Embedded FreeBSD Presentation...

Mon May 15 00:28:07 UTC 2006

George, Jim et al,

Have you looked at the miniBSD build system
described below?  

I just ran an 'embedded' system during the 
2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games to monitor the
lighting system datanet that was

Freebsd 4.11 based, handled SNMP trap monitoring, fping monitoring,
SNMP fetch queries and SMS notifications.

I had a DHCP server running on the main LAN, dhclient on the WAN port,
sshd login and about 60-70 of the basic programs
(vi, awk, more, grep, find, sh, csh, gsmsmsd... ) fully available to me.
All managed within a couple of shell scripts and a cron job or two.

Hardware: 300MHz 486, 32 Meg RM, and a 32 MEG CF flash disk.
kernel was minimally downsized by removal of unneeded functions,
and was loaded on the flash disk as kernel.gz, to be ungzipped 
automagically during boot. All other programs had been rebuilt
to use dynamic libraries rather than static linkages to reduce the
binary sizes.

CF space used
	boot partition: approx 22 Meg of 28Meg
	config data partition: approx 20 Kilobytes of 4 Meg

NB Config data actually was all the shell scripts and my 
.conf files. Done this way so that the config partition 
could be mouunted R/W during shutdown to save all shell scripts
and config data that may have been edited / updated since boot.

Original minibsd
Freebsd 4.7 -> 4.11	https://neon1.net/misc/minibsd.html
and derived works
Freebsd 5.x
http://www.ultradesic.com/index.php?section=86
Freebsd 6.x
http://www.ultradesic.com/index.php?section=125

I didnt do the original work, I just use it, and it is a blast.
Particularly useful is keeping a dnode mounted disk image of
the CF on the development host. Dead easy to copy new programs to
the vnode mount, unmount it, dd a new CF image, and run. Also
by temporarily mounting the miniBSD boot partition as R/W, one can
do a SCP copy of a file to the CF disk from the development host
over the WAN ....

Useful, you betcha!

Murray Taylor

Special Projects Engineer
Bytecraft Systems

P: +61 3 8710 2555
F: +61 3 8710 2599
D: +61 3 9238 4275
E: mtaylor at bytecraft.com.au 

--
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It
takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite
direction."
  Albert Einstein 
-- 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-small at freebsd.org 
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-small at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Jim Thompson
> Sent: Monday, 15 May 2006 6:56 AM
> To: gnn at freebsd.org
> Cc: freebsd-small at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Embedded FreeBSD Presentation...
> 
> 
> On May 14, 2006, at 5:45 AM, gnn at freebsd.org wrote:
> 
> > At Sun, 14 May 2006 09:16:48 +0200,
> > Eduardo wrote:
> >> Is this really possible:? Sorry for be a bit unoptimist, 
> but in the 
> >> embeded space the o.s.must follow some rules that freebsd 
> (nor linux, 
> >> *bsd, windows, etc..) can't:
> >>
> >> - size: The o.s. must be minimal. Freebsd kernel, now, is 
> a bit huge.
> >> - realtime: The o.s. must do some tasks at fixed times, this tasks 
> >> can't wait for nothing.
> >>
> >> The size one can be fixed, but the realtime not. It needs a new 
> >> scheleude, irq manager,...; so a great kernel rework.
> >
> > Perhaps you mis-understand the thrust of this drive, in that we are 
> > not talking about turning FreeBSD into an RTOS, at least not in the 
> > short term, but about making it more amenable to embedded.
> >
> > There is much to do but it will be a gradual process.  Size and 
> > configuration are the first things to address.
> >
> >> Also, you forget the PowerPC chips. They are in a lot of embedded 
> >> devices and now freebsd has support for them (6.x).
> >
> > We did not forget them but amongst those who have shown interest in 
> > this project ARM and MIPS are the clear leaders.  If we find people 
> > who wish to address the PowerPC chips as well, all the better.  One 
> > other important component in this work is focus.  We cannot be all 
> > things to all people, at least not at the outset, so two different 
> > processors and two or three reference boards for each are where we 
> > plan to start.
> 
> In the embedded world, most people who build their own "SOC" 
> tend to use ARM7, ARM9 or MIPS cores.
> For instance, Atheros and Broadcom both use a MIPS 4KC core in their  
> WiFi parts.   Realtek uses an LX50 core, which is "MIPS minus the  
> patented instructions" (there is a port of GCC which won't 
> issue these instructions).
> 
> TI uses ARM7 in OMAP, but that platform is probably "too 
> small" for FreeBSD's resource requirements in the immediate 
> future.  (Read: lots of work to squeeze FreeBSD onto 
> platforms using OMAP.)
> 
> Folks who are not ODMs of one of these companies tend to use PowerPC  
> (either IBM's 440 or one of the Freescale parts) or Xscale.   Intel  
> did a real "number" on the market starting in 2003 (similar 
> to what they did to the WiFi chip market with Centrino) and 
> essentially drove suppliers of MIPS core parts (such as IDT) 
> into a corner of the market.
> 
> That said, there are very few "commodity priced" PowerPC boards.
> 
> I think the most "bang for the buck" will be found porting 
> FreeBSD to Xscale (especially the ixp42x parts) first, 
> followed by PowerPC (because FreeBSD is already running on a 
> (slightly different) PowerPC chipset), and then the various 
> MIPS-based parts that support WiFi or the little 
> switches-with-embedded-MIPS parts.
> 
> Jim
> _______________________________________________
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