[uClibc]Root filesystem automated generation

Mark Robson slarty2 at ntlworld.com
Thu Nov 28 12:25:54 UTC 2002


On Thursday 28 November 2002 8:34 am, you wrote:
> Hello,
> one the most boring and error-prone procedures during embedded
> systems Linux-based development is building the root filesystem to be
> flashed on the target. I know that perheaps any developer end up
> writing his own script for this task; after some research on the web
> and among my colleagues, I only found a proprietary tool from Bluecat
> that of course I don't want to use!

> Before starting my own script, anyone knows of such a tool somewhere?

I have made a set of scripts to build my own mini root filesystem image. It 
isn't very good so I don't suppose you want it. I use a minix fs in initrd 
for the whole system, which works well as the image is gzipped. Here are some 
tips

- If on 2.4, use devfs. This reduces hassle immensely by freeing you from 
having to create device special files. It makes the kernel bigger but the 
root smaller. 
- If using initrd, ensure that /linuxrc isn't present from busybox, or initrd 
might try and use that as it's pre-init script.
- uClibc and busybox are easy seeing as they have make install PREFIX= 
- I have separated out each package into its own root directory, and created 
a script which merges them for production system - this is a good idea as it 
means you don't need to uninstall things.
- Some "packages" consist of scripts I've written myself

This approach usually works. In particular, if I've got other things wrong, 
busybox and uClibc always run flawlessly.

Regards
	Mark



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