On Wednesday 07 March 2007 02:34 pm, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> Bzzt!  Thanks for playing, come again.

Ah come on...the games not over...;-)

> Specifically, we're building an embedded product based on Linux that
> runs in a very tight foot print, but which doesn't use BusyBox.  Then
> again, it lacks almost all of userland, consisting of a custom init, and
> only those programs which are absolutely required.  (The biggest of
> those at the moment is racoon.)

Sure, what does that prove? BusyBox is a tradeoff between the commands that 
you need, and the size they take. Most all of the counterparts in BusyBox are 
water'd down of course, and as such are a tradeoff in themself.

> The whole thing fits under 5 MB, and runs on more-or-less standard x86
> hardware.

Not hard to do, but I have one in 8mb that does use BusyBox and is a very 
functional system, and has an incredibly powerful system (based on a 2.4 
kernel). Mine uses MontaVista, so keep that in mind, not in anyway implying 
it's good/bad, just that it used it.;-)

Folks like Tivo have rolled their own embedded Linux since around the same 
time I was working with MontaVista. I'm not fond of MontaVista and the way 
they danced around GPL loopholes to take money for opensource software, but 
that's another (and off topic) story.

But my comments were based on the fact that OpenSolaris in such a small 
footprint would be difficult at best, and BusyBox is more valuable to more 
people than having a smaller footprint.

> Of course, a lot of embedded projects _do_ use BusyBox, and it makes
> life easier for a lot of them.  A Solaris port is still a good idea, IMO.

Yes, I didn't mean to imply that it can't be done without BusyBox, just that 
to be able to get much of the system and networking pieces of BusyBox. A 
Solaris version of BusyBox would require both SysV and GNU based utils 
anyway, right? <gd&r>

-- 

Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 Engineering - IHV/OEM Group
Advocate of insourcing at Sun - hire people that care about our company!


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