issues with inital setup

[pixel]

hello all. i am using an x64 uefi-only laptop and am trying to install tiny core linux in any way possible with my wifi. i've tried every iso file offered and only tinycorepure64 works, which leaves me stuck considering the install guide assumes im already connected to the internet, which i am not. the only tool that works in creating this bootable usb is etcher, which makes the usb read-only (i'm trying this on a mac), stopping me from adding the tcz files for the wifi extension i need. this whole thing sounds like a massive xy problem; all i want is an installation of tinycore, i don't care how. i'd appreciate anyone pointing me in the right direction

[mocore]

wrt
>my wifi.

---> if it is a router you can access , perhaps *you* can skip some hoop jumping and use a lan cable ? <---

>the only tool that works in creating this bootable usb is etcher

what else did you try ?

because ... afaik (apart from some boot loader/manager eg grub2 ,ect) no "tool" is required ...

[pixel]

sorry my post is kind of all over the place. anyhow, i've tried rufus with wine, diskutility, and unetbootin. i found a way to manually add the extensions by booting up my computer with the bootable usb, then ejecting the usb after tc is loaded and erasing and reformatting the thing to fat32, then readding the same files along with any extensions in cde/optional and editing the onboot.lst file. the issue with this is now i can't boot into the os again, so i have to keep my computer on and can't reboot. i have no clue if this is the correct way to do it. i dont have a lan cable available to use for a wired connection.

i've managed to add every tcz file listed on http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/15.x/x86_64/tcz/wifi.tcz.tree in an attempt to use wifi.tcz. weirdly enough, now my taskbar isn't showing and when i try booting up the wifi app from the click menu, it just displays a black screen which allows typing???

[pixel]

taskbar thing is just me being stupid, wbarconf fixes it.

[GNUser]

i've managed to add every tcz file listed on http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/15.x/x86_64/tcz/wifi.tcz.tree in an attempt to use wifi.tcz.

Hi pixel. In order for wifi to work you also need to load the firmware for your specific wireless card. For example, if you have an Intel card that uses iwlwifi, you also need firmware-iwlwifi.tcz

If you are downloading extensions using a different distro that already has working wifi, you should use Rich's FetchExt.sh script, available here:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=23034.0;attach=6171

Rich's script automatically downloads an extension's entire dependency tree for you. To grab wifi.tcz and its entire dependency tree, for example, do this:

Code: [Select]

$ FetchExt.sh wifi

[pixel]

i believe i am using iwlwifi, so i'm trying to install firmware-iwlwifi.tcz. every tcz file i load with tceload -wi says already installed except elogind.tcz, which for whatever reason tries to download from the internet? of course since im offline, wget then throws an error. i have elogind's tcz, dep, and md5 files just like every other extension, yet elogind doesn't wanna cooperate.

[GNUser]

I'm on TCL15 x86_64 with wifi working, no elogind issues. Try deleting the elogind extension and re-downloading it using Rich's script.

If elogind.tcz can't be loaded, wifi.tcz will refuse to load because elogind is in its dependency tree.

Code: [Select]

tce-status -i shows you which extensions are actually loaded on your system.

[pixel]

i'm on mac without stuff like wget so i cant use that script. i redownloaded elogind and it appears to work, however running tce-load -wi /mnt/myusb/cde/optional/*.tcz gave a screen full of errors reading like "c_rehash: line 12: openssl: not found". tce-status says openssl is loaded. the wifi app is still just a black screen.

[GNUser]

I'm not sure what's causing the openssl-related errors. Some extensions in the repo depend on the older openssl-1.1.1:

Code: [Select]

$ depends-on.sh openssl-1.1.1
dillo-beta.tcz
edbrowse.tcz
fuse-zip.tcz
irssi.tcz
keepalived.tcz
lagrange.tcz
libstrophe.tcz
libtorrent-rasterbar.tcz
mariadb-10.4.tcz
mariadb-10.5-client.tcz
mariadb-10.5.tcz
mariadb-10.6-client.tcz
mariadb-10.6.tcz
minizip.tcz
mongo.tcz
net-snmp35.tcz
openldap2.4.tcz
openssl-1.1.1-dev.tcz
pixiewps.tcz
pixz.tcz
proftpd.tcz
pure-ftpd.tcz
python3.7.tcz
python-cryptography.tcz
python-m2crypto.tcz
python.tcz
qt-5.x-base.tcz
sc-im.tcz
tcpdump.tcz
If you manually downloaded one of the above extensions, you should also download openssl-1.1.1.tcz and load it.

P.S. It should be fine to have both openssl.tcz and openssl-1.1.1.tcz loaded at the same time.

EDIT: You should try to get a wired network connection for TCL (or use FetchExt.sh on a linux machine) to get the extensions you need to get TCL up and running. It will make your life much easier.

[pixel]

nevermind, turns out i need realtek firmware. i downloaded 1.1.1 openssl just to be safe and firmwares rtl_nic and rtlwifi, along with doing modprobe rtlwifi and rtl_pci. ifconfig -a lists the following:

"dummy0" link encap: ethernet
broadcast noarp

"lo" link encap: local loopback
up loopback running

"tun10" link encap: unspec
noarp

i don't know how to interpret any of that information, but it says nothing about wifi or wireless, so it feels like something is wrong. running wifi.sh just says no networks found.

[GNUser]

I suspect you have not loaded the extension that contains the necessary firmware.

What is the exact model of your wireless nic? This command may help (but requires lshw.tcz):

Code: [Select]

sudo lshw -c network

[pixel]

this is what lshw says:

network: unclaimed
description: network controller
product: rtl8821ce 802.11ac pcie wireless network adapter
vendor: realtek semiconductor co. ltd
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
version: 00
width: 64 bits
clock: 33mhz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress cap_list
configuration latency=0
resources: ioport:e000(size=256) memory:a1100000-a110ffff

[GNUser]

It seems your rtl8821ce adapter is being very finicky. It sounds like it is a wifi+bluetooth usb dongle, is that right?

I can't find firmware with exactly "rtl8821ce" anywhere in the filename, but I found rtl8821c_config.bin in the firmware-rtl_bt.tcz extension. Hopefully this is what you need.

I also found kernel module rtw88_8821ce.ko.gz in wireless-6.6.8-tinycore64.tcz. It sounds like you already downloaded this extension.

Try this:

Code: [Select]

$ tce-load -wi wireless-6.6.8-tinycore64 firmware-rtl_bt wifi
$ sudo modprobe rtw88_8821ce
Then unplug your dongle and plug it back in. Then try using the wifi extension.

[pixel]

i'm not using a dongle, the wifi thingy is built into my laptop. wifi.sh still finds nothing and ifconfig remains unchanged.

heres all of my currently loaded extensions if that helps:

Xfbdev
Xlibs
Xprogs
aterm
attr
bzip2-lib
ca-certificates
dbus
elogind
expat2
firmware-iwlwifi
firmware-rtl_bt
firmware-rtl_nic
firmware-rtl_wifi
fltk-1.3
flwm
freetype
gcc_libs
glib2
graphite
harfbuzz
imlib2
imlib2-bin
libICE
libSM
libX11
libXau
libXcursor
libXdmcp
libXext
libXfixes
libXfont
libXmu
libXrender
libXt
libcap
libffi
libfontenc
libiw
libjpeg-turbo
libnl
libpng
libxcb
lshw
ncursesw
openssl
openssl-1.1.1
pcre
pcre21042
readline
udev-lib
util-linux
wbar
wifi
wireless-6.6.8-tinycore64
wireless_tools
wpa_supplicant-dbus

[GNUser]

Hi pixel. It seems all the necessary extensions are loaded.

I only have two more ideas right now. Please add rfkill.tcz and iw.tcz to your loaded extensions.

To make sure your wireless nic isn't turned off at hardware level (e.g., by a physical on/off switch), please try this command:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo rfkill list all

And let's see the output of this:

Code: [Select]

$ iw dev wlan0 info

If neither command gives us clues, maybe other users can share their thoughts while we mull this over.

P.S. Have you used this wireless nic successfully before?