I have 2TB hard disk.
At the beginning , there is a primary 10GB partition with
windows 7.
Resizing the 1.7TB partition (1.2TB filled) to make space for ext2/ext3 partition is an uphill task .
I want to boot tiny core from this partition.
In grub legacy I used entry in menu.lst about kernel & initrd option
In grub2 I have seen 'insmod ntfs' available.
Does that mean I can keep my initrd & kernel file on this ntfs partition & boot . Actually tiny core runs from RAM . No need of writing back to ntfs partition or SWAP.

How can I do above ?

Not sure I understand your question completely, but that may be due to my lack of experience with tiny core.
Let me challenge your statement
though...

What stops you from booting into a live system and running gparted to resize your hard drive the way you need it?!? Make a backup of your data and start the resizing / partitioning in the evening, so if it decides to run for a long time (which does happen sometimes) it can run all through the night. Avoid moving start positions of partitions if possible.

check out # 3
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/install.html

Not sure why you can't use windows to resize the disk.

Depending on what grub you have you might be able to boot off of a few ways. One is a iso image, another is boot to a wubi filesystem within a file or maybe others.

sorry for my late reply
EDDY1 has pointed to need for file permission .
jefro , I cannot understand your suggestion.
Is it possible that grub2 can read ntfs partition ? If yes , I think you meant creating some iso image on that ntfs partition because there is no wubi for tiny-core unlike ubuntu.

What bootloader are you planning to use to do this? Grub Legacy? Grub2? windows?

You had TinyCore on a Linux partition, why move it? It's a 15MB download and as suggested above, you should easily be able to resize your partition to put a small one for TinyCore. Is this just a proof of concept thing, to see if it works?

Grub2 on some distributions (mostly Ubuntu derivatives) can boot the downloaded iso file but it won't be able to boot just any Linux iso. You need to have a loopback entry in the grub.cfg file and the distributions must be able to booted in that manner which requires it having specific software enabling it. I seriously doubt this would work with TinyCore.

Are you planning to use Grub to boot it? Grub Legacy? Grub2. Have you tried copying the Tiny Core files to your ntfs partition with an entry in the Grub menu? I don't know but I doubt that Grub2 reads ntfs. If it did, I would not expect it to need to chainload windows.

When Grub tries to boot directly (non-chainload entry) it must mount the filesystem first and it doesn't mount ntfs. The chainload process just points to the IPL of the partition and if the correct boot files for that system are there, it should boot. Since TinyCore is so small, you could easily test this by loop mounting the iso, then creating a tinyiso directory in the root of an ntfs system partition. Put your entry in the menu.lst file of Grub Legacy you referred to above (or Grub2 menuentry in grub.cfg) pointing to the files on that partition. If you did this correctly, you should see a message after trying to boot it show the kernel and initrd lines followed by: Cannot mount selected partition.

It took me about 15 minutes to do this including downloading TinyCore so I'm curious as to why you haven't tried it.

I'm wondering if may be Grub4Dos would work as suggested? I've never used it but you might give it a try as it's windows software.

If you have an iso image and use grub it can boot the iso.


It may be possible to compile grub to read ntfs or ntfs-3g. http://forums.opensuse.org/showthrea...boot-partition

I put the Tiny Core iso file (TinyCore-5.3.iso) in the root of a windows partition (sda2) and put the following entry in Grub2. TinyCore booted to a command prompt in 5 seconds. I'm not sure why it doesn't boot to GUI, I think it should. There are a lot of options at the TinyCore site to boot so you might take a look at that if you are still trying to do this:

1 members found this post helpful.

Sorry for my late reply.
I will give this a try.

I'm using Debian Testing and Windows 8.1 Professional in a dual boot system using Grub, which came with Debian.

Windows was originally the only OS on my laptop. And in Windows using "Schijfbeheer" probably translates to Disk Manager (since I'm using the Dutch version of Windows), I was able to resize my Windows partition and make room for Linux. Took only a few seconds here to free up 100 gb for Debian. So for the life of me I really don't understand your uphill battle with your HD.

So here Windows has it's own NTFS partition while Debian has it's own Ext4 and Swap partitions. And they run like a charm side by side.

It would seem to me also to be a lot simpler to create a separate partition for TinyCore. The only reason I could think of is not having any room to create a new partition. In that case, using a Linux partition would be easier. Using GParted to shrink a partition would seem to be a simple choice as would the partition manager in windows 7.

Out of curiosity, I put a Slitaz iso on the ntfs partition with a similar entry in the grub.cfg file and had the same result. It booted but only to a prompt and no GUI although both TinyCore and Slitaz should boot to GUI. I copied an iso file of Peppermint Three to an ntfs partition and it booted to the GUI as it would on a CD. My curiosity is satisfied.

What I had suggested in one statement was wubi. It is like a virtual machine file where a complete linux hard drive and filesystem are contained within a single file.

You really wouldn't want linux on ntfs anyway. Permission issues.

Have you used wubi on a non-Ubuntu system? wubi=Windows UBuntu Installer. I would not expect it to work but haven't tried it.
It isn't clear to me exactly what the OP intends. My earlier post explained a boot menuentry using Grub2 which does boot TinyCore on an ntfs partition. It is the iso file which is going to a read-only partition and it should work the same way a Live CD works. If the intent is to have an install where changes can be made and saved, I would just wish him luck.

I was trying to reply to the OP actually and not in anyway disagree with you yancek. I could have made that more clear.

Wubi is ok to try but not good for long term, IMO.
With a machine that will run windows 7 why run tiny core instead of a full distro? If it can run wins7 itcan run any linux distro out there.
Also wubi is not just an Ubutu installer, it may have been creared as an Ubuntu installer but there are a few distros that use it.