uArch

[zio]

Hello all,

just wanted to post a quick message. we are looking for feedback on uarch a micro linux distro. its basically a port of archlinux to uclibc and its moving along quite well you can find more information here uArch

any feedback would be helpful

Regards,

Mike Rosset

[Ed Wildgoose-2]

zio wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> just wanted to post a quick message. we are looking for feedback on uarch a
> micro linux distro. its basically a port of archlinux to uclibc and its
> moving along quite well you can find more information here
> http://code.google.com/p/uarch/ uArch
>
> any feedback would be helpful
>  

I guess you have tried gentoo before embarking down this route?  You can
drop out a basic bootable image starting at about 5MB and go up from
there.  Simple to build binary packages and merge them using qmerge.  
Build binary images for the architecture of your choice (although to be
fair cross compiling for non native architectures adds some extra steps
which are somewhat complicated).  Use uclibc/mdev/udev or whatever takes
your fancy...

I have just used it to knock out a basic distro for an embedded
appliance.  Very fast to customise (although probably you need a bit of
time to setup your build environment first time).  Also very easy to get
the image size nice and tight

Good luck

Ed W
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[zio]

Actually Ed, uArch currently has a complete roofs including toolchain and kernel. all installable from web into dir or mounted dir. if you install to a mount point you can boot the partition or if you install to a dir, chroot.

Creating new packages is extremely easy, even more so if your use to Arch Linux's abs. And its all managed with pacman, install new packages remove packages, upgrade system etc.

Current draw back, I still have not worked out a base-micro group using busybox. So a base file system is quite large. "mainly good for developers at this point". Currently only supports i386 however once I think i386 is pretty stable. I'm going to start porting to arm.

Anyone is welcome to help out if there intrested.

install instructions can be found at uArch

Regards,

Mike

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:35 AM, Ed W <lists@...> wrote:

zio wrote:

Hello all,

just wanted to post a quick message. we are looking for feedback on uarch a
micro linux distro. its basically a port of archlinux to uclibc and its
moving along quite well you can find more information here http://code.google.com/p/uarch/ uArch
any feedback would be helpful
 

I guess you have tried gentoo before embarking down this route?  You can drop out a basic bootable image starting at about 5MB and go up from there.  Simple to build binary packages and merge them using qmerge.  Build binary images for the architecture of your choice (although to be fair cross compiling for non native architectures adds some extra steps which are somewhat complicated).  Use uclibc/mdev/udev or whatever takes your fancy...

I have just used it to knock out a basic distro for an embedded appliance.  Very fast to customise (although probably you need a bit of time to setup your build environment first time).  Also very easy to get the image size nice and tight

Good luck

Ed W

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[Denys Vlasenko-3]

On Wednesday 23 April 2008 15:35, Ed W wrote:
> I guess you have tried gentoo before embarking down this route?  You can
> drop out a basic bootable image starting at about 5MB and go up from
> there.  Simple to build binary packages and merge them using qmerge.  
> Build binary images for the architecture of your choice (although to be
> fair cross compiling for non native architectures adds some extra steps
> which are somewhat complicated).  Use uclibc/mdev/udev or whatever takes
> your fancy...

Sounds surprisingly sane.

Maybe it even uses something less arcane than init-with-runlevels-
and-tons-of-scripts-in-/etc?
--
vda
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[zio]

Actually uArch currently has a complete rootfs including toolchain and kernel. all installable from web into dir or mounted dir. if you install to a mount point you can boot the partition or if you install to a dir, chroot.

Creating new packages is extremely easy, even more so if your use to Arch Linux's abs. And its all managed with pacman, install new packages remove packages, upgrade system etc.

Current draw back, I still have not worked out a base-micro group using busybox. So a base file system is quite large. "mainly good for developers at this point". Currently only supports i386 however once I think i386 is pretty stable. I'm going to start porting to arm.

Anyone is welcome to help out if there intrested.

install instructions can be found at uArch

Regards,

Mike

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux@...> wrote:

On Wednesday 23 April 2008 15:35, Ed W wrote:
> I guess you have tried gentoo before embarking down this route?  You can
> drop out a basic bootable image starting at about 5MB and go up from
> there.  Simple to build binary packages and merge them using qmerge.
> Build binary images for the architecture of your choice (although to be
> fair cross compiling for non native architectures adds some extra steps
> which are somewhat complicated).  Use uclibc/mdev/udev or whatever takes
> your fancy...

Sounds surprisingly sane.

Maybe it even uses something less arcane than init-with-runlevels-
and-tons-of-scripts-in-/etc?
--
vda

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uClibc@...
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[Ed Wildgoose-2]

Denys Vlasenko wrote:

On Wednesday 23 April 2008 15:35, Ed W wrote:
  

I guess you have tried gentoo before embarking down this route?  You can 
drop out a basic bootable image starting at about 5MB and go up from 
there.  Simple to build binary packages and merge them using qmerge.  
Build binary images for the architecture of your choice (although to be 
fair cross compiling for non native architectures adds some extra steps 
which are somewhat complicated).  Use uclibc/mdev/udev or whatever takes 
your fancy...
    

Sounds surprisingly sane.

Maybe it even uses something less arcane than init-with-runlevels-
and-tons-of-scripts-in-/etc?
  

I don't really know arch-linux so I don't know if you are being ironic about that or gentoo?

However, I can dip into the buildroot and turn on or off services using (from my build script):

# Don't start unneeded and unavailable services
rc-config delete keymaps boot
rc-config delete consolefont boot

#setup some default services
rc-config add dropbear default
rc-config add net.eth0 default

Building a root file system is easily scriptable, but the first few lines of my build script look like:

export PROJECT=base1
export EMBEDDED_ROOT=/var/embedded
export ROOT=/var/embedded/builds/${PROJECT}
export PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT=/var/embedded/portage
emerge -vK baselayout
emerge -vK uclibc busybox

Roughly speaking you run this under a chroot which matches your target environment (eg I use an x586 environment although the host is running AMD64), then this builds you a simple (small) base filesystem which will do not much more than boot and give you a busybox shell.  Customise or add software from there. eg:

emerge -avK dropbear postfix dovecot madwifi-ng wpa_supplicant hostapd openntpd dnsmasq e2fsprogs ppp l7-protocols iptables firehol gpsd

See the Tiny Gentoo entry on the gentoo wiki for a leg up, but you can do much better than that and I could be badgered to add my build scripts somewhere if people were interested.  Takes a couple of mins only to build a new base layout (and mine is now about 120MB of stuff using mdev, busybox and uclibc! )

All the best

Ed W


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[zio]

I do use tinygentoo at times. however I've since ported arch linux to uclibc . so to create a base system is as easy as

"for devel chroot"

sudo ./pacman.static -Sy base base-devel --config ./pacman.conf -r ./uarch_root

or for micro chroot

sudo ./pacman.static -Sy busybox --config ./pacman.conf -r ./uarch_root

I have full instructins here uArch . The instructions are longer then they need to be since it convers none arch systems "I plan to condense it down to one install script".

basically the difference is you do not require a chroot to create a chroot.


Arch uses bsd style init scripts if you need to add a service. you simple add it to /etc/rc.conf

Mike

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Ed W <lists@...> wrote:

Denys Vlasenko wrote:

On Wednesday 23 April 2008 15:35, Ed W wrote:
  

I guess you have tried gentoo before embarking down this route?  You can 
drop out a basic bootable image starting at about 5MB and go up from 
there.  Simple to build binary packages and merge them using qmerge.  
Build binary images for the architecture of your choice (although to be 
fair cross compiling for non native architectures adds some extra steps 
which are somewhat complicated).  Use uclibc/mdev/udev or whatever takes 
your fancy...
    

Sounds surprisingly sane.

Maybe it even uses something less arcane than init-with-runlevels-
and-tons-of-scripts-in-/etc?
  

I don't really know arch-linux so I don't know if you are being ironic about that or gentoo?

However, I can dip into the buildroot and turn on or off services using (from my build script):

# Don't start unneeded and unavailable services
rc-config delete keymaps boot
rc-config delete consolefont boot

#setup some default services
rc-config add dropbear default
rc-config add net.eth0 default

Building a root file system is easily scriptable, but the first few lines of my build script look like:

export PROJECT=base1
export EMBEDDED_ROOT=/var/embedded
export ROOT=/var/embedded/builds/${PROJECT}
export PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT=/var/embedded/portage
emerge -vK baselayout
emerge -vK uclibc busybox

Roughly speaking you run this under a chroot which matches your target environment (eg I use an x586 environment although the host is running AMD64), then this builds you a simple (small) base filesystem which will do not much more than boot and give you a busybox shell.  Customise or add software from there. eg:

emerge -avK dropbear postfix dovecot madwifi-ng wpa_supplicant hostapd openntpd dnsmasq e2fsprogs ppp l7-protocols iptables firehol gpsd

See the Tiny Gentoo entry on the gentoo wiki for a leg up, but you can do much better than that and I could be badgered to add my build scripts somewhere if people were interested.  Takes a couple of mins only to build a new base layout (and mine is now about 120MB of stuff using mdev, busybox and uclibc! )

All the best

Ed W

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uClibc@...
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[Ed Wildgoose-2]

mike rosset wrote:
> I do use tinygentoo at times. however I've since ported arch linux to
> uclibc . so to create a base system is as easy as
>
> "for devel chroot"

Sounds very cool!

I admit to being ignorant of the details of uArch - it's now on my todo
list.  Thanks for your work and good luck!

Ed W
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