of the installation is 164mb, then used tc_install to install onto the hard drive, installation size has dropped to 8mb

Tinycore reports “ not found “ when I try to load Vesa, Xprogs, flwm, aterm, wbar

There is no file labelled as boot loader config. I have a tce folder and syslinux.cfg file (137kb)

I managed to fix it in the end. I used software mini tool partition wizard to copy the sd card partition onto the hard drive, and it worked!

1. I noticed in the repository there is a ati catalyst centre download, my motherboard has ati graphics, would it be a good idea to install this ati catalyst centre which may provide drivers my pc needs, only thing that bothers me is that the download is 60meg in size.

Also, when using vlc media player the screen display blacks out every ten minutes, a shake of the mouse and the display is back on. Is there a fix for this to keep the screen on for longer.

Many thanks. John.

[Juanito]

I booted tinycore from an sd card, the size of the installation is 164mb, then used tc_install to install onto the hard drive, installation size has dropped to 8mb

Tinycore reports “ not found “ when I try to load Vesa, Xprogs, flwm, aterm, wbar

That's because tc-install installs just the base (core.gz, modules.gz and vmlinux) and does not install any extensions.

There is no file labelled as boot loader config. I have a tce folder and syslinux.cfg file (137kb)

syslinux.cfg is the boot loader config file in this case.

I noticed in the repository there is a ati catalyst centre download, my motherboard has ati graphics, would it be a good idea to install this ati catalyst centre which may provide drivers my pc needs, only thing that bothers me is that the download is 60meg in size.

Which extension are you referring to? Note that you can use xf86-video-ati with Xorg-7.7, but not with Xvesa.

Also, when using vlc media player the screen display blacks out every ten minutes, a shake of the mouse and the display is back on. Is there a fix for this to keep the screen on for longer.

Try "vlc --help" to see if there's an option to disable the screensaver.

[john11]

Hi. Many thanks.

The extensions are:  ati-catalyst.tcz, ati-fglrx-kernel-source.tcz, ati-fglrx.tcz

I am hoping this may supply needed drivers for my motherboard which has ati graphics. Which do you recommend, i am trying to keep tiny core OS as small as possible but retain functionality.

Also, about the vlc screensaver, there is checkbox under video to enable/disable the screensaver but it does not do anything. I googled and others with linux OS are having the same problem, fixes for ubuntu no fixes for tiny core as of yet. The tiny core version of vlc is four years old, is it possible to get an update.

Thank you. John.

[Juanito]

Ah - so you're using tc-4.x.

Any particular reason why, when you're new to tinycore, that you use 4.x instead of 6.x?

What graphics hardware do you have exactly?

Edit: the version of vlc in tc-6.x looks to be more recent also.

[john11]

Oh dear. Must have downloaded from the wrong location, no wonder i am having all these problems.

The motherboard is  gigabyte ga-ma785gpm-ud2h with  ATI Radeon HD4200 graphics adapter. The ati download i mentioned should contain drivers for this along with chipset drivers, southbridge drivers etc

Many thanks

[Juanito]

I'd recommend trying the open source radeon driver in the Xorg-7.7-3d extension, but you're going to need to upgrade to tc-6.x first.

Basically you need to over-write core.gz and vmlinuz in your current installation with the ones from here:

http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/release/distribution_files/

..and then use the apps gui maintenance/check for updates.

Edit: corrected error in which base modules to over-write.

[nitram]

The tiny core version of vlc is four years old, is it possible to get an update.

The VLC player in Tiny Core 6 was last compiled in 2015, hopefully this newer version will work better for you.

[john11]

Hi. Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

When i installed windows 7 i needed to install drivers for all the different onboard hardware, but with tcl core plus there is no need for this. Are all the drivers pre-bundled?

Think i have found the correct page for the version 6 download, but am torn between tiny core and tiny core plus. Am leaning towards tiny core (15 meg ) so i can download just what i need and keep the operating system small. What are the differences between the two, is it drivers, or is it all the pre-installed extensions.

Many thanks.

[Juanito]

The base files of tinycore - core.gz and vmlinuz - are the same in the three iso releases, Core, TinyCore and CorePlus.

core.gz contains a number of linux kernel drivers, which are usually sufficient to boot to a console prompt with a wired ethernet connection.

The TinyCore iso contains the extensions required to boot to a basic gui.

The CorePlus iso contains the extensions required to boot to a basic gui with a choice of desktop window managers. It also contains the extensions required to get WiFi working with common hardware.

Once you have installed tinycore for the first time on a given machine, the difference between Core, TinyCore and CorePlus no longer matters because you can install whichever extensions you wish to get the setup that you need.

As explained above, you do not need to use tc-install again on the same machine to upgrade between versions, you just need to overwrite one or both of the base files, which you can do in tinycore itself, and update the extensions after rebooting.

As an example, open a terminal window in your current version of tinycore and:

Code: [Select]

$ cd /tmp
$ wget -c http://www.tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/release/distribution_files/core.gz
$ wget -c http://www.tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/release/distribution_files/vmlinuz
$ sudo cp core.gz /mnt/sdb1/boot
$ sudo cp vmlinuz /mnt/sdb1/boot..then reboot (substitute /mnt/sdb1/boot with the actual location of the files on your machine)

[john11]

Hi. Thanks for the reply.

I went for the 15 meg version of tiny core, placed it on sd card, installed vlc media player and a few of the alsa sound extensions.

Tiny core seems to be running ok, but not smoothly. When i click on drive mount lt pops up but freezes and is generally unresponsive. The lights go green but freeze green. I click on the cross in the corner to end drive mount but it doesn't.

Tiny core had problems with esata, the partitions are recognized in drive mount but i can't navigate to them in vlc.

Vlc in windows7  plays all file types, but in tiny core it fails to play matroska. I installed the vlc.locale.tcz file ( 12 meg ) but noticed a few other vlc extensions in apps. Should i have downloaded anything else, perhaps something is missing.

Many thanks. John.

[Juanito]

I went for the 15 meg version of tiny core, placed it on sd card, installed vlc media player and a few of the alsa sound extensions.

How did you "place" it on the cd card - was the card newly formatted, did it have an existing installation of tinycore, or?

The reason I ask, is that if you previously had tc-4.x installed and now you have tc-6.x installed, you would need to update many of the extensions.

Vlc in windows7  plays all file types, but in tiny core it fails to play matroska. I installed the vlc.locale.tcz file ( 12 meg ) but noticed a few other vlc extensions in apps. Should i have downloaded anything else, perhaps something is missing.

The locale extension is just for alternate languages - in the 6.x repo, there is a minimal version of vlc and a full-fat version, vlc2 - you could try vlc2?