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Table of Contents
Select which Operating System to Start using Extlinux
Partition the Drive
Partition the hard drive or USB drive. For more information, see
Install the Operating Systems
Install all of the operating systems you want.
Install Tiny Core as explained in one of these guides
Install Tiny Core in a primary partition, as Extlinux needs to be in a primary partition.
If Tiny Core is installed using one of these methods, Extlinux will be installed. It just needs some modifications to start other operating systems.
The syslinux.tcz extension needs to be installed
The syslinux.tcz extension needs to be installed in Tiny Core, and loaded.
Copy vesamenu.c32 and chain.c32 to extlinux
To copy vesamenu.c32 and chain.c32 to extlinux, open the terminal and type
sudo su cp -p /usr/local/share/syslinux/chain.c32 /mnt/sda2/boot/extlinux cp -p /usr/local/share/syslinux/vesamenu.c32 /mnt/sda2/boot/extlinux
In this example, Tiny Core is installed in sda2. If you are using a partition other than sda2, change as appropriate.
Edit extlinux.conf
To start the editor, open the terminal and type
sudo editor
Open the file /mnt/sda2/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
If using a partition other than sda2, use the correct partition.
If installed to a USB drive, you should have something like
DEFAULT tinycore LABEL tinycore KERNEL /boot/bzImage APPEND initrd=/boot/tinycore.gz quiet waitusb=5:UUID="long-number" tce=UUID="long-number"
To have a menu for selecting other operating systems, edit it to be like this
UI vesamenu.c32 MENU TITLE Tiny Core Bootloader TIMEOUT 50 DEFAULT tinycore LABEL tinycore KERNEL /boot/bzImage APPEND initrd=/boot/tinycore.gz quiet waitusb=5:UUID="long-number" tce=UUID="long-number"
To be able to boot either Tiny Core or Windows, edit it to be like this
UI vesamenu.c32 MENU TITLE Tiny Core Bootloader TIMEOUT 50 DEFAULT tinycore LABEL tinycore KERNEL /boot/bzImage APPEND initrd=/boot/tinycore.gz quiet waitusb=5:UUID="long-number" tce=UUID="long-number" LABEL windows KERNEL chain.c32 APPEND hd0 1
If you have other operating systems installed, you can also add them.
Notes
If installed to a hard drive, the APPEND line in Tiny Core should be different. It should be correct if you followed one of these installation guides.
TIMEOUT 50: This determines how long the bootloader will wait before starting the first operating system, in tenths of a second. If 50 is used, it will wait 5 seconds. You may change this.
APPEND hd0 1: In this example, Windows is installed in sda1 or hda1. hd0 1 is the same as sda1 or hda1. If Windows in installed in sda2, use hd0 2. If in another partition, use the correct partition.
If using the Extlinux bootloader, the partition containing Extlinux, needs to be Active or Boot.
The Active or Boot partition can be changed after installing operating systems, by running GParted, selecting the partition, and setting the flag. This is easy using Parted Magic, which may be downloaded from http://www.digitalincursion.net/partedmagic/
A text based menu, menu.c32 can be used instead of vesamenu.c32.
Background Image
To have a background image in Extlinux, you need a suitable image, 640×480 pixels, in PNG, JPEG or LSS16 format. Copy it to the same directory as extlinux.conf.
Add the following line to extlinux.conf.
MENU BACKGROUND image_name
Use Passwords in Extlinux
If you want to use passwords to prevent other people from logging in to your computer, see Extlinux Passwords.
