Persistence issue

[Flojer0]

Greetings all.

I just discovered tinycore a couple of days ago. and as I assume was similar with many of the others here I was drawn in by the incredibly small foot print (I suspect windows 95 is bigger )

(correction, just looked it up, it's almost as small as windows 3.1 :O )

anyway.

so I've been playing with it and being amazed and all, but short answer, I can't get persistence to work.

longer answer, I can't make it back up to my SD card. it can see it, but nothing more. and linux seems to have some wierd trait where it can only see 4 partitions in a drive. so the fact that this HP has 4 partitions for nearly no reason (2 for recovery purposes and one installed by windows 7) completely thwarts my efforts of setting up a 5th partition just for linux fun.

I also tried running it in suns virtual box, and while everything ran beutifully, I still couldn't find a way to make it backup.

now I suspect I may be missing some really important step, I tried waitusb to see if that could help with the SD card, and formatting it (ext4 if this is a problem it would be nice to know.) and tried giving boot commands tce = mmcblk0p1 (sdcard) and tce=sda5(assuming 5th partition of primary drive.) but alas that partition can't be seen by tiny core because I can't get it formatted to EXT.

hmm, what more. sorry this is getting lengthy, hopefully not uselessly so.

nope can't think of anything more. I do have a couple other small problems when booting natively but I figure they should be a lot easier to figure out than this. and much more useful by then.

Thanks, and have fun in the Core

[lucky13]

Greetings all.

I just discovered tinycore a couple of days ago. and as I assume was similar with many of the others here I was drawn in by the incredibly small foot print (I suspect windows 95 is bigger )

(correction, just looked it up, it's almost as small as windows 3.1 :O )

anyway.

so I've been playing with it and being amazed and all, but short answer, I can't get persistence to work.

longer answer, I can't make it back up to my SD card. it can see it, but nothing more. and linux seems to have some wierd trait where it can only see 4 partitions in a drive. so the fact that this HP has 4 partitions for nearly no reason (2 for recovery purposes and one installed by windows 7) completely thwarts my efforts of setting up a 5th partition just for linux fun.

I also tried running it in suns virtual box, and while everything ran beutifully, I still couldn't find a way to make it backup.

now I suspect I may be missing some really important step, I tried waitusb to see if that could help with the SD card, and formatting it (ext4 if this is a problem it would be nice to know.) and tried giving boot commands tce = mmcblk0p1 (sdcard) and tce=sda5(assuming 5th partition of primary drive.) but alas that partition can't be seen by tiny core because I can't get it formatted to EXT.

hmm, what more. sorry this is getting lengthy, hopefully not uselessly so.

nope can't think of anything more. I do have a couple other small problems when booting natively but I figure they should be a lot easier to figure out than this. and much more useful by then.

Thanks, and have fun in the Core

There's no weird "trait" regarding four partitions. That's the convention.

The total data storage space of a PC hard disk is divided into at most four, and at least one, primary partitions. One of these can also be an extended partition. All these primary partitions are described by 16-byte entries that constitute the Partition Table which is located in the master boot record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

You can set up the fourth partition as an extended (rather than primary) and add more on it so that you have three primary partitions plus however more in the fourth (within reason). Your manufacturer's scheme for recovery partitions is something you have to weigh carefully if you want to add more partitions, and will require (or it SHOULD anyway) backing everything up in case you screw up. I don't recommend you do that on that particular computer since it appears you're unfamiliar with partitioning paradigms. Practice on something else you don't care if you mess up. Spare hard drive, etc. You should be able to pick one up cheap and it's a lot less hassle than wondering why you can't boot into anything anymore, let alone recover your Windows installation. Don't get in over your head. No fifth primary partitions, okay?

When you're comfortable and better understand things, then you can look at shrinking partitions to make room to extend and move things around. I really don't think you're ready for that yet.

Also, some computers have problems booting from or mounting SD cards early enough in the process. Depends on drivers, etc., and when they load. I haven't personally tried mounting a SD card as /home or anything else on boot.

[Flojer0]

alright, I guess there was more detail I could have covered.

If tiny core linux can't access logical cores, or any other linux can't access logic cores, than yes, I guess I may not understand this enough.

but I did understand that you could only have 4 primary partitions.

and as far as messing with partitions, I already have some recovery disks which is what those 2 HP partitions are good for.

so now, if that's the case, should I see if I can find a usb stick and use that, or remove my recovery partition (which, by the way, would only be good for a disk free recovery any ways)?

or abandon it all together since I don't have time or money to go buy a junker and play with that

[lucky13]

Define what YOU mean by "logical core." I understand it to relate to something which has nothing to do with hard drives or other storage media.

Four primary partitions, that's it. If you want more than four, one needs to be changed to an extended partition. You won't get five if four are set up as primaries. Linux is more than capable of reading and booting from extended partitions. Your limit with a SATA drive (I'm assuming you're using a SATA drive since you're running Windows 7) is 15 partitions -- which is three primaries and one extended with 11 partitions (IIRC, count the fourth partition even though it's extended). You can get many more on an IDE drive (63?).

It's your call on whether you run from USB (that would be my Plan B if you don't have another computer to get familiar with partitioning with) or start messing with your recovery partitions. I'm not going to advise you beyond what I already have. I don't know if both HP recovery partitions are to restore Windows or if one is for system settings or whatever. You need to make damn sure you understand what those are and what will happen if and when you delete either of them. It's your computer and it will be your mistake to live with.

[danielibarnes]

what is the output of the command "fdisk -l"? That will get us started on being able to analyze your setup and answer your questions.

[curaga]

Note that ext4 needs the filesystems extension, and so can't be used as the only persistency storage (you'd need to get the extension from some supported partition, or do a remaster).

[Flojer0]

okay, when I have time I'll see about the fdisk thing.

so then, which filesystems are compatible, or where may I find a list. because it would be pleanty doable to just boot from one of my other livecd's and reformat.

[curaga]

Supported in the base:
ext2/3, cramfs, squashfs, fat16/32, iso9660, nfs

ext3 would be my recommendation.

[mwoodruff]

For the SD card, I would recommend ext2 over ext3 or ext4, since the journaling features of the latter two have a reputation for wearing out flash memory.  (NAND flash can only take so many program-erase cycles before it wears out.)

[Flojer0]

well, now I'm not sure what the exact problem was earlier.

just downloaded v2.11 and the problem mysteriously disappeared. don't know what could be different between this and 2.10.

anyway. maybe it was ntfs earlier or something. but it doesn't give errors when I backup now. so pending further announcements case closed

EDIT: okay, now I'm confused again. I Backup and it doesn't give an error this time. and when I boot back up I can see the file on the SD card title 'mydata.tgz' or something like that. but, I try to use that backup/restore utility from the panel and nothing happens.

back to research.

[thane]

mydata.tgz is the backup file for Tiny Core which normally saves application preferences and downloaded files. It's usually updated when you shutdown and is accessed when you boot. If you're getting things like browser bookmarks back when you boot you're probably OK. I don't think you'd necessarily notice anything when executing backup/restore from the panel. Backup will update mydata.tgz and restore may not change anything obvious if you're just getting the same things you did when you booted.

[Flojer0]

then I guess I didn't understand the idea of backup and restore. I'll have to try again and see.

what I have done so far is booted, checked that it saw my SD card, which seemed all well. then I tried downloading firefox and all went well. but when I backed up and rebooted, all I saw was the default setup. no firefox.

I'll take a look again to make sure it's still restoring something (like browsing history or something) but if not I'll be back.

thanks for all the help.

[gerald_clark]

Try the 'waitusb=5' boot option.

[maro]

@Flojer0: I hope you were not expecting for backup/restore to include your extensions (i.e. '*.tcz*') files. It's purpose is to ensure persistence for (global) settings and configuration (mostly from your home directory). It's a tar-archive that includes files (and directories) listed in '/opt/.filetool.lst' and excludes those listed in '/opt/.xfiletool.lst'. An alternative to using backup/restore would be the use of persistent 'opt' and 'home' (by using appropriate boot codes).

To find out more about extension installation I guess you should carefully read the Wiki

[thane]

There's a boot code that will automatically create the tce directory. Within this tce directory is a directory called 'optional' which is where the tcz extensions are stored. By default the mydata.tgz file is under the tce directory as well, so I'm not sure now what your setup is.

The boot code is 'tce=[device name]' (no quotes or brackets). I store the tce on a USB stick so the code I use is tce=sda1. The first time you boot with this code the directory should be created on the device. The appbrowser should then store your extensions in tce/optional and Tiny Core should find it everytime you boot (just make sure there's only one tce) or you can keep using the boot code to direct TC to the right place.

It's simple once you do it but it took a few tries for me to figure it out.

If your storing on a USB stick or other solid state device, gerald_clark is right that you should also use bootcode waitusb=5, which gives Tiny Core time to recognize the device.