Persistence

[pnguine]

I expect this has been covered many times before but I haven't been able to find the answer I'm looking for so I'll try asking here.

I'm new to tc but not to Linux having tried various flavors over the years but this one seems like it might be what I'm looking for - especially on this old Toshiba Satellite.

I have a kind-of 'ad-hock' HDD install off a CD and I've finally gotten the frame buffer and the wireless card to work without being 'hard wired' to my lan by downloading everything I needed to my desktop box and transferring it to the Toshiba on USB stick and using tce-load -i. Now every time I shutdown I lose everything and have to spend hours trying to piece it all back together when I start up again.

The box has XP and Debian on it and I have /tce and /tce/optional folders set-up in the Debian/Linux partition. I have used the app-browser to install firefox from which I am writing this. So how do I shutdown now so when I start-up again I will still have the same X settings (with framebuffer) and wireless setup?

TIA

[alu]

http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php?page=Backup

[pnguine]

Thank you - I appreciate that but I think I'm looking for something else: the right way to back up the system state. I 'manually' installed Xfbdev, wpa_supplicant and wpa_gui and all their dep's from the command line with tce-load. When I have done that previously they were not re-loaded automatically during boot even after using backup from the log-out prompt. Even after manually installing all the dep's many of them were downloaded and installed by the app manager when I used it to install Firefox indicating to me that, even then, the system (or app manager) didn't see them as installed. Do I need to put all the tcz's in /optional and set up the onboot list for Xfbdev and the wpa app's and the dep's myself and if so what is the correct format for onboot.lst? Is it necessary to have wpa_supplicant running as a deamon all the time for my atheros based wireless card to work or is it just needed to get the initial configuration which is then stored somewhere in the file system to be used by the kernel? And, ever time I have booted up tc it keeps hanging on the 'creating Xauthority file' line at which time I press ctrl-c to get a command prompt, load Xfbdev, run xsetup.sh and then startx to get a gui. Is that a permission problem? Should all files and folders be tc:staff? Is the Xauthority file that tc is trying to create in memory or on /hdax/tc?

[roberts]

I have a kind-of 'ad-hock' HDD install

Don't know what this means.

If you look at /opt/.tce_dir it should be pointing to your tce directory. This happens automatically on recommend setups. On a hacked setup, you may have to manually enter the path to your tce directory.
Extensions are not inclued in the backup, they are written directly a persistent store pointed to by /opt/.tce_dir, e.g. ./mnt/sda1/tce

If you use  -wi option of tce-load the requested extension will be listed in onboot.lst
If you use Appbrowser Install button the requested extension will be listed in onboot.lst
Otherwise use Apps Audit, Onboot maintenance.

[pnguine]

Thanks. By 'ad-hock' I meant I installed into an existing linux partition following the instructions on the wiki and installing apps and deps using tce-load because I couldn't get the gui working without the framebuffer. So I didn't click on an 'install to hard drive' button anywhere or install using a boot option. And I got confused because there seems to be some more-or-less major changes made to the tce/tcz install system made recently and a lot of info refers to the 'old' way such as the lone /tce directory vs the /tce and /tce/optional directories. But, one thing at a time so I'll be looking into your reply in more detail later on when I get back.

Also I understand I probably wouldn't have this problem if I had just plugged in the cat5 cable but I took it as a challenge getting it running straight from the wireless card. 

[pnguine]

/opt/.tce_dir looks OK. Apps audit boot maintenance shows all the wireless stuff in /mnt/hda3/tce/optional but Xfbdev was nowhere to be found so I manually entered it in onboot.lst. Firefox, xfv, xfe and xfw all show up in both places.

What can I do about the failure to create the Xauthority file? Every time I've tried to boot tc no matter what boot options I've used or not used it always stops after repeating the same 'creating Xauthority file' line twice. Is it maybe a permission problem because of the way I installed tc?
 
Thanks

[^thehatsrule^]

You can try `xauth -b` (use q to quit).

Or you could add just try removing it/adding it to .xfiletool.lst

[thane]

I'm not very clear on exactly what your setup is, but that's never stopped me from putting my 2 cents in...

I always get the double Xauthority message booting off CD, so that may be a red herring.

Have you tried booting from CD and seeing if everything works OK? If TC functions normally from a CD boot then I'd say you're right that something's messed up on your hard drive install. If it doesn't work from CD then you might want to fix that part first (getting extensions and settings to load and save etc.) and then deal with the install part.

Disclaimer: I've never installed to hard drive and don't have a clue about it...

[OldAdamUser2]

Installing to a hard drive is a bit different--especially if one has to do it manually for some reason. Maybe some of my advice could be helpful to you. See the following:

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=3611.0

I tend to wonder if your GRUB entry is OK. I also wonder if there is something different about using Xfbdev--but I don't know what it could be.

[^thehatsrule^]

I always get the double Xauthority message booting off CD, so that may be a red herring.

It's different if you get errors from that.