Make a persistent installation on a USB

[semsaudade]

Hi to everybody. Forgive me, but I am a newbie of Tinycore Linux. I installed it on a usb key and everything is ok, installing applications is very simple and effective. But I don't know how to make my installations persistent. I tried with Backup/Restore tool but apparently it backups only my home directory and doesn't backup new installed applications. Is there any simple way to do it?

Thanks a lot for helping!

[jano]

Not sure I can help, but here are my 2 cents:

* If you want applications to run when booting, you have to add them to the onboot.lst; otherwise, you have to mount them everytime you want them

* Take a look at http://www.tinycorelinux.com/concepts.html you can find an answer : see The Copy Mode of Operation: TCE/Install + copyfs indicator  and / or The Hybrid Mode of Operation: Local/Install

Good luck !

[jur]

Did you study the relevant wiki page?
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php?page=Installing+TC+on+USB&structure=Installing+TC

[semsaudade]

Sorry, but I tried following explanations in http://www.tinycorelinux.com/concepts.html, particularly the "The Mount Mode of Operation: TCE/Install". So I added the boot option tce=sdc1 in

append initrd=/Tinycore/boot/tinycore.gz quiet max_loop=256 tce=sdc1

Result is that now apparently every installation is broken, simply it doesn't work! For example, I tried to install Abiword (operation that I did with success yesterday). Now installation is very fast, just some seconds (yesterday it lasted a long time, dowloading a lot of dependences), but Abiword doesn't work! The same happens trying to install other apps.

In addition to that, there is no tce directory in my Usb key for permanent storage of applications, nothing was created.

I don't understand this phrase:
"The next time you boot all extensions will automatically be mount loaded from this directory structure based on a system and user maintained list named onboot.lst."

There is no such file (onboot.lst) on my Usb key!

Forgive me, but I am a newbie and may be this is a too difficult task for me. If anyone can suggest me a step by step method for this problem, I'll appreciate it very very much.

In any case, thank you so much for helping!

[^thehatsrule^]

You might need to use the waitusb boot option, i.e. waitusb=5 (see notes in the main's site FAQ and the above wiki page)

[jano]

In case it helps:
the extlinux.conf  in my pendrive is (I have removed some boot options that are of no interest here):

DEFAULT tinycore
LABEL tinycore
KERNEL /tce/bzImage
APPEND initrd=/tce/tinycore.gz quiet home=sda1 opt=sda1 max_loop=255 waitusb=5 tce=UUID=(long alphanumeric string)

Note that the path to initrd in my settings is =/tce/tinycore.gz because I use tinycore  2.11 and not 2.11.1 or 2.11.2 (and in these versions tinycore.gz is in /boot).

Note also the waitusb=5, as ^thehatsrule^ points out.

The boot optio tce=UUID=................ was created when installing to the pendrive - check that you don't have both tce=sdc1 and tce=UUID=........

But you should have a tce directory in your pendrive. Try through control panel to select / create the tce directory.

The onboot.lst is (should be) inside the tce directory. You can either populate it manually (mine simply says:
alsa.tcz
vlc.tcz)
or you can create it via control panel -> apps audit -> onboot: you should see a double pane, in the left side with all the extensions you have downloaded, and in the left side, the ones in the onboot.lst - to add one extension, simply click on its name in the left pane, and its name should be copied to the right pane...

[jano]

See also http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6283.msg33456#msg33456

[thane]

Hey Jano, thanks for the tip about the duplicate tce entries in extlinux.conf. I just installed to USB for the first time and put in tce=sda1 (since I'd used that in my old setup booting off CD). Didn't know the installer would take care of that.

[jano]

My pleasure

[semsaudade]

Great! It worked!I changed boot options in Syslinux.cfg in this way:

append initrd=/Tinycore/boot/tinycore.gz quiet max_loop=256 waitusb=5 home=sdc1 tce=sdc1

Then I added manually a tce directory in my / on usb key. Finally used Apps Audit, as suggested by Jano, to specify which applications I wanted to preserve on next reboot.

Thanks a lot for your patience and help!!!!!