LiveCD usage and options

Boot from a cdrom

To boot SliTaz from a cdrom, just burn the ISO image onto a blank disc, then reboot your computer with the disc in your cdrom drive. The first splash image is powered by isolinux bootloader, you can then just press ENTER with or without any options to start system initialization. Note that pressing F1-F4 will display help and information. SliTaz runs entirely in memory and will not damage the installed host system. When the boot process is finished, you can login without any password as user hacker. To become root administrator, you can use the command su with the password root in a XTerm window or the Linux console. In LiveCD mode the root password is root.

Options and parameters to pass at boot

The SliTaz LiveCD can pass various boot options via the command prompt powered by syslinux. There are two types of options: those of SliTaz and those of the Linux Kernel. The options for SliTaz are used by various startup scripts and the parameters such as the VGA mode are managed directly by the Kernel (kernel boot parameters). To pass options at startup, just precede your commands with slitaz

 slitaz vga=791 no387

Note that the Linux Kernel keeps data passed to boot in the text file /proc/cmdline. On a GNU/Linux system, you can view this information by running the command:

 $ cat /proc/cmdline 

Parameters of the Linux Kernel

On GNU/Linux systems, parameters specific to the Kernel vary greatly depending on the configuration used in compiling it. The kernel used by SliTaz is constructed with a minimum of modules and offers very few modifiable parameters at startup. However, you can disable the emulation of a math coprocessor via option: no387 and/or activate irqpoll in the case of problems with interrupts (CD/DVD). The SliTaz Kernel also provides a video output mode for the VGA Vesa framebuffer - this is what displays the tux logo and manages the display of the Linux terminal. Once the system has started you have access to six pseudo terminals via the key combinations Ctrl+alt+F1, Ctrl+alt+F2, and so on.

vga=XXX - VGA Kernel modes

Colors | 640x480  800x600  1024x768  1280x1024  1600x1200
-------------------------------------------------------
256    |  769      771       773       775        796
32768  |  784      787       790       793        797
65536  |  785      788       791       794        798
16,8M  |  786      789       792       795        799

Option : home=usb

To store your data permanently (bookmarks, downloads, Firefox Add-ons, etc), you need USB media with a partition formatted in ext3 and it must specify home=usb for sda1 (most cases) or home=devname at boot time. Note that you can also specify the device using the partition UUID or label by using home=*. Example:

 slitaz home=sda1

Prepare USB media

All USB media can formatted in the native Linux ext3 filesystem. Ext3 is a journaled, stable filesystem, it allows you to keep permissions on all files and is much more secure than the default Windows FAT32 filesystem. To format USB media you have a few options: the command line with mkfs.ext3, the tazusb utility or graphically with Gparted. To get a full list of available partitions including the USB drive you can use the command fdisk -l and then format. Example:

 # fdisk -l
 # tazusb format /dev/sda1

Options : lang=XX and kmap=XX

When you use the LiveCD you have two options to directly configure the system language and keyboard mapping. These options can be set by simply navigating to your country code and reloading the bootloader configuration with ENTER. To skip the language and keyboard configuration you can simply type options on the command line, for English/UK:

 slitaz lang=en kmap=en

Option : config=<device>,<path>

The config= option lets you execute a script at SliTaz boot time, the script can be located on external media or a HD partition. For example, the script can mount an ISO image on /usr to save memory and boot the LiveCD on computers with only 32 Mb of RAM. An example with a script named slitaz.sh located on the first disk and partition:

 slitaz config=/dev/hda1,slitaz.sh

Option : screen=<type>

The screen= option lets you specify your screen resolution at boot. Note that the screen=text option disables the Slim login manager. Example:

 slitaz screen=1024x768x24

Option : sound=*

The option sound=no or sound=noconf lets you respectively disable all of the modules and applications relating to sound to save memory (ram) or skip the automatic setup of the sound card, but still allow you to manually configure if needed:

 slitaz sound=no

Option : modprobe=modules

To load Kernel modules at boot time use the following example:

 slitaz modprobe=module1,module2

Option : laptop

The option laptop will automatically load ac and battery Kernel modules - useful for laptop computers:

 slitaz laptop

Option : previous

Used by the Tazusb utility to rollback to a previous filesystem:

slitaz previous

Sessions - Login, passwords and X

When the system has finished it's initialization, the screen is cleared and the login prompt or the session manager Slim is displayed. Now you can choose to login as hacker (without password) or as root administrator (password root). Once logged into a session, you can use the many commands available in Busybox, the GNU text editor Nano or the Clex file manager. You can initiate a graphical server (X) via startx or connect to a remote machine via SSH or X. The startx command will launch Xvesa and start the window manager.

The desktop is powered by JWM (Joe's Window Manager), you can get the menu by clicking on the screen with one of the mouse buttons. Applications are classified by category and are available in English. Menu, theme and wallpaper can all be changed to your needs/preferences by editing one single file - personal settings and data can be stored on USB media (Flash key, SD card, etc).

To launch a X session from the Linux console, for example if you have passed the screen=text option or if Slim is not configured to run at startup:

 $ startx
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