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This guide is intended to be detailed enough for beginners to follow. It is based on my recent experience as a Linux newbie installing Micro Core 64 with a Micro Core live CD on a desktop PC and on a hard drive with Windows installations on every primary partition and a third party (neither ntloader nor grub) boot loader in the boot sector. For non-multiboot installations or 32 bit installations YMMV.
A Micro Core installation is unlike that of most Linux installations. Only 5 or so files need to be copied to the drive. So it is incredibly simple and fast. The process consists of booting to a live cd, making some directories, copying some files, and installing a boot loader. The whole install could take as little as 10 minutes. In order to avoid confusion for ultra-beginners I will use a $<space>command or #<space>command format. Whatever comes after the $ or # is what you type. « » indicates a changing parameter that you have to fill in yourself. I will enter what I used. I will also bold whatever text is actually to be typed in.
Pre-install:
1. Download and burn to CD the microcore_current.iso file from the main downloads page.
2. Download bzImage64 and microcore64.gz from http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/3.x/release/distribution_files
3. Save the 2 files on a partition that will be easy for you to identify later by size or type. I would recommend a usb pendrive. Preferably not formatted with NTFS.
4. Put the microcore live cd in the drive and reboot. If your CDRom drive is not set to boot first you will have to change that in BIOS.
5. Hit ENTER when prompted to get to a console prompt. Do not enter any boot code options.
6. Check your partitions with fdisk and identify the sdxy ID for both the partition you want to install Micro Core 64 on and the partition that contains bzImage64 and microcore64.gz:
$ fdisk -l
7. Mount those 2 partitions:
$ mount /mnt/«sda7»
$ mount /mnt/«sdl1» (sda7 is my micro core linux partition and sdl1 is my pendrive)
Main Install:
Now we are ready to begin the actual installation process. While we are still logged in as user tc let's do the temp installations. These will not be permanent. When you reboot they will be gone. They will only be installed to the ram disk. I chose to install jed, an easy to use text mode text editor because I am not familiar with using vi. If you are familiar with vi you can skip the jed installation
1. Install grub and, if you are not familiar with vi, a text editor of your choice. I think 'jed' is a nice alternative.
$ ab grub
This will lead you to a screen with some applications listed. You type the number that precedes the listing you want to install. In this case the package you want is 'grub-0.97-splash.tcz'. Enter the number that precedes it. A readme file will automatically be displayed. Press 'Q' to exit from that and then 'I' to install grub. If you are not familiar with the vi editor then enter 'S' to do a new search. Enter 'jed' and install that the same way you installed grub. Type 'Q' to exit the application browser.
2. Login as root:
$ sudo su
3. Make your boot and grub directories:
# mkdir -p /mnt/«sda7»/boot/grub
4. Copy bzImage64 and microcore64.gz from the now mounted device that contains them (possibly a pendrive) to your boot directory:
# cp /mnt/«sdl1»/bzImage64 /mnt/«sda7»/boot
# cp /mnt/«sdl1»/tinycore64.gz /mnt/«sda7»/boot
5. Copy your grub image files to the grub directory:
# cp /tmp/tcloop/grub-0.97-splash/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/* /mnt/«sda7»/boot/grub
6. Create the grub config file:
# jed /mnt/«sda7»/boot/grub/menu.lst (substitute vi for jed if you are using vi)
Now enter the following lines in the text editor (obviously without the comments in parenthesis):
default 0 (This tells grub to boot the first entry in this file if nothing else is selected)
timeout 10 (This is the number of seconds grub waits for someone to choose which OS to boot. Substitute whatever you want)
title Micro Core Linux (the name of this boot entry)
root (hd0,6) (the grub device designation for the partition where your kernel and ramdisk image are located so that your relative paths will be understood)
kernel /boot/bzImage64 quiet (Your space seperated boot codes go here. Which boot codes depends on the complex topic of package install persistence. Without any you will have cloud level of persistence. No installed packages or user settings will remain on reboot.)
initrd /boot/microcore64.gz
In jed enter <alt>F to open the file menu and <alt>S to save the file and <alt>F X to exit
7. Run grub:
# grub
8. Install grub to your Micro Core partition for chain loading from another boot loader in your boot partition/MBR or if you are not multibooting with Windows or if you wish to use legacy grub as your main bootloader then you can install grub directly into the MBR. For the following grub commands you must convert between the standard linux device designation of sdxy (sata device xy) where x=drive and y=partition and where x starts at 'a' and y starts at '1' to the grub designation of hdx,y where x and y are both numbers starting at 0. In my case, I wanted to install grub to the first sector of the linux partition itself for chainloading from another (MBR installed) bootloader. Since my linux partition was sda7 my grub device name would be: hd0,6. For an MBR installation sda would become hd0. So at the grub prompt type the following, substituting your grub device name for mine:
root (hd0,6)
setup (hd0,6)
quit
For an MBR installation (for the drive connected to the first sata port of your motherboard or RAID card):
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit
And that's it. Micro Core is now “installed”. If you installed grub to the MBR then when you remove the Micro Core live CD from the drive and reboot you should end up at the console command prompt logged in as 'tc' in cloud persistence mode. The grub and jed packages will no longer be installed. Whatever packages (aka 'extensions') you install will only install to RAM and will no longer be installed after reboot. If you are chainloading grub from another bootloader in the MBR you will have to install or modify that boot loader before you can boot to this installation. There always has to be a boot loader in the MBR. You could even install grub in both the MBR and the partition boot record, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.
If you don't want to reinstall all of your programs on every boot you will have to choose a persistence mode. The minimal persistence level would be a tce directory with a mydata.tgz file and 'tce=«sdxy»' in menu.lst. This is also called mount or PPR mode. For that do the following:
# mkdir /mnt/«sda7»/tce (After reboot you will have to mount the partition first with: mount /mnt/«sda7» and either login as root or precede the command by 'sudo')
You can create your mydata.tgz file with:
# touch /mnt/«sda7»/tce/mydata.tgz
After you have created the tce directory and the mydata.tgz file and added 'tce=sdxy' to menu.lst you should be able to permanently install more programs after you reboot. They will be stored in the /mnt/«sda7»/tce/optional directory.
For further information on package/data persistence modes, adding a window manger, and adding users and passwords please see the wiki and search the forums.
