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Standard Operating Procedures for Embedded Linux Systems

Issue 160

From Issue #160
August 2007

Aug 01, 2007  By Chi-Hung Chou, Tsung-Hsien Yang, Shih-Chiang Tsao and Ying-Dar Lin
 in
Follow these procedures for the smoothest path to great embedded Linux.
Conclusion

This article describes the five procedures for making a Linux-based embedded system and describes ten methods for downsizing the kernel and the root filesystem. After we used these methods, our Wall Project was downsized by 26.18%. The experiment's results reveal that the two most efficient methods are giving correct kernel compilation parameters and using simplified tools and libraries in the root filesystem. Hopefully, this article helps you understand the procedures and problems when building a Linux-based embedded system.

Resources

John Lombardo, Embedded Linux, 1st ed., New Riders, July 5, 2001.

Todd Fischer, “Optimizing Embedded Linux”, Dr. Dobb's, May 2002: www.ddj.com/184405050.

Lei Yang, Robert P. Dick, Haris Lekatsas and Srimat Chakradhar, “CRAMES: compressed RAM for embedded systems”, International Conference on Hardware Software Codesign, Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE/ACM/IFIP international conference on Hardware/software codesign and system synthesis, Jersey City, New Jersey, 2005, pp: 93–98.

“Buildroot—Usage and documentation v1.2”, December 28, 2004: buildroot.uclibc.org/buildroot.html.

Karim Yaghmour, Building Embedded Linux Systems, 1st ed., O'Reilly, 2004.

Chi-Hung Chou is currently working on his Masters' degree in Computer Science at National Chiao Tung University. His research interests include mesh network and embedded systems. He can be reached via e-mail at payton345.cs95g@nctu.edu.tw.

Tsung-Hsien Yang is currently working on his Masters' degree in Computer Science at National Chiao Tung University. His research interests include automatic block module tests and embedded systems. He can be reached via e-mail at thyang.cs95g@nctu.edu.tw.

Shih-Chiang Tsao is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at National Chiao Tung University and has been advised by Dr Ying-Dar Lin since 2003. His research interests include TCP-friendly congestion control algorithms, fair-queuing algorithms and Web QoS. He can be reached via e-mail at weafon@cs.nctu.edu.tw or through his Web site (www.cs.nctu.edu.tw/~weafon).

Ying-Dar Lin received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1993. He has been a professor of Computer Science at National Chiao Tung University since 1999. He also is the founder and director of the Network Benchmarking Lab (NBL), which reviews the functionality, performance, conformance and interoperability of networking products, ranging from switch, router and WLAN to network and content security and VoIP. His research interests include design, analysis, implementation and benchmarking of network protocols and algorithms, wire-speed switching and routing, quality of services, network security, content networking and embedded hardware software co-design. He can be reached via e-mail at ydlin@cs.nctu.edu.tw or through his Web site (www.cs.nctu.edu.tw/~ydlin).

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