tinycore_2.4rc3

[roberts]

The Third Release Candidate of v2.4 (tinycore_2.4rc3.iso), is now posted and ready for testing.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/release_candidates/

Change log for v2.4 Release Candidate 3
* Updated flwm_topside with color titlebar  support and cursor patch.
* Added GNU cpio - dropped busybox cpio applet.
* Updated tce-load to use boot flag and cpio for copy to filesystem (ram).
* Updated tce-setup, optimized code and calls tce-load via boot flag.
* Updated tc-config with more consistent and streamlined messages at boot.  
* Updated usbinstall to operate better when launched from system menu.

[bigpcman]

Good job Robert. It's good to have some quick fixes.

I am testing 2.4rc3 on Qemu now. Looks like the title bar color fix works just as it should.

I did notice that the extensions loaded during boot are no longer listed. I was just wondering if this is intentional?

edit: I have Opera, emelfm2 and ace of penguins loaded.

[bigpcman]

Change log for v2.4 Release Candidate 3

* Updated tce-load to use boot flag and cpio for copy to filesystem (ram).

Robert could you provide a little more background on this change. I'm not sure I understand how this works.

[roberts]

In v2.3 & v2.4rc1 I was using rsync to copy to filesystem, i.e, 'install' a tcz.
This was causing upstream directories to be overwritten.
In v2.4rc2 I switched to using a tar pipe with xlist, but it was noticeable slower.
With the help of Jason, we tried several options, and decided on cpio.
The GNU version of such has a passthru mode and we can control upstream permissions better.
So rsync, was replaced by tar pipe, was replaced by cpio.

I no longer display extensions as they are  being loaded, with upwards of 100 or so, it takes too much time to write to screen. Besides, I do not display each file as it is being restored, nor do I display each boot codes as it is being checked. So we now have a more consistent and cleaner boot screen.

[bigpcman]

Thanks for the additional information.

I also noticed that a tce directory is created in /opt even though I have a tce directory in sda. Is this as it should be?

[roberts]

That has been there for many releases. It provides a simple way to remaster.

[meo]

Hi Robert!

The new cut seems to work pretty fine at first glance. There is one problem though that has been the same throughout the rc cycle. I boot with base, norestore, xsetup, mount beaver and emelfm and press Refresh Menu, then the screen goes black. But if I reboot with the tce directory specified and also the same with restore, everything works fine. Thanks to the TC team for continually refining the distribution.

Have fun,
meo

[roberts]

meo, I could not reproduce. Did the same steps. You are using appbrowser to load local? By using appbrowser load local the menu and icons were refreshed. No action needed. Perhaps you are using a different window manager? If you are using jwm you should be using the one in the release candidate area. Please give more information.

[meo]

Hi again Robert!

Here comes the whole shabang. These are all the boot codes I use: quiet vga=791 noicons tz=Europe/Stockholm tcvd=hde1/harddisk base norestore xsetup. I ran it all from scratch using the appbrowser mount function. So the only extensions I installed (mounted) were beaver and emelfm. Then I pressed the Refresh Menu to get access to the extensions but the screen went black. Maybe I installed (mount option on the app browser) links too I don't remember. The strange thing is that I looked through the harddrive and the compact flash card that I have in a PCMCIA adapter but I could not find the extensions. I even manually mounted the virtual hd that I have on the flash card to see if they were there but I couldn't find them. I have a tce directory in the root of hda6 which I have formatted in ext3 and it also contains another linux distro. So I'm kind of puzzled but I hope this information can be of help.

Have fun developing tinycore further,
meo

[roberts]

Using the 'base' boot option will set the tce directory to /tmp/tce and so the mounted extensions were not saved. If you wanted them saved on the virtual drive then you would need both tcvd=hde1/harddisk tce=tvcd  The first to setup the virtual drive, the second to set tce to use the virtual drive.

See: http://www.tinycorelinux.com/faq.html#qemu

[bmarkus]

I no longer display extensions as they are  being loaded, with upwards of 100 or so, it takes too much time to write to screen. Besides, I do not display each file as it is being restored, nor do I display each boot codes as it is being checked. So we now have a more consistent and cleaner boot screen.

What is about a number of loaded extensions instead of rotating -|=\ or a simple progress bar?

[roberts]

Because rotdash is and has been the standard indicator that processing is occuring as shown above with udev and below with restore. Any other interaction will only slow down the boot process.

[bmarkus]

On a clean system the first loop device is /dev/loop0. Installing extensions in RAM is consuming a loop device for each extensions. For example after installing Midnight Commander and its 3 dependencies first loop device is /dev/loop4 according to 'losetup -f'

It means, that after loading 320 extensions to RAM in my case no any free loop device available even when no any mounted loop.

Just for checking mounting and unmounting an extension manually as a loop device next free loop device remains the same after.

EDIT: Extensions at the end of the list (in alphabetic order) are not installed as no free loop device available.

[MikeLockmoore]

As excited as I am to get started using 2.4... I'm having problems with 2.4rc3.  I had a bunch of .tcz's in my hdc4/tce directory.  I have been boothing 2.3.1 with the options:

  tce=hdc4 noswap laptop

In my menu.lst, I copied the 2.3.1 section for 2.4rc3, pointed it to the new bzImage and tincycore.gz files, and used the same boot options listed above.  2.4rc3 boots right up and displays the flwm desktop, but no extensions are loaded, and if I go to the status window in the control panel, the extensions list is empty.  I can can use AppBrowser to install extensions, but they get stored in the home folder (/home/tc), and if I reboot, they will not be automatically reloaded.  

I tried to boot with the option tce=hdc4/tce_2_4, to create a new 2.4-specific tce directory, but booting like this does not create the hdc4/tce_2_4 directory, nor does installing apps from appbrowser.    What am I doing wrong?

My restored files are ok that come from mydata.gz.  I tried to reset .xsession and .profile from /etc/skel to make sure those files where not causing a problem, but I did not see any change in the tce/ situation.  Is there something else I can do to troubleshoot this?  Or do differently to set up a tce/ that works?  Thanks for any help.
--
Mike L.

[bmarkus]

How to identify version of running system? I do not find a solution. A simple text file like /etc/tcversion with 2.4rc3 in would be sufficient.