Re: Guide to embedding NetBSD?

[Hubert Feyrer <hubert.feyrer%informatik.fh-regensburg.de@localhost>]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Jason Hecker wrote:
> What documentation should I be looking at as a guide for getting a
> FLASHable (as in standard memeory mapped FLASH) image with a compressed
> kernel and filesystem?  I've picked up some clues from the archives of
> this mailing list and from poking about in the arch conf files and other
> source but there are things missing.

You can look at the process described in src/distrib/i386/floppies which
first builds a kernel with a ramdisk (md), a filesystem image (ramdisk-*),
and then frobs the ramdisk into the kernel's reserved space using
mdsetimage(8), resulting in a kernel that can be bootet and that has the
ramdisk image included.

The process itself is scattered across a bunch of machine-dependent and
machine-independent Makefile-fragments, see src/distrib/common and
src/distrib/i386/floppies/common etc.

I didn't write any of these, but I've used them myself in the g4u project
to make a custom floppy (see .sig :-).


> If I do ever embed NetBSD then I'd definitely think about writing a guide
> based on experiences.

I guess an "embedded howto" would be a nice addition for our online docs
at http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation or the NetBSD Guide at
http://www.netbsd.org/guide/.


 - Hubert

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