On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 03:13:36PM -0700, Loren M. Lang wrote: | I'm looking at replacing Linux used on an embedded device we are selling | with NetBSD, mostly for licensing reason. This is a more high-end | embedded device with an AMD 586 running apache and php for it's | interface to the world. It uses compact flash for it's hard drive. The | default install of NetBSD using the installer and sets provided I think | is over 100 megs, maybe like 300 if I'm right. My question is how do | people install NetBSD on small foot prints like in under 8 megs? Do | they just pick and choice from the base sets what they need or are there | already put together sets for building small system? I can probably | remove what I don't need, but I was curious if there is an easier way. For a functional NetBSD system you only need the `base' & `etc' sets. It's possibly to cut down the install to just the shared libraries and user programs you need, but that's an issue of "trial and error". For example, I have a very functional embedded appliance that uses a 10-20MB file system embedded in a kernel that ends up being 4-7MB in size. | Secondly, the host system is Linux right now. I was thinking I could | just copy what I need to the Flash card using a reader attached to the | linux system, but how do I partition/disklabel and format the drive. | I'm not sure if linux supports disklabel, but I don't think it can | format UFS, not to mention load the BSD bootloader. Is there an easy | way to do this or do I need to install a NetBSD system somewhere? We don't have a "host tool" version of disklabel or newfs at this time, so you'll need to do that on a NetBSD box. It is possible to make an ffs file system using 'makefs' and then dd that onto a drive. Another alternative is use the 'embedded filesystem' trick I mention above and boot the kernel off a bootable FAT CF card (I do this); installboot(8) has more information on how do do the latter..
Attachment:
pgp4dLrd9Uz6k.pgp
Description: PGP signature