Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 19:10:48 -0800 From: "Sergey Hlupnov" <sh@nasdoma.net> To: "Jonathon Tidswell" <jont@cse.unsw.edu.au>, <freebsd-small@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: status / appropriateness query Message-ID: <0a0001c060c4$787c9160$2f04000a@sergey> References: <20001208131517.A29977@cse.unsw.edu.au>
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> I suppose my major question is to what extend does Pico/Tiny BSD give > me additional kernel tuning options over standard FreeBSD ? It actually does not. Pico BSD is not different OS/kernel/whatever. It is : - just same kernel with all unused options turned off to reduce size. May be with added MFS/MFS_ROOT support to keep all filesystem in memory. - a single crunched binary, that contains code of all user programs like ls, more, init, getty, ping and all libraries linked as static. That greatly reduces size comparing to all programs in separate files plus dynamic libraries. There is some code that executes code of particular user program depending on what name was used to launch it so if you run 'ls', it will behave exactly like 'ls' should do. - scripts that prepare floppy/flash/cdrom image, create filesystem and create links like "ln /usr/bin/ls /usr/bin/big_crunched_binary" for every user program. - tweaked boot process. Some people do not need init/getty at all. Some dont need sh/csh and use some mini-shell to conserve space. Some put additional files on the second floppy and copy them to MemFS (ramdisk) during boot time... Some "burn" filesystem inside the kernel so after boot it is already looks like ramdisk. - if you decide to save some space by dropping vi what is good idea, then some system to edit and save configs > The currently proposed solution is linux paging back over the host > interface. I'd rather no GPL, more RAM for caching and reduced host interface > load. Of course I could be being greedy, since I really don't have time to > fork a kernel project, and probably not the patience to debug it :-) > [ Fortunately there is bootloader written & tested that loads the OS over > the host interface so lots of testing/debugging is simplified already. ] You can do it with FreeBSD. May be you'll want some older versions like 3.x or even 2.x because as far as I know 4.x needs like 8 megs RAM (may be Im wrong here). Debug is a bit complex and time consuming since for a little change you'll need redo all make procedure - re-create filesystem, make new image and put it on floppy/cdrom. Then boot off it and see if you want change something else. If you use MFS you can not just mount floppy and make your changes on it - all files are inside /kernel.gz. Hope this helps Sergey To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message
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