Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 14:05:44 -0600 (MDT) From: "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com> To: jim@netgate.com Cc: phk@phk.freebsd.dk, small@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD's embedded agenda Message-ID: <20060525.140544.1474621433.imp@bsdimp.com> In-Reply-To: <472414CE-94E8-4C8A-9586-DCA9E02A53C3@netgate.com> References: <2538.1148556253@critter.freebsd.dk> <472414CE-94E8-4C8A-9586-DCA9E02A53C3@netgate.com>
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In message: <472414CE-94E8-4C8A-9586-DCA9E02A53C3@netgate.com>
Jim Thompson <jim@netgate.com> writes:
:
: On May 25, 2006, at 1:24 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
:
: > Platforms
: > ---------
: >
: > I386 goes without saying.
: >
: > AMD64 may have an embedded future in the high end segment, keeping
: > it "unbloated" is a concern.
: >
: > ARM is going great according to Jean-Mark and Warner, and we are
: > looking for a cheap (< $200) reference platform to point people at.
:
: These are available. Someone else was asking (privately) for sub-
: $100, which is (much) more difficult.
There's many sub $100 MIPS boards available that have enough
resourses, barely, for a minimal system to boot/run on.
: > NanoBSD caters only to the "run read-only from flash" area, call
: > it if you will the "soekris" area. I need to investigate if it
: > makes sense to use the FreeSBIE framework to build nanobsd images.
:
: All soekris boards have CF, which looks, for all the world like an
: IDE drive.
:
: "real" flash is quite different. Soekris (and the PC Engines
: boards) are a proper subset of i386, and
: should be treated as such.
Yes. Running off a real flash is much more difficult...
: > What can you do ?
: >
: > If you work with embedded FreeBSD, I think the best you can do is to
: > chime in to small@freebsd.org, tell us what you are doing (as far as
: > company policy will allow you), and if you have any ideas, wishes,
: > problems, let us hear about them.
:
: I'm looking for the time to get FreeBSD running on the Gateworks
: Xscale (arm) boards. These are interesting to me for a couple
: reasons, but the
: most important is that most of the boards come with a CF socket,
: which means not having to deal with smaller flash sizes, and/or
: dealing with a FFS
: at the FreeBSD level (for now).
Those would be a good level to start from. Subsetting is a pain
during development, but once developed, it shouldn't be too hard to
shrink things down. Doing it generally might be an issue...
Warner
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