Re: Debian pkgs in ROMs?
On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 05:22:39PM -0700, Roger Flores wrote:
> This isn't a strictly ARM question, but so many ARM devices are embedded
> that maybe the answers are known.
>
>
> 1. How are people using Debian in devices running from ROM? We're
> working on an ARM device with a 8MB ROM. I want to enable adding
> Debian's precompiled packages at runtime. I've setup debootstrap on an
> NFS mounted partition, but it's HUGE! No way will it fit in ROM! I
> really only want dpkg and apt-get, and their dependencies. Is there a
> web page somewhere describing this? Has anyone done this? I played
> around with installing arm packages to a rootfs on my i386 desktop using
> dpkg's root directory option. The idea was to ultimately put that in
> ROM, but dpkg goes crazy without (undocumented?) config files being set
> up in that root directory system. I wish it would just create defaults.
> Why is this so hard?
>
> 2. How do people inform dpkg that certain package equivalents are
> available? We have tuned jpeg and SDL substitutes. Installing a
> generic one is the wrong thing to do. And we use busybox. Did I miss a
> doc describing how to do this? Is Ubuntu kind of doing this with their
> "funny" versions?
>
> 3. Another issue is that some packages are likely to be in ROM and
> others in a ramdisk. We're thinking of using something like Unionfs to
> merge the two. Will there be a problem updating packages?
On a standard debian install, the available file dpkg stores in /var is
at least 20M, and the lists apt stores are close to that size too.
A standard debian install just isn't meant for an embedded system, but
more of a desktop/server type system.
The system I am currently working on is going to have a 256MB compact
flash for the filesystem, and that you can fit debian into.
Perhaps embedian would be a better fit, although I don't know if it is
much smaller.
Len Sorensen
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