Load TinyCore without bootable CD

[athouston]

I came across Tiny Core on a magazine CD and I love it. I ran it on a virtual PC on my VMWare Workstation.

I have about 20 older PC's that I need an O/S on to play with some parallel processing stuff and TC looks just the ticket.

I need to boot from a floppy disc, as the CD's are not bootable, and have support for the CD so I can read the TC CD. I tried to make a floppy using the TCE type instructions but can't seem to make that work.

I am relatively new to Linux (but I've worked with MSoft products for so long that I had a source code disk of MS-DOS) so any instruction would be most welcome.

Thanks.

[maro]

For a pretty much similar question (http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=928.0) Curaga did suggest "Smart Boot Manager", which I guess you can found here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

For myself I'd probably create a boot floppy with GRUB, but trying to explain this goes a bit too far for my writing skills.

[Guy]

If you install Tiny Core on a hard drive you can put it in another computer and it will work.

If you have one computer you can install Tiny Core with, you can use that computer to install Tiny Core on the hard drives of all of the other computers.

You can either remove the hard drives and put them in the other computer, or just connect them with a cable.

Do you have one computer which will boot from a CD?


Almost all computers will boot from a CD. Do you know how to set up the BIOS so the computer will boot from the CD?


If you had another Linux distro on a computer, and a Linux partition for Tiny Core, you could use Linux to install Tiny Core.

[Kingdomcome]

If the old computers are capable of PXE booting, that may be the easiest solution.  TC has a easy to use script to set up a PXE environment from which you can boot and then install TC on any networked PC.  You can setup and start the PXE environment from the right click menu, selecting "Terminal Server"

[athouston]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have found a set of instructions for grub which seem pretty easy to follow, but there is no grub in my TCL salad. If I understand TCL philosophy I have to install it first. But I don't have a persistent installation so everytime I restart I literally have to restart (everything all over again).

I don't have TCL on a hard drive (this is what I am trying to achive) so I can't put another hard drive in and copy it.

I tried the PXE idea but TCL will not give out an IP address to the remote PC (yes TCL is the only DHCP server on the network).

So back to my original problem.

I need to put TCL on a hard drive. I can boot TCL in a vitual machine (VMWare Workstation 6) but cannot mount either /dev/fd0 of /dev/hda (probably because neither has a file system on if). When I try to format either I get permission denied error - I'm not logged in as root am I! So I need to log in as root (username??? password???). When I tried to run mk2fs (before I reslised the format problem) it said it did not exist - how then would I a create file system on the devices.

Then how do I put TCL on the hard drive.

Then I assume I install GRUB and make a boot floppy (because all MODERN PC's can boot from CD but most P4's and below can't).

Working with a minimalist O/S has it's drawbacks but it is the foundation of what IT is all about. It's fine to have the money to throw around on a mega-gig hard diks (sic) equipped wonder snow-blower, even if all your business needs is a Commodore 64 (for the benefit of you youngen's reading this, that was an early model PC). So I see imense value in understanding this problem and working through it.

More please........

[Juanito]

I need to put TCL on a hard drive. I can boot TCL in a vitual machine (VMWare Workstation 6) but cannot mount either /dev/fd0 of /dev/hda (probably because neither has a file system on if). When I try to format either I get permission denied error - I'm not logged in as root am I! So I need to log in as root (username??? password???). When I tried to run mk2fs (before I reslised the format problem) it said it did not exist - how then would I a create file system on the devices.

To issue commands as "root", you need to preface them with "sudo", i.e. "sudo mke2fs (note the "2"). To mount a device:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/hda1 [might not be required]
$ sudo mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

[Guy]

all MODERN PC's can boot from CD but most P4's and below can't

Most computers can boot from a CD.

I will be very surprised if you have a computer with a CD drive, which cannot be set up to boot from it.

In some computers the BIOS may not be set up so the computer boots from the CD before the hard drive.

You can change the BIOS settings.

To change BIOS settings, soon after turning the computer on, press "Delete." On some computers it may be another key, such as F1, F2, F10, or another function key. After entering the BOIS, change the boot sequence so the computer boots from the CD before the hard drive.

[maro]

If your target system is really too old and doesn't boot from CD_ROM, here are some steps that might get you there:

(1) Create a TinyCore CD by burning the latest (2.7) ISO image onto a CD (I guess you'll have to use a Windows system for this).

(2) Create the Smart Boot Manager floppy: download the http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/files/btmgr/3.7-1/sbminst.exe/download file and execute it on a Windows system to create the floppy (e.g. sbminst.exe -d a -t us)

(3) Insert the floppy and the CD into your target system and try to boot: In the 'Boot Menu' dialog scroll down (with the cursor key) to the 'CD-ROM' entry. You could press 'F8' to make this selection your default one for any further use of this boot floppy. If you press 'Ctrl-T' you could change the delay time value from 30 sec to e.g. 2 sec. If you press 'F2' you could save all changes back to the boot floppy. This would mean that the next time you boot with this floppy it should automatically boot from the CD-ROM.

(4) Assuming you have come this far (i.e. booted with the help of the floppy and the TC CD-ROM) you should have a basic TC system running in "Cloud mode". I assume your target system has an ethernet card and can be connected to the Internet. Furthermore assuming that TC has recognised the adaptor you should have no trouble in following the guide to install TC on a hard disk now: http://tinycorelinux.com/install.html
Note: You don't have to install the cfdisk and grub extensions on the hard disk itself. You will probably need them only once. Bear in mind that all extensions you install without persistence are only available during that session (and gone after you shut down the system).

[athouston]

Maro - you are a hero. Thank you my friend - I now have TCL running on a 450MHz P3 with 128MB ram and 40GB hard drive. It absolutely flies, and I can even add another 256MB of ram so it will be a real road-burner.

I originally put the CD as IDE master and the hard drive as slave to try and boot from the CD but the IBM PC300PL does not support boot from CD (at all).

The original 6.5GB hard drive worked fine with WinXP but had problems when formatted as EXT3. Grub complained about an unrecognised file system (). I replaced it with a 40 GB Seagate and all was well.

I used the sbminst to boot but there seems to be an issue with grub when the CD is a lower number (higher order) than the hard drive eg, CD is /dev/hda and hard drive is /dev/hdb. When I put this back to standard all was again well. This came up when trying to mkfs. The system would say it was creating the FS but it did not. None of the subsequent FS commands would work.

After I noticed that bzImage is spelled with a capital "I" in menu.lst I was up and running.

Guy - thanks for the pointers on SUDO. Another piece of the puzzle for a Linux newbie.

My next task is to learn how to load other apps not in the TCL "catalogue", specifically the Erlang language, its internal database and the CouchDB database. I don't know what their memory requirements are yet, and the DB's may yet live on a bigger box or a SAN, but that's the fun isn't it.

Thank you all for your help.

[maro]

Pleased to learn that you have now a working TC system.

I'm not sure what might be the issue with your 6.5G hard disk, but I've got at least a hunch with regards to your hda vs. hdb problem you encountered:
With your inital setup (CD-ROM as master i.e. /dev/hda, hard disk as slave i.e. /dev/hdb) you would have to substitute all uses of /dev/hda1 with /dev/hdb1 (for the cfdisk, mkfs.ext3, mount, cp, ... commands). I take it you had done so (at least too some degree). Furthermore with your initial setup the commands when running GRUB should have been: root (hd1,0) and setup (hd1). And that is what I'd guess lead to the hickup.

But hey, in the end you got there. So not really critical what else could have been ...

[athouston]

I picked up on the hda v hdb thing and followed that change through all the instructions (all 7 or so times) - or so I thought; and the grub params too. But like you said - it works so....

The second pc (same same) went through first pass in about 5 minutes. Now I'm going through my stack to find the next most logical candidates. I have several DEC Venturas 575's that I was hoping to use but apparently they are too old, I get invalid tag errors when I try and boot TCL. They currently run Windows NT v4 so I was hopefull. Oh well.

I also loaded a VMWare virtual machine in minutes first time through, so I can play with it at my desk as well. I just need to find a shelf to stack all the machines on as I get them working. Looks like the weed spray and paint are gunna get turfed out of the garden shed.

Thanks again for the help.

[Guy]

With regards to the hard drive which won't boot.

Completely erase the hard drive, then partition and format it, and that should fix it.

I have one hard drive which would not work, even after repartitioning. I ran DBAN to completely erase it. I then partitioned and formatted it, and it worked. I think a virus had done something to the MBR, which made it unusable.

Parted Magic is a good program to have for partitioning and formatting.

As mentioned, I used DBAN to erase the hard drive.

Parted Magic also has a program for erasing, which may not have been available at the time I did it (some years ago).

[bmarkus]

Completely erase the hard drive,

How and why?

[Guy]

I had a hard drive which just would not work. I believe a virus had corrupted the mbr.

I erased the entire drive using DBAN, and partitioned and formatted it using GParted, and it worked.

DBAN is a sure way of removing viruses, and everything else.

http://www.dban.org/

Formatting alone will not fix something like this.


There are simpler ways to fix some problems.

If you don't know the cause, this method should fix it whatever the cause.

[^thehatsrule^]

It's probably faster just to repartition the entire disk, i.e. with cfdisk -z

There are probably tools to attempt to fix corrupted mbr's.  Restoring backups works as well.