Extlinux Bootloader

Partition the hard drive or USB drive. For more information, see

• Partition a Drive so you can Install more than one Operating System

Install all of the operating systems you want.

Install Tiny Core as explained in one of these guides

• Install Tiny Core on a Hard Drive with Internet
• Install Tiny Core on a Hard Drive without Internet
• Install Tiny Core on a USB Drive with Internet
• Install Tiny Core on a USB Drive without Internet

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.

If you have Windows on the computer, and are installing Tiny Core in another partition, use tc-install.gz, as it will automatically detect Windows, and set up the Extlinux bootloader so you can start either Tiny Core or Windows.

If you want to set it up manually, following is a guide.

Either tc-install.gz or syslinux.tcz needs to be installed in Tiny Core.

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.

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 hard drive, you should have something like

DEFAULT tinycore
LABEL tinycore
KERNEL /boot/bzImage
APPEND initrd=/boot/tinycore.gz quiet opt=sda2 home=sda2 norestore 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 opt=sda2 home=sda2 norestore 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 opt=sda2 home=sda2 norestore tce=UUID="long-number"

LABEL windows
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1

If you have other operating systems installed, you can also add them.

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.

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

If you want to use passwords to prevent other people from logging in to your computer, see Extlinux Passwords.