Bots and Google

[Rich]

While reading a response to a post I made, I decided to do
a search to see if the Google bots had catalog it yet.
These were the first two entries that popped up:


None of the following entries related to Tinycore. But when
I reached the bottom of the page, I was a little surprised
to find this:


Seven out of eight suggestions referred to Tinycore.

This was the post I made:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,27848.msg180072.html#msg180072

[Paul_123]

I guess that's something for all that scraping that gets done.   Its a never ending battle to keep them tamed.  Some of it is good, it would just be nice if there were not hundreds of bots doing the same damn thing.  Just scanning the logs right now,  ClaudeBot, PetalBot, GoogleBot, AmazonBot, bingbot, ThinkBot, AwarioBot, DuckAssistentBot, GPTBot are all active.

Most do respect the robots.txt directive I have to limit rates.  I did tell Bytedance and TikTok Bots to knock it off......and so far they have respected the robots.txt

[gadget42]

@Rich, i would like to replicate(as closely as possible) your/the specific search(es) you're making/referring-to in this thread.

to that end, knowing the browser and extensions and search engine & particulars would probably help to do that/this.

i use Librewolf with NoScript, PrivacyBadger, and uBlockOrigin(yes, some overlap/redundancy/etc) and then https://start.duckduckgo.com/lite/ which seems to keep the results to a manageable level(if not quite sparse actually, not to mention wildly different from other folks results from the exact same search elements/terms).

[Rich]

Hi Paul_123
Wow, that's a lot of bots. So I guess if someone asks a similar question
to the one I answered, ChatGTP will try to use my answer. Or maybe not.

I pasted the beginning of the original query into ChatGTP. A few highlights:

... Tiny Core’s “CD extensions mode” (cde/) expects:

/cde/boot/isolinux/boot.cfg
/cde/optional/*.tcz
/cde/mydata.tgz   (optional) ...

cde doesn't care about boot/ or isolinux/. I don't think Isolinux uses a file called boot.cfg.

Here, the key is the boot parameter:

cde_dir=/cdeA

Tiny Core will then load extensions from /cdeA/optional.

    🟢 Works perfectly from a CD/ISO, USB, or hard drive boot.

I searched my TC10 and TC14 installs as well as github and the forum.
I can't seem to locate that  cde_dir  boot code anywhere.


Here is the complete response:

Skip to content
You said:
My goal is to make a bootable CD that lets me choose between two different versions of Tiny Core.  I have programs in each version that I use under different circumstances.  The problem is that extensions are loaded from the cde/optional directory, and I can't have multiple files with the same name in that directory.
ChatGPT said:

That’s a great and pretty classic Tiny Core Linux problem — making a multi-boot CD that offers two different setups while working around the shared cde/optional directory.

Let’s walk through what’s going on and how you can solve it cleanly.
🧠 The Problem

Tiny Core’s “CD extensions mode” (cde/) expects:

/cde/boot/isolinux/boot.cfg
/cde/optional/*.tcz
/cde/mydata.tgz   (optional)

At boot, it automatically loads extensions from cde/optional according to the onboot.lst file.
If you have two different Tiny Core environments that both use, say, bash.tcz, but perhaps different versions or sets of extensions, you can’t have two files named bash.tcz in the same optional directory.
💡 The Goal

You want:

    A single CD (ISO)

    A boot menu that lets you choose between:

        Tiny Core A (with its own extensions)

        Tiny Core B (with possibly overlapping extension names)

🧩 Solutions
Option 1: Use Separate Extension Directories

This is the cleanest approach.

You can make:

/cdeA/optional/...
/cdeB/optional/...

Each with its own onboot.lst.

Then, create two separate boot entries in your bootloader config (isolinux.cfg or grub.cfg), each pointing Tiny Core to the right extension path.

Example isolinux.cfg snippet:

LABEL tinycoreA
  MENU LABEL Tiny Core A
  KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
  APPEND initrd=/boot/core.gz cde_dir=/cdeA

LABEL tinycoreB
  MENU LABEL Tiny Core B
  KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
  APPEND initrd=/boot/core.gz cde_dir=/cdeB

Here, the key is the boot parameter:

cde_dir=/cdeA

Tiny Core will then load extensions from /cdeA/optional.

    🟢 Works perfectly from a CD/ISO, USB, or hard drive boot.

Option 2: Use Different tce= Directories

If you’re booting Tiny Core in “persistent” mode (for example, from a USB stick or HDD), you can specify:

tce=/mnt/sda1/tceA
tce=/mnt/sda1/tceB

That way each setup keeps its own optional/, onboot.lst, and other data.

But for a CD-only setup, cde_dir is usually the right mechanism.
Option 3: Rename and Manually Mount

You could rename extensions and use custom scripts to mount them manually, but that’s messy and unnecessary when Tiny Core already supports alternate cde_dir locations.
🧰 How to Build the ISO

Once you’ve set up:

/boot/vmlinuz
/boot/core.gz
/cdeA/optional/...
/cdeA/onboot.lst
/cdeB/optional/...
/cdeB/onboot.lst
/boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg

You can build your ISO like so:

mkisofs -l -J -R -V "TinyCoreMulti" -no-emul-boot \
  -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
  -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin \
  -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat \
  -o tinycore_multi.iso .

Then burn or write it to a USB/CD.
✅ Summary
Goal   Solution
Two Tiny Core variants on one CD   Use two cde_dir directories
Avoid duplicate extension name conflicts   Separate /cdeA/optional and /cdeB/optional
Boot menu choice   Two LABEL entries in isolinux.cfg (or GRUB)
Boot parameter   cde_dir=/cdeA or cde_dir=/cdeB

Would you like me to show an example full directory structure and a working isolinux.cfg for a two-version CD layout?


ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.

[Rich]

Hi gadget42

@Rich, i would like to replicate(as closely as possible) your/the specific search(es) ...

The exact search I entered into Google is in the first image in the original post.

... to that end, knowing the browser and extensions ...

Firefox and uBlockOrigin.

[gadget42]

did the search in firefox via google and got pretty much the same results at the beginning of the first page and the ending of the fourth page but most of the results inbetween looked mostly like ai slop(and in multiple languages)