Tiny Core Linux
Tiny Core Extensions => TCE Talk => Topic started by: vinceASPECT on March 04, 2026, 05:15:48 AM
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Hello forum,
If i load the NTFS 3g and associated extensions..........
Does this then allow me to .......Read and Write........ to any NTFS formatted partition or drive right?
Should i first create a TCE or TCL empty directory on the mentioned NTFS partition?
i know it's likely not widely used...........but the ntfs idea seemed to work fine in the past for putting extensions there and then loading them from the ntfs location
thx
C
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Hey vinceASPECT,
The NTFS package should enable you to both read and write to NTFS partitions. However, I think TinyCore has to be remastered in order to get it to use an NTFS partition to load extensions from it because NTFS is not part of the ramdisk image (hence the remastering of it to include NTFS support during the boot process). Without this step, the ramdisk image has no knowledge of how to mount an NTFS partition. Unless the readonly NTFS support was included in the Linux kernel (which I'm not sure of).
As an alternative, I could create a hook in the pax package so that a script could be called to redirect the TCE directory to an NTFS partition and the package loading could take place there. The only two packages you would need in the original TCE directory would be NTFS and pax.
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Hello,
I think you are right and the kernel has support .... Because I have had it working
In the past
Thx
C
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Looking at the mounted drive for a test VM shows the TCE directory tree:
/mnt/sda1/tce/...
So I would say to copy that tree (everything after the /mnt/sda1 prefix above) on your NTFS partition from its present location. From there you will need to re-symlink your /etc/sysconfig/tcedir file to the /mnt/sda1/tce equivalent location of your NTFS partition. Afterwards you'll probably have to run a backup of your profile to save the changes. That part I'm not overly familiar with as I don't use TC and my fork has permanent storage based on partition labels. Reboot and see if it works.
Just to be safe, I'd backup the original symlink in case you need to restore it.
These are just my assumptions, so proceed with caution.
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To use a tce directory on an NTFS partition, it used to be required to use ntfs3g to gain read/write access to the partition. The problem was that, by mounting ntfs-3g.tcz, you then had a file (the extension itself) open on the NTFS partition so you could no longer remount the partition to gain read/write access to it. The solution was to convert ntfs-3g.tcz to an initrd (.gz) file and load it along with core.gz (what I call a :lazy man's remaster - the only kind for me!) or, to remaster it into core.gs itself. By doing this, ntfs3g is brought into play before the tce directory's partition is mounted in the first place.
Since a few years ago, the read/write NTFS driver has been built in to the base (into the kernel itself, I think) so ntfs-3g is no longer necessary in order to use an NTFS drive for the tce directory, I think irs still considered "bad form" to have the tce directory on ntfs because ntfs is not "linux filesystem" (different file ownership an permissions mechanisms), but is does work (I presume it -still- works, though I haven't tried such a setup for a long time.
I note that ntfs-3g.tcz is still in the (x86_64) repo and was updated as of a couple of years ago, so it likely is still useful for something. The process of converting it to a loadable .gz file was fairly straight forward, though I don't remember the details of it. At one point, someone had provided such a file and it was useful without change cross several Tiny Core versions. Search the forum for more details.