libpthreads OK!

[Richard Jennings]

>
>BTW, There is nothing keeping pwlconfig from working with any other
>distribution (if its rpmd nicely ).  If you find someone to rpm RTLinux, LEM,
>LRP or whatever, then you could select a base configuration from one of
>those...In fact the main file configuration menu could just be a list of
>distributions (yet another feature - oops).


I'll have to see if I can find a RPM of RTLinux or RTAI.  Adding a 
real time version of Linux to PeeWeeLinux would be a plus.
>
>>Do you need a hand with the
>>  documentation or anything? I don't have much spare time but I could
>>  expand on the docs that you have as I'm learning.
>>
>Wow - that would be great. The pending changes for ramdisk support should be
>incorporated before you get started...release planned real soon now :)


Should I start with the posted docs or do you have something in the 
works already?
>
>>  We're going to try to show people how easy it is to build an embedded
>>  system using LabVIEW, Linux and VMware.  We plan on shipping one or
>>  more embedded systems with the book as VMware virtual machines that
>>  people can boot up and play with on their own computer. No extra
>>  hardware required! Then we'll point them to www.peeweelinux.com.
>>
>>  What do you think?
>>
>I've never tried vmware - I saw it demo'ed at Linux World Expo and it looked
>great -  but I don't have anything faster than 400MHz/128Mb Ram.
>Actually using it with Linux should be a big help.

I'm using a 400 MHz. AMD K2. It's pretty cool for trying out 
different distributions and configurations.

>
>However, after the demo, people are going to want to port it to some box
>somewhere - it would be neat to have some recommended motherboards (and
>associated drivers) for "instant embedding".  These would be simple, 
>small (20K
>or so) pwlconfig project files. Of course, thats a lot more work too...but I
>wouldn't claim to be "embedded" without gett'n in the hardware at some point.

I agree, it's not really embedded until you put it on some hardware 
but I don't have any particular hardware vendor to work with so I 
thought I would try to write the book without depending on a vendor. 
VMware gives us a virtual machine that (hopefully) is going to act 
the same no matter what the underlying hardware (plus it works on 
NT/2000 so people without Linux can still see what is happening). 
Then we can concentrate on showing people how to use Linux to build 
an embedded system and not on trying to make it work on their 
particular model of PC or embedded board.

When you build a new "machine" with VMware you still have to format 
the disk and make a file system. You still have to xfer your OS to 
the hard drive, install lilo and all those other things. That's what 
I plan on showing people.  We'll include one or two working systems 
to show how they work, hopefully one standard linux and one 
real-time. People can use vmmount to mount the embedded system at a 
mount point on their drive and then we'll show them how it works and 
what config files control what things. Then we'll walk them through 
placing their own  program on a virtual machine that they build 
themselves. Hopefully by the time they are done the light will have 
come on and they will be ready to build their own embedded system 
with Linux.

That's the plan in a nutshell. I wasn't too sure how I was going to 
come up with a current embedded system that I could ship with the 
book. The system that I did last year is getting stale and I wanted 
something that people could use without too much trouble. None of the 
distributions that I had seen on the net worked with LabVIEW when I 
tried them. That's why I asked Ralph to give my LabVIEW application a 
try on his machine. I was really happy, Ralph, when you let me know 
that it had worked with just the addition of one library. God does 
answer prayers!

Some of the things I'm having trouble with right now are:

setting the path at boot up so all users have X. I can't seem to get 
this to work. Does every user have to a .profile script with a PATH 
statement?

Logging in automatically: I've tried "login USER" and "su USER -c 
'path to file'" but neither one of those works. The login command 
works in my SuSE derived system but not under PWL.

Well, back to work. Any tips you have for me are appreciated.

Richard





-- 
Richard Jennings
1426 Aster Lane
Livermore, CA 94550
USA
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