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Re: [ts-7000] Re: apt-not-get

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Subject: Re: [ts-7000] Re: apt-not-get
From: Jim Jackson <>
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2007 22:30:30 +0100 (BST)


On Sun, 5 Aug 2007, j.chitte wrote:

> Sure I could do all this by hand the hard way and research the
> depandancies on the net but the whole point of using a distro is that
> all this hard work has already been done and kept upto date. Debain
> maintains ARM arch so it's stupid to take advantage of what is
> available.

Or you do it the hardway by starting from the debian image and removing
packages to strip the image down to as small as you can get it. If oyu can
get it small enough to fit in the onboard flash then you've got a winner.
If, as I suspect, you find it won't strip down small enough - well you'll
still have learnt something :-(

But, the TSLinux on-board image doesn't have package management. The full
blown debain image does. By the way, you don't have to run the full debian
image via NFS. On the TS7200 you can put it on, and run it from a CFDisk -
on the other boards I assume you can run it from an SDcard. I'm sure you
can boot to the debian image on a USB filesystem with a suitable initrd
setup. The possibilities are endless - this is Linux, and this is why TS
can't meet all possibilities - unless you pay them :-)

>
> > What many developers do instead though is use something like
> > buildroot to build the entire flash image for the target. When they
> add
> > or change software they create a new buildroot image and flash it
> to
> > the embedded system.
> >
>
> Fine , that's a logical step for production or a finished prototype
> but I'm not going to flash the entire fs every time I make a
> development change.
>
>
> > I am not aware of any embedded systems that use apt like tools
> > to load software. This is due to the nature of the environment being
> > small spaces and often hardware specific.
>
> Obviously in the field this is unlikely to be needed and would be a
> waste of limited resources but it could be appropriate in a
> development system. I chose the board with extra flash and memory for
> the development system exactly for this sort of reason.
>
> >A binary distribution on an
> > embedded system is a convenience but its pretty much expected
> > that if you're adding stuff you're building from source. This is
> the case
> > in all embedded systems I am aware of.
>
> What TS provide is an, out of the box, bootable running system.
> This seems like a good base for what I need to do. The major time
> saving this represents over starting from scatch with a bare piece of
> hardware is why I chose their product.
>
> Nowhere do I see an expectation that I remake from scratch what is
> already provided . I don't see why you say that.
>
> >
> > Have you looked at the below?
> >
> > http://www.embeddedarm.com/Manuals/gs_arm_tslinux.pdf
> > http://www.embeddedarm.com/Manuals/linuxarm-guide-rev2.3.pdf
> > http://www.embeddedarm.com/Manuals/TS_ARM_L.PDF
> > http://www.embeddedarm.com/linux/ARM.htm
> > ftp://ftp.embeddedarm.com/ts-arm-linux-cd/
> >
> >   -- Doug
> >
>
> Yes thanks , I read all of those. The first one shows how to boot to
> the "full" Debian fs on a server via nfs. Although it failed to work
> earlier.
>
> I could do a similar trick with the TSlinux. Boot into it using the
> target hardware but without the space restriction. There I should be
> able to use apt-get in a similar env to the target and take full
> advantage of Debian package management.
>
> So I'm in a chicken and egg situation. I'll have to get into the guts
> of apt and see if it's possible to unpack a .deb with the limitted
> tools in the TS busybox.
>
> regards,
> /js
>
>
>
>


 
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