Recent Posts

21

TCB Talk / Re: Re: Tiny Core v17.0 upgrade issues

« Last post by Paul_123 on April 24, 2026, 06:58:08 PM »

Through all this, you still have not managed to capture any sort of log or crash dump.  You likely need a direct console connection on a monitor and local keyboard.

22

TCB Q&A Forum / Re: Installation fails on Pentium MMX laptop

« Last post by rodders on April 24, 2026, 05:15:57 PM »

If you boot a system information tool like AIDA16, such as from The Ultimate Boot CD, it might tell you the model of chipset for the PCI bus and the IDE controller. Then you could look them up to see if Linux actually has a driver, or whether there might be a driver in earlier versions of Linux which has since been removed.

Its an SiS chipset and its the SiS 5103 that handles IDE. Not sure how to find out if that's supported with a driver.

23

TCB Q&A Forum / Re: Installation fails on Pentium MMX laptop

« Last post by rodders on April 24, 2026, 05:13:33 PM »

As patrikg suggested, you could look through the BIOS.

Unfortunately the BIOS is very basic with no options to tweak the IDE settings, it doesn't even recognise the CDROM drive.

24

TCB Talk / Re: Upgrading TC 14.0 to 17.0?

« Last post by nurbles on April 24, 2026, 04:55:05 PM »

Thanks Rich!  Everything went smoothly and my system is now running Core64 17.0.  It feels like it is taking almost twice as long to boot, but that is purely subjective, since it didn't occur to me to take any before measurements.  Regardless, it boots in about a minute, which is good enough for our needs since reboots are very rare and typically only when troubleshooting hardware issues or updating our software on the box.

Thanks again, you're the greatest!

25

TCB Talk / Re: Tiny Core v17.0 upgrade issues

« Last post by Stefann on April 24, 2026, 03:49:40 PM »

try upgrade tc 16 ,maybe can shrink this problem

I thought about that but that would not help me.
Just to "not have crashes" I could simply stay on TC15. But.... Than I would miss out on upgrades.
Getting upgrades is the whole point of getting to TC to begin with. I started on DSL in 2008 but DSL quickly stopped doing upgrades.
2 years ago I really had to move to a newer OS. Without upgrades I had no https and missed lots of libraries on gcc, php, python.
So... getting OS updates is important.
A stepping stone on TC16 would not give other insights.
Only when its clear which component has the error it makes sense to figure out whether that component broke from 15 to 16 or from 16 to 17.

26

TCB Talk / Re: Tiny Core v17.0 upgrade issues

« Last post by Stefann on April 24, 2026, 03:44:18 PM »

Hi,
I appreciate a lot that you are reading my reports, I can sure use any help I'm getting.

Yes,...
I'm opening the file descriptor at the start of my program and than never close it:

Code: [Select]

fd = open("/dev/ttyUSB0", O_RDWR);
My home automation program (originally) simply keeps reading from it.
Before each read it did checks whether there was data with a select command.
The fd remains the same, that never changes, so as far as I know nothing increments and reaches a limit

Code: [Select]

call this as part of forever loop:
{ static char buf[BUFSIZE+1];
   fd_set fd_check;   
   struct timeval wait = {0};
 
  FD_ZERO(&fd_check);
  FD_SET(fd, &fd_check);
  select(fd+1, &fd_check, NULL, NULL, &wait);
  if (FD_ISSET(fd, &fd_check)  )
  { j = read(fd, &buf[i], BUFSIZE-i);
    ... process results...
   }
   other commands...
}


So.. I think in principle THIS should work, and actually it does on TC15.

However...
You are very right that "if I would open other pipes without closing" I could get in trouble.
Yes.. it's not very safely programmed, it does not include the range check.

I never intentionally keep opening files without closing when I no longer need them.
What I meant is that I open "this specific file" and keep reading without ever closing.
In itself "that is not strange", I'm actively using it.
But if "it collects some garbage over time", it never gets a fresh start.

Anyway, last experiment was to "close & reopen" every 15mins. Its seems that that about doubled the time to crash but it still crashes.

Thanks for the input, I can include a logging on number of fd's when I do a next compilation.
"never intentionally" is different from "absolutely sure I did not"
For now I keep it running. Its 13 hrs down the road now... And it's almost bedtime here. Tomorrow morning I will know whether it at least passed the "15hr average crash milestone"

27

TCB Talk / Re: Upgrading TC 14.0 to 17.0?

« Last post by Rich on April 24, 2026, 01:34:11 PM »

Hi nurbles

... So I guess I can just copy the two primary OS files, reboot and update the very few extensions I use afterward.

Yes. Then just run:

Code: [Select]

update-everythingand it will update all of your extensions.

28

TCB Talk / Re: Upgrading TC 14.0 to 17.0?

« Last post by nurbles on April 24, 2026, 11:18:32 AM »

Thanks for the link!  Upgrading the extensions was always part of the plan, but I had thought I could do that after booting the upgraded OS.

After running the commands on the page you linked to look for kernel-specific extensions, I found that I have none at all.  Of course, that was after I discovered that my regular user account couldn't even see the directory being searched.  But a quick 'sudo -i' and I was able to execute the search commands.  Still, no results.  So I guess I can just copy the two primary OS files, reboot and update the very few extensions I use afterward.

29

TCB Talk / Re: Upgrading TC 14.0 to 17.0?

« Last post by Rich on April 24, 2026, 09:49:51 AM »

Hi nurbles
You should also update your extensions.
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=28008.msg181492#msg181492

30

TCB Talk / Re: Tiny Core v17.0 upgrade issues

« Last post by Rich on April 24, 2026, 09:45:18 AM »

Hi Stefann

... I got a tip from my brother that "SELECT" is a quite complicated kernel call.
I'm using SELECT to check that the pipe is ready for read but I can just as well call read from it in nonblocking mode without checking.
So... I now changed that...
- removed the SELECT
- read in non-blocking mode ...

You mentioned in a previous post you were opening files without
closing them. If you were using those file descriptors with select(),
that could be a problem:

Code: [Select]

C_Programs/AutoCursor/AutoCursor.c:     int fdmax=0;                                    // Highest file descriptor select() should monitor.
C_Programs/AutoCursor/AutoCursor.c:             select((fdmax + 1), &Dcursor, NULL, NULL, NULL);Select is limited to somewhere around 1024 file descriptors. If you keep
opening the same file over and over again, you will eventually reach
that limit and bad things things will happen. You can test for this fairly
easily. When you open a file for select() to monitor, compare the file
descriptor to FD_SETSIZE:

Code: [Select]

if(file_descriptor >= FD_SETSIZE)
{
     print error message
     exit program
}