Greetings--may I be of service?
Ralph Stickley
[email protected]
Wed, 8 Mar 2000 13:10:54 -0800 (PST)
Hi Dennis,
I hope we have something here you can use. Like you, I think both Adi
and I want to build on the "latest" RH distribution, but finding nothing
available we ended up doing it ourselves.
We are currently trying to get the system up with X windows. Adi is
doing all the library and binary compiling and configuring (all the
in-depth technical stuff). I am developing the pwlconfig program
as a means 1) to stop the never ending studying of How-Tos and
2) because nobody else has done it. I started reading all the
How-Tos and then would have to go back and re-read them...never
being good at following the instructions, I could never get anything
to work twice in a row :-o
I am configuring and booting from Disk-On-Chip (Msystems) Disk-On-Module
(PQI) and Compact flash cards (IDE to CF adaptor from PC-Engines).
This will also work from any partition on any mounted hard drive.
We haven't done the Floppy or CD-ROM boot image yet.
The next big ToDo is a read-only partition and/or ramdisk boot...
Note: the freeBIOS group is currently working to install LILO in
ROM and maybe even the kernel in rom. I recommend checking with them
to figure out where they are ...
More...
--- "Dennis W. Tokarski" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Adi, Hi Ralph.
>
> My name is Dennis Tokarski. I run a little one-man consulting shop in
> Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Mostly my work is software development for
> real time and embedded systems, much of that driver writing, and almost
> all of it for QNX (at least for the past 6 years or so).
>
As a little background: I spent a year or so working with QNX - it
seems a bit cleaner than the Linux stuff, probably because it all came
from the same shop, but the costs are way too high for the project I'm
working on now. You can see our "thin client" at:
http:/www.datalux.com/ipix
> However, I am finding Linux a compelling alternative for some
> applications. The learning curve has been a bit steep, and have found
> Beck & Co's book "Linux Kernel Internals" very helpful. I am now
> part way through Rubini's very excellent "Linux Device Drivers".
>
> Recently a client approached me about putting together a small footprint
> Linux package for use in their embedded product. The hardware isn't
> really constrained (Pentium/133 at least, 64MB RAM, all the usual PC
> desktop facilities like SVGA, etc), but they do have a peculiar
> requirement in they aren't allowed to use a hard drive, or any kind
> of alterable media for program storage.
>
Is a write protected flash drive sufficient ? This would make development
a lot easier. Maybe start here, get it working then migrate to a ROM...
Do you have the Source for your BIOS ? (BTW, General Software BIOS is
fairly cheap if you have any development budget...FreeBIOS isn't quite
there yet)
Several commerical "Thin Clients" are being sold with write protected
M-Systems devices. With the proper tools from the server, they can
be in-field upgraded by application, services or kernel. Maybe a
CD-ROM boot would work if you have the hardware, but the upgrade
is more on-site than most would like for large numbers of installed
units.
> In a previous incarnation of this project, we've booted QNX4 from ROM,
> with all the ancillary applications loaded from a ROM disk. I'd like to
> work my way toward a similar capability using Linux.
>
> PeeWeeLinux seems to be the best starting point. I've spent a couple of
> days looking for small-footprint distributions. There are lots out
> there, but as Ralph noted in a January 26 post about YASL, some have
> just sort of faded away. I didn't find anyone else using the 2.2 kernel,
> it's all 2.0 as far as I could tell. Nor does anyone appear to have
> their project as cleanly organized as yours, or set up to use as current
> a development platform as current as RH 6.1, which is what I'm running
> in my office. By the way, while I've downloaded your latest (0.20) I've
> not taken it for a test drive. I expect to have that pleasure later
> today or tomorrow.
>
> The one common thread amongst all the small Linices seems to be that
> they boot from floppy, or more rarely as in your case, Disk On Chip.
> I've used the DOC parts before with QNX. They're OK, but in my current
> project the fact that they behave like writeable disks is a problem.
>
> Adi, I think you mentioned in a readme file somewhere something about
> writing an open source file system driver. Have you done anything with
> that idea yet?
>
> If not, perhaps this is where I can make a contribution in the near
> future. I was thinking of using the existing dos/fat file system as a
> starting point, then seeing what I could carve out and otherwise modify
> to suit my customer's requirements. The result would have to be
> suitable for use with a disk image on ROM (hopefully using compression
> to save space), and could probably be used with battery backed SRAM
> (which we also have on our hardware).
>
> The other thing I'm looking to do is solve the boot-from-ROM problem.
> Nobody has done this so far as I can tell. My current thought is to
> locate a modified version of lilo in one of our user bios ROMs. It would
> have hard-wired knowledge of a ROM address where it would find an
> essentially conventional Linux boot image which it would relocate to low
> RAM and start up. After that it would be business as usual. This is
> basically what we did with QNX, so the idea is at least workable.
> Ultimately what we'd like to achieve is an execute-from-ROM ability, but
> I'm most definitely not knowledgeable enough about Lines yet to tackle
> that one.
>
> So, do think these sorts of things would be useful additions to your
> project? Of course, any advice and moral support you can provide while I
> do the dog work will be greatly appreciated.
>
I think PWL will be a nice starting point. Just using this in a different
environment and testing the stuff that is currently installed will be a big
help. Our ultimate goal is to have available Pee Wee Linux projects" for a
router, print server, thin client and whatever...you didn't mention the end
product, but if they let you GPL everything, any projects you create would be a
welcome addition (Note, a project is simply a list of tar files (packages) and
lists of files within the tar files to include in the final file system - any
custom code or drivers could easily be excluded)
> You've put together a nice package. I look forward to using it and
> giving something back.
>
Thanks, let us know of any problems you find. The latest code for pwlconfig is
not fully installed in the CVS tree, but the download has a reasonably updated
version. I'll try to get another version posted as soon as I "just a few more
features" working (actually Adi does the web page updating :-).
Good luck,
Ralph
> Regards,
>
> Dennis Tokarski
> PolTec Electronics
> 921 S. Seventh St.
> Ann Arbor, MI 48103
> (734) 994-0212
> ---------------------------------------------------
> See the list archives at http://adis.on.ca/archives/
> See the PWL homepage at http://embedded.adis.on.ca
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
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