Re: libc reduction and powerpc/apus woody boot floppies.

[Giorgio Terzi <dem5757@iperbole.bologna.it>]

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------
 
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