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Author Topic: TinyCore does not boot after installation  (Read 13396 times)

Offline newbieCore

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #60 on: February 13, 2024, 07:39:33 PM »
Your backup is restored by default. You can suppress restore with the bootcode "norestore".

I need to correct inflate.sh and I need the output of the commands I've asked.
Unfortunately it is not, I installed spacefm for example and after a reboot it is not found.

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #61 on: February 13, 2024, 07:42:17 PM »
Try
Code: [Select]
tce-load -i spacefm

and check
Code: [Select]
ls /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/space*

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #62 on: February 13, 2024, 07:46:43 PM »
What the commands from previous post shown? Was spacefm found in tce14 directory?

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #63 on: February 13, 2024, 07:52:34 PM »
@Rich, what's Your opinion, is eMMC suited to handle the swap partition? We are going to inflate the filesystem and if eMMC is able to survive swap we need to create swap first.

Offline newbieCore

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #64 on: February 13, 2024, 07:53:23 PM »
What the commands from previous post shown? Was spacefm found in tce14 directory?
Yes you are right.
https://ibb.co/zXpXSZ5
So every time I will have to reinstall the extensions?

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #65 on: February 13, 2024, 07:56:29 PM »
So every time I will have to reinstall the extensions?
If You want them to load by default You need to add their names to the .lst file currently used. If You load and install with "-wi" options it is performed for You by tce-load. These are TinyCore basics, You need to read more.

Offline newbieCore

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #66 on: February 13, 2024, 08:01:41 PM »
So every time I will have to reinstall the extensions?
If You want them to load by default You need to add their names to the .lst file currently used. If You load and install with "-wi" options it is performed for You by tce-load. These are TinyCore basics, You need to read more.
Oh ok I got it, thank you very much for the explanations and help and sorry for my lack of knowledge.
Hope my stupid questions don't annoy you too much haha.
One last question regarding the disk space, how should I expand it?

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #67 on: February 13, 2024, 08:12:03 PM »
Don't worry, those features are present in TinyCore only.

Before expanding the filesystem we may create the swap partition. Frankly speaking I am not sure should we create it or not. Usually flash media is not recommended for usage as swap. Can we wait until someone will help us to answer this question? I don't feel quite sure I know the correct answer. In my opinion flash is not well suited for swap partitions. But maybe eMMC can handle it?

I understand that You want to continue as soon as possible, but if we will proceed now, then creating swap in the future will demand additional steps.

So what's on Your mind, let's continue without swap or will wait until someone will help us?


Offline Rich

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #68 on: February 13, 2024, 08:22:55 PM »
Hi jazzbiker
In my book, swap is there as a safety valve to prevent apps
from being killed unexpectedly due to Out of Memory errors.
It's not there to compensate for insufficient RAM by constantly
shuffling data in and out of swap space.

So yes, I think the eMMC is suited to handle the swap partition.

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #69 on: February 13, 2024, 08:26:19 PM »
So yes, I think the eMMC is suited to handle the swap partition.

Thank You very much for an advice! We'll try to continue.

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #70 on: February 13, 2024, 08:34:10 PM »
@newbieCore

So let's create the swap partition on Your eMMC drive. Are You online through the smartphone? We will need to boot to "base+resize".

Offline GNUser

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #71 on: February 13, 2024, 08:42:48 PM »
So what's on Your mind, let's continue without swap or will wait until someone will help us?
Hi jazzbiker. Even though eMMC is suited to handle a swap partition as Rich pointed out, by default TCL creates a zram device to use for swap. If you run cat /etc/fstab you'll see that /dev/zram0 is being used for swap. This default behavior can be turned off with the nozswap bootcode.

For what it's worth, my strategy has always been to make sure I have an adequate amount of RAM and doing without a swap partition. I allow the default TCL behavior of using zram for swap even though I don't think I need it.

Offline jazzbiker

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #72 on: February 13, 2024, 08:48:39 PM »
Hi GNUser!

newbieCore's box is equipped with 2G of RAM if I am not mistaken. Maybe half-gig of zswap will be enough without additional swap partition ... So You think newbieCore will be able to surf using firefox without big problems?

Offline CNK

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #73 on: February 13, 2024, 10:38:33 PM »
newbieCore's box is equipped with 2G of RAM if I am not mistaken. Maybe half-gig of zswap will be enough without additional swap partition ... So You think newbieCore will be able to surf using firefox without big problems?

I run Firefox with 2GB RAM and zswap, without a swap partition. It works well enough for my usage (I'm not someone who keeps hundreds of tabs loaded, and I never wish to watch videos in it). The zswap isn't often used.

I don't put swap partitions on eMMC or other light-duty flash storage for fear of accidentally wearing it out quickly. Writes to it are also slow, so unlikely to perform as well as a swap partition on a HDD, and flash writes can have more unpredictable delays too. I do consider it OK to use swap "to compensate for insufficient RAM" when the need is only rare though. Compiling big software is a key example (actually linking is where it's really needed, frustratingly right at the end of the build process).

Offline GNUser

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Re: TinyCore does not boot after installation
« Reply #74 on: February 13, 2024, 11:12:26 PM »
newbieCore's box is equipped with 2G of RAM if I am not mistaken. Maybe half-gig of zswap will be enough without additional swap partition ... So You think newbieCore will be able to surf using firefox without big problems?
Hi jazzbiker. On my system, RAM usage is about 500-550 MB when running a GUI web browser (Brave). If I also open Thunderbird, memory usage jumps up to about 700 MB. If I add Libreoffice, RAM usage peaks around 800 MB.

So 2 GB RAM plus zswap is likely enough for everyday tasks, but probably not enough for some memory-intensive tasks such as compilation.

I didn't realize that he has only 2 GB RAM. With 2 GB I might consider setting up a swap partition. With 8 GB (which is what I have), I don't setup a swap partition. Ultimately it's a matter of preference. I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that TCL uses zram for swap by default.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2024, 11:17:35 PM by GNUser »