On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:04:29 -0500, Bill Glidden
<bglidden@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Christopher
> > Hotchkiss
> > Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 2:38 PM
> > To: slug@nks.net
> > Subject: Re: [SLUG] embedded linux - second try
> >
> > Could you possibly describe the system's purpose and its hardware in
> > more detail? There are a number of solutions that could work.
>
> The system is a Pentium-based machine, 733mhz. It has an integrated touch
> screen. 128mb RAM. I purchased a 512MB CF card to put in it. When the card
> is in there, the bios recognizes the CF card as an IDE disk drive.
>
> The main task that I see is that I have to build the Linux for this machine
> on a different machine. I don't have any other way to boot the kiosk machine
> besides the CF card. So I have to make the CF bootable, and install the
> Linux distro from my machine, then move the CF card to the kiosk machine and
> boot up.
>
>
Since it's a pentium, you don't really have to worry about
cross-compiling necessarily. I've done something similar to this, the
main problem with building the system in compact flash on another
machine and transferring to the embedded system is that sometimes the
bios will translate the CF geometry differently from one system to the
next, which frustrates grub.
Gentoo is a really good choice, as it works almost like LFS, though
the portage snapshot can take up some space if you're really cramped.
You can use an initrd to save space and mount read-only CF partitions
if you need to limit writes as well. What I've done in the past is to
use dd to make a file full of zeros, build a filesystem on top of
that, mount the file as a loopback device, copy a stage one tarball as
if it were a new partition, mount and chroot into the file, build
gentoo normally with really limited requirements, strip the stuff you
don't need, and copy the rest to CF once it fits the bill. It limits
writing to flash memory and gives you some elbow room while you're
building.
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