Creating Simple Root Filesystem for Embedded Linux

During the last few posts, I’ve been using Debian-ARM from TS-Logic site as the root filesystem. Debian is a nice distro, but it’s too much for learning embedded linux development. Therefore, I’m creating a new simpler root filesystem to make it faster to boot, and reduce the complexity.

The new root filesystem is very simple, so it only have single user (root), a shell, and no-login. It cannot mount any media, send/receive TCP/IP connection, etc. But, we’ll learn how to do it (mounting media, detecting media, detecting ethernet card, etc) step-by-step later.

Setting Netbeans for Embedded Linux Application Development

I’m using Netbeans as my IDE to build embedded linux application. Here’s the small guide to setup your Netbeans for cross compiler IDE.

Testing The Host Infrastructure

Done with setup, now we’re heading for the testing.

Preparing The Kernel

Download the kernel source from TS-Logic site (or your board manufacturer’s site). Compile it, and copy into /tftpboot directory.

# tar xvzf tskernel-2.6.21-ts-src.tar.gz
# cd linux-2.6.21-ts/
# make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi- ts72xx_defconfig
# make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi-
# cp arch/arm/boot/zImage /tftpboot/

Note if the compilation fails due to ‘PATH_MAX’ const not found, add “#include <linux/limit.h>” in the beginning of the failure file. Mine has some problem with scripts/mod/sumversion.c.