Re: libc reduction and powerpc/apus woody boot floppies.
Hello Sven,
i had the time to download the mail only today,
sorry...but i was very busy working.
Your question:
The dimension of the normal libc2.2.2 is about 1.2megs
and its reduced counterpart is about 700 kbytes.
Note that the previous reduced libc 2.1.3 (from potato root-disk)
was about 900 kbytes, this can be not so important but has
left me some suspects...
Ah, forgotten to mail you that tuesday i have uploaded the floppy image
to your ftp site.
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For the mailing list:
Please don't think i have made any type of in-deep modification:
i have worked in this test only sobstituting files,
with a "follow the stream" logic. :)))
Last but not least: I don't know nothing about libc incarnations,
modifications etc.
For a better explanation here are my testing steps:
1) In first i have built floppy image "as-is" downloading all the
debs needed, letting the software to create all the floppy-images
for all the platforms involved.
The build process worked ok.
Dbootstrap worked if called by a shell.
I was not sure of Busybox's init subroutine because was impossible
to test it in a right manner by shell.
(almost something worked... what is device z6 ? It complained for it).
I have tried some other its builtin commands as cd, ls, du
and they worked.
2) I have tested the "as-is" root1440apus.bin.
Failed.
It locked just before or during init process because after the following
kernel messages:
Ramdisk: compressed image found at block 0
VFS Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)
Freing unused kernel memory: etc...
all the processes stopped.
The cursor stopped but was blinking...
probably something was still running or waiting :)))
The 2.2.10 kernel i have used was compiled with the syskeys ctrl.
With this i have seen that the processes that was running was:
1) init
2) kflushd
3) kpiod
4) kswapd
5) md_thread
So init process was started but was locked before the inittab reading
because there wasn't ash messages after, and none VC was working.
3) I have downloaded busybox source and compiled it with the general debug
option enabled and the special debug options in the init.c file too.
I was hoping for some debug messages.
I have loop mounted the image file and i have sobstituted the old busybox
with the new that i've compiled.
Test Failed: same results as above.
4) Changed strategy.
I have sobstituted only new busybox ( the standard version ) and
the new dbootstrap in a old working root-floppy image
(taken from potato)
Test Succeded : the root.image bootstrapped, but new dbootstrap
complained because i had left the old libc2.1.3 in that old image.
5) Sobstituted old library with the new reduced libc2.2.2.
Test Failed: got locked as the first tries.
6) Tried to sobstitute the small library with the standard big libc2.2.2
Test Succeded: the image began to bootstrap another time.
Of course i have sobstituted it also in the "as-is" image and it began to work
too. It works also with our last 2.4.3 kernel.
As you can see, what i have done was a simple file sobstitution.
Nothing more.
I don't want to give any opinion about because i don't know in-deep what
libc does. Also is the same for dbootstrap and busybox.
But i have a question:
May be now dboostrap & busybox need more resources than in the past?
Friendly,
--
Giorgio Terzi
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