Version control systems that work on FreeDOS

Since I am into retro, I thought about hobby programming on an old machine that runs FreeDOS. I considered using version control systems, though I don't remember using any about 30 years ago when my main (and only) machine was running MS-DOS. My search led me to the following threads:

• [Freedos-user] Git for DOS?
• [Freedos-user] DOS version control
• Source code control on an MS-DOS system

To conclude: Mercurial can be made to work locally. TLIB is a proprietary version control system still being sold. Free and open-source RCS 5.7 has been patched to work on DOS, another port can be found here. There is also Prism, and CVS DOS binaries can be found on various FTP servers.

How to update Tiny Core Linux from version 17.0 to 17.1

I am running only the Core base system, so these instructions cover only that.

1. First, run getMirror. This will populate $MIRROR system variable. 
   
   
2. Now, you have to update optional kernel modules, if you have any - I don't:
   cd /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional
   for File in *\-6.18.2\-*.tcz*; do wget $MIRROR/${File/\-6.18.2\-/\-6.18.35\-}; done
   
   
3. Download updated vmlinuz and core.gz files from:
   http://www.tinycorelinux.net/17.x/x86/release/distribution_files/
   
   Replace with them existing files in the boot directory. In my case, it is:
   /mnt/sda3/tce/boot
   
   
4. Reboot the system and that's it!

 

Configuring the SSH server on Tiny Core Linux using OpenSSH

1. Create (and persist) a proper user

   The default tc user is passwordless, so you either want to set a password for it or perhaps create a separate user. Creating a user and setting a password is the same as on other Linux distributions. Once you do that, you'll need to persist the changes. Add these lines to the /opt/.filetool.lst:

   etc/passwd
   etc/shadow
   etc/group

2. Install the openSSH package

3. Create the SSHD configuration from the template

   cd /usr/local/etc/ssh/
   sudo cp sshd_config.orig sshd_config

4. Start the SSH daemon

   sudo /usr/local/etc/init.d/openssh start
   
   At this point you should be able to ssh into your machine.

5. Make the SSH configuration persistent

   sudo echo 'usr/local/etc/ssh' >> /opt/.filetool.lst

6. Edit the system startup file

   sudo echo '/usr/local/etc/init.d/openssh start &' >> /opt/bootlocal.sh

7. Backup your configuration files

   backup 

8. Reboot the system 

That should be it!