Tiny Core on eBox 3300MX

[Tuftec]

Hi All,

I am a bit of a novice when it comes to Linux, particularly Tiny Core and I am new to this forum.

I am trying to get TC to run reliably on an eBox 3300MX device. This device is built around a SOC core known as the MSTI PXI-1000. It is essentially a cut down 586 core.

I need to create a very reliable, low cost device.

I have been able to sucessfully get Puppy Linux and even a cut down XP version running on the box but I am having some difficulties with TC.

It sort of works, but on boot it flags a number of errors to do with the USB ports (error 62 and others).

I can boot from USB (with errors) but if I boot from another device (HDD) I find that I can not mount any USB devices. This all works perfectly if I run Puppy.

I want to use TC as ultimately I need to run the entire application from RAM (only 512kB) and boot from a low cost, small SD card (2MB).
TC on face value appears to meet the majority of my criteria.

Details of the device I plan to use can be found here
http://www.compactpc.com.tw/ebox-3300MX.htm

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Peter.

[gerald_clark]

The eBox3300 has non-standard CF interface and will not boot from CF.

[tinypoodle]

Besides from that no way to fit MC on 2MB.   

[curaga]

How about posting the dmesg? Also, did you mean both units in the level above (kb -> mb, mb -> gb)?

[Tuftec]

Oops.

I must be stuck in a time warp.
On board RAM should have been 512Mbytes
SD should have been 2Gbytes.

The EBox can boot from both SD and USB.

The testing I have been doing is on USB at this point as it is convenient.
I will try to post the dmesg if I can work out how to do that.

[Rich]

Hi Tuftec
Open a terminal and type  dmesg > dmesg.txt
When you go to post a message click on  Additional Options  and attach the file

[Tuftec]

Here is the dmesg file when booting from USB.

[Tuftec]

Another observation.
Even after booting from USB, I find that the USB drive is not available and is not mounted.
I have a HDD currently in the system that has 3 partitions (sda1,sda2 & sda3).
sda3 appears to be mounted after boot (which is my Linux partition. Puppy + TC).
The first 2 partitions have various flavours of MS Windows on them.

[Tuftec]

Here is the same dmesg file when booting Puppy and then inserting a USB stick.
Puppy seems to recognise the USB stick.

[Juanito]

That - not mounting unneeded partitions on boot - is normal behavior?

[Tuftec]

I am confused.
I guess that my novice status shows.
I just did another test.
If I plug in my bootable TC Linux USB stick, it appears that TC does not recognise it as mountable.
If I plug in another USB stick that I use on Windows then TC recognises it.
I suspect that the format on my USB stick is causing my problems.
When I put TC onto it I formatted using the HDD option. Maybe I should have used another option?

[Juanito]

When your usb sticks are plugged in, what does this give:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo fdisk -l

[gerald_clark]

TC will not automatically mount a partition unless it is the partition that contains the persistent tce directory.
USB partitions with tce directories will not be found unless you include the waitusb=10 option.

[tinypoodle]

Here is the same dmesg file when booting Puppy and then inserting a USB stick.
Puppy seems to recognise the USB stick.

You seem to have USB device errors there as well (plus fs errors).

[Tuftec]

Weird!!!!

Sometimes when plugging in my TC USB boot stick after removing my Windows USB stick TC recognises it.
When the USB stick is recognised it shows up when you use fsck. When it is not recognised, fsck does not test it.
I am using waitusb=15 to try and allow time for the stick to be seen.

When the TC stick is recognised, comes up as 250MB and FAT16. My other USB stick is larger 4GB and formatted as Fat32.

I think the errors on boot are possibly due to slight differences with the USB controller implementation on the Vortex SOC.

Peter.