TinyCore64 on VirtualBox 6.1.30 always has "failed on waitforX"

[oliverhbailey324]

Hello,
I'm a 48 year veteran of OS development and have been developing custom embedded Linux systems for over twenty years. I routinely use Yocto and Buildroot in addition to also doing hardware design.

I recently downloaded TinyCore 12 and found it more than acceptable for a non-embedded project coming up but want a little more performance so downloaded Tinycore64, the complete version. I setup Tinycore64 12, the same as Tinycore 12, and have not been able to get the system to boot properly yet.

I am using VirtualBox 6.1.30 on Windows 10.0.19044 and there are three issues that are shown with the attached screen captures. The first issue throws a "Wrong EFI Loader Signature". The problem here is that I have not checked the UEFI box, so it appears there may be something wrong with the boot signature created by Tinycore64. The second issue is a mouse menu that is shown in screen capture 2. I have tried every mouse type available in VirtualBox, and this menu comes up no matter what. And finally, as shown in Screen capture three, it ends after a long delay with "failed on waitforX' error before dumping me out to the standard Linux user prompt.

I also have QEMU installed on this Windows machine and plan on giving it a try next.

Regards and Happy New Year

[Juanito]

You could try downloading/loading the Xorg-7.7 extension from the prompt and then startx.

[curaga]

The first message is expected. It's just the kernel saying you booted using MBR, not EFI.

[oliverhbailey324]

Thank you,
I trying with Xorg 7.7 in a few minutes. And thanks for letting me know the EFI error is normal. I'll let you know how the Xorg download goes.

Sincerely

[oliverhbailey324]

I must be missing something here. Since I get dumped into text mode, there is no clear way to install Xorg 7.7. Do I run tc-install on the booted system? Or is there a text version of Apps? Even more important, is there a document that covers booting and switching from GUI -> Text Mode Apps install?

Thank you.

[Rich]

Hi oliverhbailey324
Try:

Code: [Select]

tce-load -wi Xorg-7.7
startx

[oliverhbailey324]

Hello,
tce-load fixed the problem. Based on the speed of drawing, it would appear there is no frame buffering. And finally, will this be persistent since it is installed to the image on the boot drive, or do I need to take additional steps to make it persistent.

I will go through the documentation over the next few days to get up to speed on the steps to get things done in Tinycore and Tinycore64.

Thank you all very much.

Sincerely,
Oliver

[Rich]

Hi oliverhbailey324

Load Xorg-7.7-3d for hardware or software acceleration.

Found here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/12.x/x86_64/tcz/Xorg-7.7.tcz.info

I don't use VMs myself, but if the drive and its contents are persistent, extensions will be too.

If you go here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/book.html
There is a very fine book you can download. It's about a 1 hour read but well worth the time.

[oliverhbailey324]

I actually installed Tincore64 on QEMU as well. The frame buffering is isolated to VirtualBox 6.1.30. The performance on QEMU is so much better than VirtualBox, I am going to use QEMU instead. QEMU is by far my favorite as I do a lot of work on the ARM processor as well.

Thank you all for point me in the right direction for information.

As getting started guide would be nice for people who are familiar with other distributions. Just a quick concepts of Tinycore would be useful.

Thank you again.

Oliver

[Juanito]

There's:

http://tinycorelinux.net/concepts.html
http://tinycorelinux.net/faq.html

[Rich]

Hi oliverhbailey324
I think you may find these to be useful:

Basic diagram about how Tinycore works.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/architecture.html

A couple of links that describe the boot process.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191011055117/http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:the_boot_process
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,22020.0.html

By default,  /home  and  /opt  are not persistent and are backed up in your  tce/mydata.tgz  file. As you place more
data in these locations it can eventually impact  bootup/shutdown  times. To make these directories persistent, first
get the UUID of your drive:

Code: [Select]

tc@E310:~/Pictures/WalkerTurner/1216Drillpress$ blkid -s UUID /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1: UUID="543cac60-3224-4cab-b1d5-008407dd9ce8"
Then edit the configuration file for your boot loader. Add the following boot codes:

Code: [Select]

home=UUID="543cac60-3224-4cab-b1d5-008407dd9ce8" opt=UUID="543cac60-3224-4cab-b1d5-008407dd9ce8"If you used the Tinycore installer, you should already see a similar entry for  tce=UUID=.

Reboot the system.
Once the system comes up, persistent directories will have been created and your backed up files copied to them.

Remove references to  home  and  opt  in  /etc/.filetool.lst  so they don't get backed up or restored any more.

Run a backup  to purge  home  and  opt  from your  tce/mydata.tgz  file. Otherwise the next restore will overwrite
them with old backups:

Code: [Select]

tc@E310:~/Pictures/WalkerTurner/1216Drillpress$ filetool.sh -b
Backing up files to /mnt/sda1/tce/mydata.tgz-
Done.
tc@E310:~/Pictures/WalkerTurner/1216Drillpress$