libpthreads OK!

[Richard Jennings]

>
>
>Haven't gone back to do the docs... still trying to figure out what we should
>be doing/showing to the user...


I thought I'd start with a few graphics / screenshots to make things 
a little clearer.  picture ==1k words ;)

I also  thought I could go through the postings to the list and see 
if I couldn't put the answers to some of those questions in the docs.

Finally I thought I'd try to answer some of the obvious questions 
like "How do you get your application to start up at boot up?" and 
any other questions we can think of answers to.

I finally worked out a solution to getting my X-based application to 
start at boot time. I'll try to explain the solution and what I think 
are the causes. Let me know if I'm off track or if you have any extra 
insight.

I'm using Ash with BusyBox. BusyBox can provide INIT capabilities and 
it comes with its own initab file which is pretty descriptive. I have 
a basic initab file which looks something like this:

# initialize system - execute all the scripts in /etc/init.d/rcS
::sysinit:/etc/init.d/rcS

# start a shell
::respawn:/bin/sh

# start a shell on tty2
tty2::respawn:/bin/sh

# start my application by calling a script in the /bin directory
tty1::once:/bin/.setpath

Note that there is no login being used and I am starting two shells. 
I think, but I'm probably wrong, that each shell is it's own process 
and environment variables are not shared between the two processes. I 
have tried sourcing (.scriptfile) any script files and exporting the 
PATH but this did not have the desired effect of making the path 
change in the "parent" process. I'm beginning to think that the 
default path of "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin" is hard coded into 
the shell but I haven't explored this yet. I tried commenting out and 
changing the PATH statement in every startup script without making 
any difference to the PATH that is initially available to me. man ash 
lists a switch (-) which will cause the .profile to be used for 
environment variables but I could never get it to work.

My solution was to call a script that I had placed into a directory 
in ash's search path. The script is :

# /bin/.setpath
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin:/etc/X11

#clean up any lock files
rm -rf /tmp/.X0-lock

# call startx which configures X and calls my application
startx

I don't know how or why it works but it works and right now that's 
good enough for me ;-)

>
>Are you tracking the free version ?
>http://www.freemware.org


I hadn't heard of them. I'll have to keep an eye on it - looks pretty alpha

>
>One of my goals with the Main Menu of PeeWee Linux was to show, in 
>general, the
>process required to embed linux.  We are generally hiding all of the command
>line stuff, but not what is actually being done. (Thats why the Erase and Load
>are two seperate operations :)  Any suggestions on how to improve this to make
>it clearer would be appreciated!
>
You guys are doing an awesome job on pwlconfig. I had a working 
system up and going in less than a day and that's fantastic! Could it 
be smoother? sure.

When I was trying to figure out how to to accomplish this on my own I 
was considering using RPMs and one of the graphical package managers 
that come with KDE as a starting place. Have you seen NT Embedded's 
target designer? It's a Windows Explorer-like configuration utility 
that lets you rapidly pick and chose which components to use in your 
embedded system.
I had envisioned using an Explorer type interface to move through the 
package hierarchy in a rapid manner selecting the components needed. 
Once this was working it might not be too far of a stretch to add 
menu items and "browse dialogs" for selecting targets based on 
devices, partitions, mount points, etc... But I'm afraid that my 
dreams often exceed my reality ;-))

See ya'

Richard

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