FreeBSD's embedded agenda

[Dario Freni]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> FreeSBIE is interesting in the upper size of embedded systems,
> and it is gaining flexibility and features fast.  If you have
> rotating media available, FreeSBIE is probably what you should
> look at.
> 
> NanoBSD caters only to the "run read-only from flash" area, call
> it if you will the "soekris" area.  I need to investigate if it
> makes sense to use the FreeSBIE framework to build nanobsd images.

For what I've seen, imho NanoBSD could be built with FreeSBIE toolkit
simply tweaking the img.sh/flash.sh scripts to reflect its partitioning
scheme. The toolkit is also ready to welcome user-overridden scripts.

> It was generally agreed that we lacked a framework for doing really
> small systems.  NanoBSD uses a subtractive approach ("WITOUT_THIS,
> WITHOUT_THAT etc") and this breaks down below 32-64 MB storage.
> 
> For smaller systems, an additive approach would make more sense
> ("I want /bin/sh, /bin/ls ...") where the framework would do the
> nasty work of figuring out dependencies (necessary libraries and
> other files) and most of all, issue a comprehensive report that
> tells why a particular file was necessary ("/usr/share/termpcap
> is necessary because of /usr/bin/top").

FreeSBIE toolkit let you choose (optionally) which file the system must
contain in two ways: an additive approach and a substractive one. The
first approach consists in a text file containing every file which must
be copied to the system, the second one is the opposite: you can specify
in a txt which files/directories will be removed from the system.

For example pfsense build system use the second approach:

http://pfsense.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/tools/builder_scripts/remove.list

The only problem is that selected files must be compatible with
compilation option (i.e.: you can't exclude libraries which you've
choose to link binaries with, but atm the toolkit let you do that
anyway). The improvements on the build-option survey have been a great
step forward.

> Right now we do nearly nothing.
> 
> For our "reference platforms" we need two part webpages.
> 
> The first half: "to get FreeBSD running on this kit, download
> this and do that", with pictures, arrows and config file lines etc.
> 
> The second half: "Here is how to build this image on your own"
> 
> We also need white-papers, HOW-TO's, magazine articles and so on.
> 
> Nobody really owned up to any of this.
> 
> We did however agree that we have the small@ mailing list and that
> we should use it more (Therefore this email).

Agree. I can write some HOWTOs about FreeSBIE or NanoBSD if it is
needed. We only have a very primordial wiki documentation at
wiki.freesbie.org.

-- 
Dario Freni (saturnero at freesbie.org)
FreeSBIE developer (http://www.freesbie.org)
GPG Public key at http://www.saturnero.net/saturnero.asc

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