So this may not be a popular idea, but you may want to think about using the 2.2 kernel. It is smaller than the 2.4 kernel (or at least it used to be, haven't checked recently). Granted there have been improvements that you will be missing, but depending on the application this may be a good way to reduce size. Also the libraries that came with the 2.2 kernel were also smaller in general than the 2.4 versions.
2 years ago I managed to get an X windows system running on 5MB using the 2.2 kernel. I was not able to use the 2.4 kernel specifically because the glibc library was much to large at that time. jm2c -jerry ----Original Message Follows---- From: "Richard A. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: "Richard A. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: lin embed newbie help Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:55:36 -0600 On Sun, 10 Feb 2002 21:44:42 -0800 (PST), Ramya Ravichandran wrote: > I have to develop a bare minimum linux system that >fits into 2meg having serial communication >capabilities. > Please suggest how I go about this. I am reading >the Linux from scratch doc and am wondering if I am on >the right track and if I can build a system within >2meg. > I am a newbie to the kernel .I have wriiten c pgms >and know basic shell scripts. How large would your application program be? Serial support is a no brainer in stock kernels. Using uclibc and busybox I have built a system that boots 2.4.x, initialized a PCMCIA wireless network card, downloads a new kernel/ramdisk and using kexec from the linuxBIOS project reboots into that image. The whole ball of wax fits inside a 1Meg Flash part less 128k of BIOS. So <= 917kb Since my initial stab fit I didn't try to shrink it any further. It uses ext2 for the filesystem of the ramdisk which is quite large. Using cramfs would drop things down even futher. -- Richard A. Smith Bitworks, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 501.846.5777 x204 Sr. Design Engineer http://www.bitworks.com -- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the command "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the message body. For more information, see <http://waste.org/mail/linux-embedded>. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx -- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the command "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the message body. For more information, see <http://waste.org/mail/linux-embedded>.
