Remaster

[jrock2004]

I saw the wiki on how to remaster your own copy. Question is where do I put the tce folder? Where do I get those files to push over?

[mikshaw]

before giving any answer, I think we should make sure we understand what you want.  Remastering is making changes to tinycore.gz and/or bzImage.  When you speak of a tce directory you're talking about an external directory of tinycore extensions...that directory can theoretically be anywhere, on any media, and doesn't have much to do with remastering.

[SublimePorte]

Not sure if my question is related to what jrock was after.

But I am wanting to know how to remaster with extensions added into the remaster.

So for instance, I follow the wiki instructions for remastering, and extract tinycore.gz into a directory. Can I now just extract tce's into this directory also? And when I re-compress it back up and then boot it, the extensions will be loaded?

The main reason I want to do this is to increase boot time, as extensions seem to take up most of my boot time.

I did try it, and minefield for instance is there, but it's missing gtk libraries. Python is there, but again can't find libraries.

[mikshaw]

You can theoretically just extract TCE files into the file system, but it might not be very reliable.  Most extensions put some or all of their files in /usr/local, which would cause some of those apps to break if used in certain situations.  Then there's the point you mentioned about dependencies.  Also keep in mind that the whole tinycore.gz is loaded into ram, so that might also be an issue.  Personally I use PPI mode, which mounts a directory of installed applications to /usr/local.  There are still a few extensions that I load as TCE, but that only takes a second.  Using PPI also saves the ram that would otherwise be used by loading all the TCE files at runtime (or by extracting them into a remaster as you have suggested).  When my /usr/local gets to a point where I'm completely (or mostly completely) satisfied with it, I'm going to try turning it into an ISO or similar file to hopefully prevent the rot that roberts has so often warned against.

The 1.2 release has apparently greatly decreased the load time of TCZ extensions, so you might consider trying that format instead of TCE.

[roberts]

Remastering Tiny Core makes sense when certain libraries and modules are needed in core.
But to do the typical remaster for applications does not give much advantage.

Of course it can be done. But...
Everything from tinycore.gz is loaded into memory. You no longer have choices as you do now.
The time to load into memory whether at boot from compressed cpio or from a compressed tar or ziofs/cramfs is not much different. The concept behind Tiny Core is that Tiny Core is the engine.

In the beginning we had thought about offering Tiny Core versions with certain collections of appllications. We decided not to, with not much different load tiime and a hit on ram requiremens (like only having tces) , but to offer many more choices instead.

Use the optional directory ( located under your tce directory ) is highly advantageous. Only place the apps that you need upon each and every boot into your tce directory, place apps that are used on occasion into optional directory, i.e, perhaps, compiletc, or oo2. Then when those apps are needed use appsbrowser File>Install Optional

Note when using appsbrowser, you can download directly to the optional directory by using the Download Only option. When using this option the optional directory will be automatically setup if needed.

For faster load times, using tcz is faster than using tce and, of course, using a PPI is no load time.

[jrock2004]

What I am doing is trying to setup tony core so when you boot you have all the apps you need. No need to go into the app browser. I thought remastering is the way to do that. Is this not correct?

[mikshaw]

It's the great thing (or one of the great things) about extensions....they are as flexible as you need them to be.  Create a directory named "tce" in the top level of a harddrive partition or removable media and put the extensions (NOT extracted) you want to load at boot in there.  The directory should be automatically detected when you boot.  As roberts said, adding a directory in tce called "optional"  is a good place to put extensions that you don't need every time you boot...they will be immediately available for installation from the desktop.

[jrock2004]

tried that and it failed. It boots and opera is not there

[tobiaus]

What I am doing is trying to setup tony core so when you boot you have all the apps you need. No need to go into the app browser. I thought remastering is the way to do that. Is this not correct?

for example if you want to create a live cd that has your extensions on it. i think more and more people are using usb so they aren't even thinking about this. the way that's usually recommended is to just use another session to add the packages when you write the cd, then tc can load them (as packages, the way it should) from the cd. for my use i would still edit the iso to add them, for example in isomaster, which is not available yet in tc.

[jrock2004]

So you are saying is boot into tc. Then install what you want plug in a USB drive and create an ISO and put it on the USB drive?

[tobiaus]

it's a little more involved than that. i've used isomaster to add files to an iso before, i just tried it with tc's iso and it didn't work.

i've never used the wiki or scripts on the forum on tc, in the future i'll try them. i want to mount an iso (i know how to do that) make a list (minus the boot image,) use mkisofs with the list, and the contents of a new tce folder, and -b thebootimage -o mytc.iso (i've been looking at the mkmydsl script that robert created.) no matter what it looks involved, i think the remaster script here does more than i want but it's probably the first thing you should try.

[SublimePorte]

Well for my usage  I think remastering the way I described is best. I need to install 3 or 4 packages, which would be best to have added into tinycore.gz

They include minefield and python, both of which seemed to cause problems with the dependancies.

Questions:

1) Is there a way to check the dependancies of a certain tce?

2) If I extract minefield for instance into my extracted tinycore.gz and all the tce's of  it's dependancies and then re-compress it, should it work on the booted tc system?

[mikshaw]

1) I think they're working on a more visible method, but in the meantime you can go to an extension mirror and look for  extension_name.tce.dep
For example, if you want  the deps of gtk2.tcel, get the address of that package and add ".dep" to the end of it:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/tce/gtk2.tcel.dep
If it a package that has no dependencies, there is no dep file, and you get a 404 error.

2) Did you read what roberts said in response to your previous post?

[jrock2004]

I install the apps and remaster tc. Reboot and some of the stuff I remaster is there except the applications.

[jrock2004]

Ok I found these instructions

Optionally, include your extension/app directory on the kernel line (read about extensions at the TC Core Concepts page). Specify the device as the information after /dev/. Something like:
kernel /boot/bzImage tce=device/tcedirectoryname

1) Will this work with syslinux way of booting?
2) second the device should be replaced with what exactly?
     i) I meanwould I do sda1/tcedirectory I say sda1 cause that is the what the partition is labeled when I boot up in tc and do a fdisk -l
     ii) Or in Ubuntu the disk is labeled sdb1; should it be that or should it be sda/devicename or sdb/devicename

Thanks