[BusyBox] cannot get BusyBox to boot

[Rob Landley]

On Sunday 19 December 2004 02:52 pm, Christoph Hanslik wrote:
> Am Samstag, 18. Dezember 2004 22:50 schrieb Rob Landley:
> > In general you debug this kind of problem in three steps:
> >
> > 1) Get an initrd to boot /bin/sh.  (Break down and compile a static bash
> > or something, and then get the kernel to boot up to a bash prompt.  Then
> > worry about dynamic linking.  Or use a "hello world" executable to start
> > out, even...)
> >
> > 2) Chroot into your initrd root image from a working linux system and try
> > to get that to work.
> >
> > 3) Put #1 and #2 together.
> >
> > Rob
>
> Dear Rob,
> many thanks, the hint with the "hello world" pushing me the right
> direction. The development machine is an AMD Athlon XP+ and the target
> machine is an AMD K6 processor and I compiled the "hellow world" on the
> development machine and got "illegal instruction" on the target. Compiled
> on the target machine it is running properly.
> The result is to compile busybox on the target machine (boring 200MHz) or
> find the proper crosscompiler option.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Christoph Hanslik

Glad I could help.

In more general terms, I've noticed a batch of questions recently that are 
more about general embedded system creation than busybox per se.  Have we got 
anything in the FAQ about where people should go for this sort of thing?

In addition to the above, I generally recommend:

1) The old "bootdisk howto", which is a good intro to creating a minimal 
bootable linux system, probably now sadly out of date.  I'm told there's a 
"from power on to bash prompt howto" that might be a better starting place 
these days.  Google says the former is at:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/
And the latter is at:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO.html

2) Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org - 6.0 just came out and 
it uses udev.  I've been meaning to get that working anyway, time to rebase 
my little project... :).  Build one of them and THEN try to put together your 
own minimal system.  Hopefully, but that point, you'll know what you're 
doing.

3) Eric Raymond's "How to ask smart questions":
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

4) The linux-kernel FAQ (since half the off-topic questions here are actually 
linux kernel questions, not busybox questions)...
http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Anybody else got any suggestions?

Rob