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[rbacher]

I tried to download the file to run TinyCore on my XO, but the link is dead.  The link given at the beginning of this thread was

ftp. cc. uoc. gr/ mirrors/ linux/ TinyCore_for_XO1 / older_versions/ tinycore_xo. tar. bz2

but it's not working now.  Does anyone know if there is another site where I can get the TinyCore distro adapted for the XO?  I have successfully set up TinyCore on several "regular" computers, and I like how small and fast it is, but those files don't work on the XO (of course).  And now I find out someone has adapted the TinyCore iso file for the XO, but the link is dead!  Where can I get the TinyCore iso for the XO?  Thanks

[mavrothal]

There are (again) hardware issues with the server all this week.
I was told that should be over in a couple of days  but I'll probably upload it (again...)  in one of the file share sites and post here.

[mavrothal]

OK...
I uploaded the latest version (0.2) in Sendspace. The folder also includes  newbe instructions and the announce of the build with more info. 

BTW I was thinking to update to Tinycore 3.x but from what I have tried it so far I do not see any major improvements (for the XO-1) and needs additional modifications in the build scripts. If the available applications for 3.x  keep growing though, I'll reconsider (assuming there is still interest).

[rbacher]

Hey, Muchas Gracias,
I got it up and running!  Only problem (and I'll work on it, maybe I did something wrong) is the wifi -- the iwlist + scan command works fine and my wifi shows up, but iwconfig won't add my wifi.  I have done this manually on several other computers running TinyCore, and it worked perfectly the first time on them, so I am bewildered (especially since my wifi shows up in iwlist).  Any ideas?  And Thanks again

[rbacher]

I got it connected manually.  I forgot to enter the "udhcpc" command when I did it manually.

And it also now connects automatically with bootlocal.sh -- not sure why it didn't do so the first two or three times (I did remove the key from the iwconfig line, since my wifi is open)

But -- maybe this is something different -- near the end of the boot process, after "Loading Tiny Core Application Extensions" and after the wifi connection, the boot hangs for a while and shows the following line four times:

xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority

After the fourth time showing that line, the TinyCore desktop comes up.  Any ideas why it hangs for 20 or 30 seconds at that point?  Thanks

[mavrothal]

xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority

After the fourth time showing that line, the TinyCore desktop comes up.  Any ideas why it hangs for 20 or 30 seconds at that point?  Thanks

No, not really
Was doing this all the time  but I thought that it rather has to do with the speed of the geode driver and the XO in general. In other machines Tinycore is almost instant so I never had the chance to notice this double entry. Do you know either way?

[rbacher]

   The problem referred to in my previous post (the screen showing "xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority" four times and taking about 20 seconds delay in boot) no longer happens.  I have no idea why.  I am not aware of anything I did different

   So now I can boot okay into microcore.  It is the fastest boot of any of the OS's I have tried (I have also tried sugar, teapot's ubuntu, debxo, and fedora 11) but microcore needs an xsystem or desktop or something that will allow me load the Google Chrome Browser (previous experience when I used Teapot's Ubuntu for several months showed Chrome worked much faster than Firefox on my XO, and I was very happy with it).

  There are instructions at http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Adding+a+Desktop+to+MicroCore but they didn't work on the XO.  They did work on a Dell Mini, so I guess it's something (again) that's different with the XO hardware.

  What I was trying to accomplish was (1) fast boot + (2) google chrome browser, period, nothing else (no abiword or gnumeric or anything else, etc).  A very minimal set up.  I will give it a shot later.  All of this is fun to play around with but it takes alot of time and I always run into a lot of dead ends.

[mavrothal]

   The problem referred to in my previous post (the screen showing "xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/tc/.Xauthority" four times and taking about 20 seconds delay in boot) no longer happens.  I have no idea why.  I am not aware of anything I did different

   So now I can boot okay into microcore.  It is the fastest boot of any of the OS's I have tried (I have also tried sugar, teapot's ubuntu, debxo, and fedora 11) but microcore needs an xsystem or desktop or something

I'm confused. This is a Tinycore build. Not Microcore. You should be getting into a desktop like the one shown in this picture. Are you?. If not and in conjunction with the missing  "/home/tc/.Xauthority" warning I would guess you have removed both Xfbdev.tcz and Xorg-7.4_xo.tcz from your onboot.list check and add either one to get a desktop.

that will allow me load the Google Chrome Browser (previous experience when I used Teapot's Ubuntu for several months showed Chrome worked much faster than Firefox on my XO, and I was very happy with it).

Google chrome is not available in the Tinycore repositories but you can get the open source version Chromium Browser that is available and actually very up-to-date (7/2010)

[rbacher]

   I wasn't clear.  Sorry.  Upon reading my last post again, I see it was confusing.

   I ran both Tiny Core and Microcore. I ran Tiny Core first by using the file you uploaded to Sendspace, and Yes, I got a screen like the one you link to in your last email (and I also installed Google Chrome, and it ran fine).  I have run Tiny Core on several other computers and I like it.  That's why I decided to try it on the XO.  I was hoping for a fast boot, and it was a little faster than Teapot's Ubuntu or DebXO, but not alot faster.

   So I decided to try Microcore (plus whatever Xserver files are needed for Google Chrome Browser) and then see what the boot time would be.  I found an iso for Microcore.  I think it was from http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/tinycore/ but I don't remember for sure. Wherever I got it, it worked, and I got to the console command line.  The boot time was very fast, and I was hopeful that a few Xserver files would not delay the boot time, but I couldn't get past the console command line.  Your TinyCore installation does it automatically, but I couldn't figure out how to do it from Microcore.

  There are instructions for adding a desktop to Microcore at http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Adding+a+Desktop+to+MicroCore but they didn't work on the XO.  I was able to get them to work on a Dell Mini, so I guess it's something (again) that's different with the XO hardware.  I will attack the problem again later

[mavrothal]

Aaa,... OK.... Now I see
Well, the instructions you refer to will not work because neither Xvesa (not supported by the XO-1 OFW in Linux) nor Xorg-7.4.tcz (needs a modified xorg.conf-try "X -configure") work on the XO right out of the box. Only Xfbdev.tcz.
So after you get microcore going and have a connection just "tce-load -wi Xfbdev.tcz". After it loads  "xsetup" and select option 1 for mouse. Then "startx" and you are on the desktop. You will also need one of flwm.tcz/jwm.tcz/fluxbox.tcz/icewm.tcz etc for window management and probably one of Xfe.tcz/pcmanfm.tcz/rox-filer.tcz or other file manager.
Also if you used Quizol's files make sure you remove the word "text" from the /mnt/sda1/boot/olpc.fth file so will allow X to load after reboot. If not, will stay in console. Just type "sudo sed -i 's/ text//' /mnt/sda1/boot/olpc.fth" and is taken care of.
However, even without it, if everything is in place, "startx" should get you to a desktop. Are you getting there?

Now for Chromium you'll need a bunch of dependencies including gtk2 and alsasound, so by the time you have everything you get a really big and slower installation.
In general I find that Tiny/micro-core is fast on the XO as long as you keep it tiny... If you need to load 50-60 extension is comparable to Teabuntu/Deborah both in boot time and performance.

[rbacher]

Thanks for the help.  I'll try it tonight, am at work (lunch) right now.  And if I get to the desktop, maybe I'll try Midori instead of Chrome.  Midori was my favorite on the XO before Chrome

[rbacher]

okay, I started microcore and connected to wifi.  I entered "tce-load -wi Xfbdev.tcz" and downloaded the file.  So far so good, but then the screen showed this:

Xfbdev.tcz: OK
[   721.036437]  loop: module loaded
mount:  mounting /dev/loop  on  /tmp/tcloop/Xfbdev  failed:  No such file or directory

I'll try it again.  Any ideas?

[rbacher]

Maybe this can help -- I ran the tce-load command several times and then looked in the /mnt/sda1/tce/ directory.  It now has both files Xfbdev.tcz and Xfbdev.tcz.md5.txt.  Is there some command to run them locally instead of continuing to run the tce-load command?

[rbacher]

As a test, I ran "tce-load -wi nano.tcz" since nano is such a basic little program.  I got the same error message.

Continuing with the "nano" test, I created an "onboot.lst" file in /mnt/sda1/tce and I put "nano.tcz" in the file.  When I rebooted, I got this error message:

Warning! Errors occurred during the loading of the extensions.
mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on /tmp/tcloop/nano failed: No such device
occurred while loading:  /mnt/sda1/tce/optional/nano.tcz
Press Enter key.

[mavrothal]

Are you still using quozl's  microcore-2.8-xo-1-2010-01-28?
The kernel in this does not support squashfs so the tcz extensions can not be loaded (that's why I had to redo the build in the first place)

However, newer olpc kernels are fine so you can use his script or mine (now that the server is up again  ) to build your own, changing xo-1 olpc build to the latest "build-10.1.2_xo1-302", instead of the original "build-802" and the  xo-1 kernel to "2.6.31_xo1-20100714.1740.1.olpc.1eac9a942c72b10" instead of "2.6.25-20090223.1.olpc.69098d87d56945c" or "`uname -r`".

Another thing you want to change in quozl's microcore is to cange "superuser" with "text" in /mnt/sda1/boot/olpc.fth", since extension permissions should be tc/staff and not root/root that will be if you download as superuser. You also may want to add  "waitusb=5" since a lot of time the usb stick is not detected immediately and your extensions do not load.