Troubles installing 14.0

[aus9]

Oops forgot to mention if you like to try my method, I will need to add a grub install into MBR

[patrikg]

Some years ago i was writtning this thing, maybe this can help with some corrections.

https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,20135.msg125292.html#msg125292

[nurbles]

jazzbiker: Windows was previously installed, but I removed that SSD drive and replaced it with a brand new SSD drive for TinyCore.  As for existing partitions, I've always used the "full disk" (or is it "whole drive"?) option during install.  Since booting from USB (or CDROM) tends to leave /dev/sda1 locked in a way I cannot unmount, I've always needed to use a bootable GPartEd in between TinyCore install attempts in order to ensure all partitions are removed.

aus9:  Your method looks possible. Can it be run from a TinyCore system booted from USB?

FWIW, the application we need to run on the device could've easily used FreeDOS (with a TCP/IP extension).  I'm only mentioning this to show that our system requirements are miniscule.  We originally chose TinyCore for the first system we built (over ten years ago) because it was the barest minimum we could find, but we could add a secure shell for remote admin and come command line tools to make the remote management a little easier (like 'mc' and 'nano' which the folks at my company are all familiar with.)

At the moment, my work week is ending.  First thing Monday morning, I will start trying these new ideas.  Thanks!

[jazzbiker]

Hi nurbles,
But as I said earlier it was the checkbox "whole disk" to not work properly when I used installer. Using existing partition was successful. Haven't You tried this way? It means that You create partition manually and then run installer.

[aus9]

Hi

If you look at my install to a specified partition I make no attempt to use an installer. Patrikg method does appear to use installer. If your system allows usb boot up to TC, you can use a busybox version of wget.....that may need ca-certificates, I will test later, or you can use the full wget and not use ca-certicates to download your target image.

it looks like you want to use a fresh SSD for TC so for clean sake, when TC usb stick is in cloud mode, I would suggest we redo gparted to format that drive as fat32 before we put the dirs on it,
move files into the dirs....then create a grub.cfg instead of a 40_custom grub file and in cloud mode,
download grub to install grub into target SSD MBR.

I should with luck be able to give you step by steps this weekend and naturally I will test it.

x86 also known as 32 bit, may be on the way out for most distros but packages build tend to be smaller. Not all upstream coders support it. eg firefox

x86_64 also known as 64 bit. Always larger packages from same source but tends to offer better support upstream.

I do not have the skills of patrikg but have the good looks 

EDIT I guess you need x86 for wifi as you have mentioned coreplus?
Is that the reason why you chose x86?
You can use an ethernet cable and choose x86_64 but we just have to download some firmware, some wifi module TCE and maybe some other TCEs

[aus9]

sheesh  correction
I think I will format to ext4 I am making too many mistakes to be trusted. But a journal system provides some power failure protection

[aus9]

Ok I has to cheat off my debian menu...but usb now boots and is read-writable. I am on tower with a usb wifi dongle that has no wifi module on TC32.
Anyhow I am happy with what I have got even tho I am not as skilled patrikg. I deliberately did not sync with repo to test check for updates.
I have a grub2 menu at boot and I am showing some file permissions, TCEDIR is writeable
https://imgur.com/a/PVPwdKv

I have only gone into the first menu. I realize I have also cheated by doing my unpack commands on TC64 with a tower with 2 internal hard drives
but the boot loader menu for target usb stick....pretend your SSD....does use sda1 formatted as ext4
I then disconnected one drive to simplify my bios boot order.

Here is what it looks like, on TC64 tower with one internal drive booting up and usb stick looks like sdb1 but when I boot up WITH disconnect my internal drive....it gets sda1

Code: [Select]

tc@box:/mnt/sdb1$ ls
boot/       lost+found/ tce/
tc@box:/mnt/sdb1$ ls boot
core.gz  grub/    vmlinuz
ls boot/grub
fonts/    grub.cfg  grubenv   i386-pc/  locale/   themes/

ls tce
firstrun               ondemand/              xbase.lst
installer.instlist     optional/              xfbase.lst
kmaps.instlist         remaster.instlist      xibase.lst
mydata.tgz             wifi.instlist          xwbar.lst
onboot.lst             wififirmware.instlist  xwbase.lst
grub.cfg may be too messy to show in same post

[aus9]

Now where I write /dev/sdb1 you may need to change that.
I assume that when you boot up your currrent read only usb stick...it will be mounted on /mnt/sda1 and so your target SSD likely to be /dev/sdb1 and when mounted /mnt/sdb1  YMMV

I assume you have used sudo gparted to format SSD to ext4. As its so big you will probably want a swap partition but I have kept it simple
Assume you have booted up CorePlus-current.iso which is 14.x x86
Open a terminal and run as root by first command

I would suggest before reboot....insert another usb data stick and copy the iso file onto it.

Code: [Select]

$ sudo su
# cloud mode TC uses login name of tc... assume you boot the usb stick up to your new computer
# so you have an SSD not yet bootable and the usb booted stick

# download the iso into ram drive under our temporary dir
URL=http://tinycorelinux.net/14.x/x86/release
ISO=CorePlus-14.0.iso

cd /tmp
mkdir unpack
su -c "wget $URL/$ISO \
$URL/$ISO.md5.txt \
tce-load -wi  coreutils grub2-multi " tc
cat $ISO.md5.txt
md5sum $ISO
echo 'do you see a duplicate of 6c28310683aa9c6bc862ff4364139d7e  CorePlus-14.0.iso ?   '

mount -o loop $ISO unpack
echo 'graphical mount tool will appear check what the SSD device, currently red is for /dev/sdX?
mount tool will be open for 10 seconds and then close '
timeout 10 mnttool

# we assume SSD is /dev/sdb1 but I have a tower so I already have a sda
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
# now we have a partition to write to.
mkdir -p /mnt/sdb1/boot/grub
cd /tmp/unpack
cp boot/core.gz /mnt/sdb1/boot  && cp boot/vmlinuz /mnt/sdb1/boot
# ignore 755 permission on /mnt/sdb1/grub files

cd /mnt/sdb1/boot/grub
echo 'insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
load_video
insmod gzio
insmod all_video
insmod vbe
insmod vga
set GRUB_FONT="/boot/grub/fonts/unicode.pf2"
terminal_input console
terminal_output console

set root=(hd0,msdos1)
set default=0
set timeout=10
set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
set menu_color_highlight=white/blue

menuentry "JWM" {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=jwm
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

menuentry FLWM-topside  {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=flwm_topside
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

menuentry "IceWM"  {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=icewm
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

menuentry Fluxbox {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=fluxbox
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

menuentry Hackedbox {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=hackedbox
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

menuentry Openbox {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=openbox
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

menuentry basic {
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz tce=sda1 waitusb=5 desktop=flwm
initrd /boot/core.gz
}

' > grub.cfg

# core vmlinuz are already chmod 444....grub.cfg is 644 which is good enough for me
# now we install grub into mbr of mounted device
echo 'There is small delay in next process abort only if it hangs after 10 seconds'
grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/sdb1/boot /dev/sdb

# before and after check
# dd if=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1 | strings
# 1+0 records in
# 1+0 records out
# 512 bytes copied, 0.00116139 s, 441 kB/s
# root@box:/mnt/sdb1/grub# grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/sdb1/grub /dev/sdb
# Installing for i386-pc platform.
# grub-install: warning: cannot open directory `/usr/local/share/locale': No such file or directory.
# Installation finished. No error reported.
# root@box:/mnt/sdb1/grub# dd if=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=1 | strings
# 1+0 records in
# 1+0 records out
# 512 bytes copied, 0.000192371 s, 2.7 MB/s
# ZRr=
# `|f
# \|f1
# GRUB # my comment.................this is success!
# Geom
# Hard Disk
# Read
# Error

# now we copy cde to tcedir stuff
cd /tmp/unpack
cp -R cde /mnt/sdb1/tce
chmod 755 /mnt/sdb1/tce
chown -R tc:staff /mnt/sdb1/tce

exit 1

[nurbles]

I finally succeeded by using the TinyCore64 image.  I have a detailed post about it, but it gets an internal error from the board any time I try to post (or preview) it.  Apparently I've typed something "wrongly" or entered too much text, but "internal error" doesn't help me to fix it.  Are the forum managers reading this?

[gadget42]

that "internal error" thing has been happening for several years and even predates the web hosting switch-over.

it is best to create your post in a separate editor and when you are satisfied then sign-in and attempt to post it.

from various forum search results it looks like we started having trouble around early February of 2021.

at any rate, keep trying and experimenting and eventually you'll get it to post successfully.

as an alternative you could always post it as an attachment and anyone interested could download it
(however that doesn't help anyone that is only visiting the forum as a guest since only signed-in members can access attachments)