Make TC a rolling release

[alu]

how about making TC a style of rolling-release linux by making new bzImage and tinycore.gz ones downloadable via appbrowser?

[gerald_clark]

The problem is figuring out where they would go.
There is nothing to tell you where the boot loader found them.
There could be multiple versions so you can't just scan all drives.

Now, if you have a way to identify the exact pzImage and xxxxcore.gz files booted,
please let me know.

[alu]

I thought about something less complicated than automatically placing the images to a specific location -- just make new images also available via appbrowser, which would enable everyone to update their TC by downloading them and saving them where it is suitable for each one.

[robc]

I think having a download option for the gzs and bzImage would be convenient. Perhaps it would be more suited in appsaudit then appbrowser? The user could choose whether they want to get micro or tiny and it could save to the tce directory.

[vinnie]

it would be nice

[tinypoodle]

Couldn't a simple script of type

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
wget -c http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/release/distribution_files/bzImage && wget -c http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/release/distribution_files/tinycore.gz
achieve such a goal while giving full control to user where to save to and without creating potential complications?

I think it would make no sense to download kernel and initrd to default tce_dir (/tmp/tce) and might rather confuse new users.

[curaga]

IIRC there's also a conflict if one keeps *.gz files in the tce dir (they get loaded by the gz loader at boot).

[Guy]

The difficulty with doing an automatic update, is that different people use different configurations, and different bootloaders.

At the present time, I use Grub legacy. A script could be written to download Tinycore, and even add a new entry in Grub.

Some people use Grub 2.

Some use other bootloaders.

There are too many variables in the way Tiny Core is set up by different people, to automate the process.


This is how I have menu.lst setup.

title   Tiny Core 3.5
root   (hd0,0)
kernel   /tc3.5/bzImage quiet opt=hda1 tce=hda1 home=hda1 noautologin norestore
initrd   /tc3.5/tinycore.gz

title   Tiny Core 3.4.1
root   (hd0,0)
kernel   /tc3.4.1/bzImage quiet opt=hda1 tce=hda1 home=hda1 noautologin norestore
initrd   /tc3.4.1/tinycore.gz

title   Tiny Core 3.3
root   (hd0,0)
kernel   /tc3.3/bzImage quiet opt=hda1 tce=hda1 home=hda1 noautologin norestore
initrd   /tc3.3/tinycore.gz

This makes it very easy to install the next version.

It would also be very easy to automate the update process with this setup.

[actionbastard]

So does this mean the only way to update is to physically install the new versions (via disk usb etc.)

It would be nice to be able to update through internet connection.

[tinypoodle]

You wouldn't have to install physically to update a netboot server, though of course that would only affect clients booted after the update.

In order to update a running system on the fly, perhaps you could look into switch_root as or pivot_root as a potential approach.
However, it might be safer first to just chroot to an initrd extracted into a dir, if resources allow to do so.

[curaga]

So does this mean the only way to update is to physically install the new versions (via disk usb etc.)

It would be nice to be able to update through internet connection.

You can update via net just fine, download the latest kernel and initrd, overwrite the old ones with the new ones, reboot.