Install TinyCore without optical drive with grub2 bootloader on to a spare partition

Assumptions

Try at own risk, assumes you have wired internet. Assumes 32 bit install and host has grub2 bootloader. The data-partition should not have a folder called opt, tce. My spare partition has no home folder but it may be possible, to use a separate host /home partition but not tested by me. On my host, the spare partition mounts under /a, which is non-FHS. Hopefully yours will be called /mnt/sdx, and mine is sda2.

Steps could be modified if you use the multicore distro.

On host computer, create files and their temporary permissions

They are called temporary permissions, because on reboot, TC will fix them up

mkdir /a/tce /tmp/unpack && cd /tmp
wget http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/x86/release/TinyCore-current.iso

Remember to change mkdir /a – to whatever your pathway to spare partition is please

Become root eg sudo su or su, or prefix below commands with sudo and unpack iso to obtain some files

su 
cd /tmp
mount -o loop TinyCore-current.iso unpack

I won't attempt to create user tc or group staff so TC fixes this on first boot.

Now copy some files.

cd unpack && cp boot/core.gz /a && cp boot/vmlinuz /a
cd cde && cp -R * /a/tce

Not sure what your HOST defaults are…let's make the folder tce world read-write-execute
and readable for kernel and core

cd /a && chmod 777 -R tce
chmod 444 vmlinuz core.gz

Host grub2 actions

Edit our grub2 file, change leafpad to your preferred terminal or gui text editor please.

leafpad /etc/grub.d/40_custom

Consider adding extra boot codes as well from TC wiki. boot codes

—————–copy and paste ———-

menuentry "TC hard-drive" {
set root=(hd0,msdos2)
linux /vmlinuz tce=sda2 opt=sda2 waitusb=5 showapps
initrd /core.gz
}

————end of paste……there is one empty line below the “ } ”

Change hd0,msdos2 (first hard drive, sda2) to where-ever your spare partition is.

save file and run

update-grub
cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg (to check it landed ok)
reboot

good luck

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