I'm working on a "Hello World" minimum
Linux distribution. As the name implies, the goal of this distribution is
to create and document the smallest footprint Linux root file system that will
support a TCP/IP server daemon. The initial daemon does nothing but respond with an ASCII Hello World
message upon establishing a TCP connection. (I have simple clients in gcc,
Java and MSVC++).
HW Linux is intended to be a bedrock framework upon which any
embedded Linux project can be built (much as I admire LRP and Trinux, there is
still too much stuff included that will be left unexecuted in the projects I'm
working on).
I started with an 850MB Redhat 5.2 installation and through
guess and by golly whittled it down to 11MB. Of that, nearly 7MB is
libraries. My next step is to create a Bootdisk_Contents input file to Tom
Fawcett's YARD PERL scripts. YARD, by culling out unexecuted libraries,
unnecessary binaries and stripping debugging symbols, should significantly
reduce the distribution size. My goal is to create a root file system <
4MB when executed natively off a hard drive or flash IDE drive and <= 1.7MB
when tarballed to execute out of a RAM drive.
Is there anyone out there interested in helping further HW
Linux along? I'll gladly contribute the root file system (such as it is),
the daemon code, the daemon start-up script, the clients, some basic
documentation and whatever YARD input files and documentation I create in the
future. I figure I'll need some FTP space and probably some Web space,
help in setting up the site, and help in creating YARD input files. Of
course, documentation and general advice on what further to cut from the root FS
will always be helpful, and will be posted on the site.
Another important use for the site would be to distribute
information on adding back functionality to Hello World Linux in a modular and
controlled manner. Also, the site can be used to distribute other variants
of minimum Linux distributions.
Hope this thing flies,
Mark
