Tiny Core Linux
Tiny Core Base => TCB Q&A Forum => Topic started by: asp on February 28, 2011, 07:41:49 PM
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A clean latest TCL on my laptop halts during the boot process with the following message:
touch: /tce/xwbar.lst: No such file or directory
The identical TCL works fine on my desktop. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the issue, but due to the fact that linux does not support this laptop's built in Intel e100 LAN (the firmware is copyright), the only other network interfaces available are the built in Agere wireless, and my add-on USB wireless, neither of which cause boot time message errors as far as I can tell.
I did look around the folders when running TCL on the desktop, but I cannot find anywhere even a folder called /tce/, except possibly in /usr/
Does anyone know of a fix?
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Hi asp
It's looking for the directory used for backup and restore. How are you booting (CD, hard drive, USB)? What boot codes
are you using?
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Hi Rich thanks for your attention to my issue. 8)
A step closer, after a correction to menu.lst (I had the thing set for SATA on the desktop, but the laptop is PATA), specifically changing tce=sda1 to tce=hda1 the error message expands to the following:
touch: /mnt/hda1/tce/xwbar.lst: No such file or directory
My GRUB hard drive boot options are identical to what works on the desktop save the above tce=XXXX change I made:
title TinyCore
kernel (hd0,0)/tinycore/bzImage quiet tinycore tce=hda1
initrd (hd0,0)/tinycore/tinycore.gz
I will add also that the laptop has one single PATA hard disk, containing one single partition.
EDIT: The issue does not occur now after the above change, now I get a long delay, as it IS complaining about the Agere wireless firmware being missing, so both the built in LAN (now disabled in BIOS), and the built in miniPCI Agere WLAN (unable to disable in BIOS) are not supported.
After the delay the boot process rolls on a bit further, the screen clears and I get this final hang-up:
Network device eth0 detected, DHCP broadcasting for IP.
xauth: creating new authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority
and then it hangs.
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Hi asp
Use your other machine to check out the firmware packages using AppBrowser.
E100 is in firmware.tcz. There are also wireless packages.
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Alright and thanks I will do that. It seems TCL will simply not complete the boot process if it cannot find any working NIC, which makes sense.
I pulled the Agere right out of the machine, leaving it with no NIC's at all, and it does not start:
xauth: creating new authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority
A second attempt to boot up using my USB wireless NIC also fails, on USB port 2 (because USB port one is physically damaged). It seems that my initial suspicion that the linux kernel simply cannot cope with a damaged USB port, that having a damaged USB port renders all other USB ports unavailable, unlike Windows, which simpy treats the bad port as an 'unrecognized device' and carries on.
I will try to find a way to forward this to the linux kernel authorities, because this behavior is not exhibited in certain past kernel versions.
EDIT:
Yes infact there may never have been a problem with the e100 once I got the other glitches out of my configuration.
Nevertheless boot process halts after this screen appears:
Network device eth0 detected, DHCP broadcasting for IP.
xauth: creating new authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority
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Doubtful that there would be any relation between any network devices and X failing to start.
You should be able to Ctrl+C to get to console prompt, or if you wait long enough, it might fall back to prompt anyway.
I actually happened to run into 'touch: /tce/xwbar.lst: No such file or directory' when I first time tried to start X in a chroot of an extracted tinycore.gz.
Couldn't remember exactly how I fixed it, but I think I created the file myself by something like 'touch /tmp/tce/xwbar.lst'.
Also, from prompt trying to run 'xsetup' could not harm.
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Thanks for those tips tinypoodle.
So the 'touch:' glitch I realize now was simply a result of me trying to use a tce folder from another TCL setup, with a new virgin setup. Yes, you have witness a formidable faceplant of a meganoob... ::)
I will, after much need sleep, retry a proper clean TCL fresh pure virgin unmolested test, and confirm or deny if there is any USB hangup. I just tried another flavour of linux , and ofcourse there was no problem at all running my nic (after I compiled the driver, FUN!) on my one working USB port.
Thanks again!
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I will, after much need sleep, retry a proper clean TCL fresh pure virgin unmolested test, and confirm or deny if there is any USB hangup.
Booting with options
base norestoreis all you have to do to achieve such ;)
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Thanks. :)
First try with just norestore, no boot, second try with base norestore, no boot.
It stops at the same place, after the screen clear followed by the network lines I've previously posted. A CTRL-C and xsetup at this point invokes no response or activity.
I'm not seeing any error messages, it just stops booting, and I'm not sure how to proceed from this point.
EDIT: For posterity I plugged the LAN cable to the router due to a 'link not ready' message, which removes that message replacing it with 'NET: Registered protocol family 10', which is now the last line before boot process is arrested.
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What exactly happens if you after you hit Ctrl-C?
Also try bootcodes 'nodhcp xsetup'
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OK I CTRL-C and get a prompt, and then I enter 'xsetup' and nothing happens, I can then press CTRL-C again and get the prompt again.
nodchp xsetup also has no apparent affect.
I've tried 5 different linux flavours since my last post here, none exhibit this hang during boot, all make it to desktop but TCL, so something unique is definitely going on here.
I've dissambled the laptop and pulled the built in agere nic, and also tried disabling the LAN in bios, none of these things has any effect on this boot hang.
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Hi asp
1. When you used the 'nodhcp boot code did the DHCP broadcasting for IP message go away?
2. When you hit Ctrl-C what exactly does the prompt look like?
3. If the laptop has a CD drive, try booting a TCL CD. When the Tinycore banner comes up type
tinycore base norestore nodhcp
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Heya Rich
1. 'nodhcp' most certainely does make the DHCP broadcasting messages go away.
2. Ctrl-C yields the following prompt:
^C
X server terminated by an interrupt signal.
tc@box:~$
3. The laptop has NO options to boot from anything other than the primary HD, and PXE
I can tell when the laptop is using CPU hard because of the fan, and so, after the CTRL-C the fan goes off, and then trying 'startx' I can hear the fan come back on and stay on, its doing 'something' ::)
EDIT: My gutt instinct from the start was to play with disabling USB support, except I can't figure out how to make changes persistent (I'm new to linux so I'm looking for something like an overlay save-out like puppy does with lupusave.2fs, but not seeing it yet.
Anyway, I see in puppy, in the dev/usb folder, there are only 2 'hiddevX-X' (hiddev 0-0, hiddev0-1), but in TCL there are infact several more. I wanted to try to delete the ones that puppy doesn't have for a test, but tcl locks me out of deleting anything, and even then it would not persist after a reboot, right?
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Hi asp
OK, just wanted to make sure something silly wasn't going on. Does typing in dmesg provide any
useful information?
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Hi Rich, yea so I went ahead to get some output from dmesg for you, but it all scrolls off the screen and adding -s 500 to dmesg isnt' working (another clue).
This is on a clean TCL. My other built up TCL, I *CAN* use the -s 500 option for dmesg to shrink the ouput. Curious.
So I started doing cd and ls to see what I could, and discovered that when I do 'ls /mnt/hda1' I get nothing at all, but on my built up tcl variant I get a proper directory listing.
Infact 'ls /mnt' on a clean TCL yields 'hda1/' only, but the same command entered into built up TCL version yields 'hda/ hda1/'
So something is way wrong here and I will now go and closely examine various TCL installation tutorials, and try to get a virgin TCL with backup/restore working on my main machine, and only then once that is done I will move that setup over to the laptop and try again, fyi. :)
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You can boot with parameter 'syslog' to log to /var/log/messages.
'/mnt/hda' sounds wrong.
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Hi asp
TCL populates the /mnt directory based on which drives it believes are present. You can redirect the
output of dmesg to a file like this
dmesg > dmesg.txt for example. The next time you post got to Additional Options and you can
attach a copy of the file, don't cut and paste the contents.
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Thanks for the info and tips, 'I'll be back'. 8)