[gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Dejan Nikic]

Hey,

I was wondering if there was a separate project of Gentoo for Embedded
systems? I'm looking into putting Gentoo on 128mb Flash, so I'd like to
make it fairly small.  I heard about some gentoo embedded groups before,
but don't remember where.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[david]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 08:26:09AM -0800, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I was wondering if there was a separate project of Gentoo for Embedded
> systems? I'm looking into putting Gentoo on 128mb Flash, so I'd like to
> make it fairly small.  I heard about some gentoo embedded groups before,
> but don't remember where.
> 

Most of the people involved with that had some disagreements with
gentoo and left(now zynot).  I have been working on some ways to
embed gentoo for my own nefarious purposes.  And putting it in 128meg
flash is exactly my goal(hopefully 64megs)
but be forewarned it is not an easy task.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Dejan Nikic]

hmm that's too bad.  I wish there is some way of acctually chrooting into
a portage-less system, but still be able to compile everything from
scratch using the flags and such.  Otherwise I'll have to go LFS way, and
I'd really hate to do that, since I really don't have that much time on my
hands.



On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 david@futuretel.com wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 08:26:09AM -0800, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> > Hey,
> >
> > I was wondering if there was a separate project of Gentoo for Embedded
> > systems? I'm looking into putting Gentoo on 128mb Flash, so I'd like to
> > make it fairly small.  I heard about some gentoo embedded groups before,
> > but don't remember where.
> >
>
> Most of the people involved with that had some disagreements with
> gentoo and left(now zynot).  I have been working on some ways to
> embed gentoo for my own nefarious purposes.  And putting it in 128meg
> flash is exactly my goal(hopefully 64megs)
> but be forewarned it is not an easy task.
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Tuesday 28 October 2003 03:30, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> hmm that's too bad.  I wish there is some way of acctually chrooting
> into a portage-less system, but still be able to compile everything
> from scratch using the flags and such.  Otherwise I'll have to go LFS
> way, and I'd really hate to do that, since I really don't have that
> much time on my hands.

You could bind mount the portage tree into the root system (of course 
updates will be out of the question). After you're done unmerge portage 
and it works.

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Vano D]

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 10:10, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> You could bind mount the portage tree into the root system (of course 
> updates will be out of the question). After you're done unmerge portage 
> and it works.

[Still not used to the reply-to. Now off to the list. Paul already has a
copy of my email before anyone else (lucky you ;)]

This is very interesting. Such a simple idea. Anyhow I have also been
looking at ways to get rid of portage/gcc/dev tools out of Gentoo. But
my goal has been to clean the system of dev tools and thus portage
(since it would be useless without dev tools) so as to create server
installations. (Although I also have had a side interest in getting a
knoppix-like system built solely out of gentoo.)

I wonder if it would be possible to somehow remotely "mount" the rest of
the stuff such as gcc/python etc.. as with portage. So this way the
system would be completely clean and when it needs to be updated a
script would mount/link the tools from a remote system and after its
done upgrading it would unlink and we are left with a lean clean system.

Any thoughts on this?

PD. I already have attempted at removing gcc and whatnot from Gentoo but
have ended up with a nonbootable system. I would really appreciate if
anyone who has had success in doing this would shed some light and give
some tips.

Cheers,

Vano.

-- 
Vano D <gentoo-dev@europeansoftware.com>



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 17:24:12 +0100
Vano D <gentoo-dev@europeansoftware.com> wrote:

> I wonder if it would be possible to somehow remotely "mount" the rest
> of
> the stuff such as gcc/python etc.. as with portage. So this way the
> system would be completely clean and when it needs to be updated a
> script would mount/link the tools from a remote system and after its
> done upgrading it would unlink and we are left with a lean clean
> system.

http://ovlfs.sf.net/  (if I recall correctly)  might be the thing here.

however, last I head any application that tries to chroot() on an
overlay mounted FS will bite the dust.


Another alternative is to use a staging machine to build binaries, then
simply untar the .tbz2 files, instead of using portage to do it. (evil
solution actually ;)  

After that, some manual pruning should get the things in order.

Though, for a server you don't gain anything in security by removing
compilers and development tools. perhaps in complexity and size, though.

//Spider


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Vano D]

On Wed, 2003-10-29 at 21:29, Spider wrote:
> > I wonder if it would be possible to somehow remotely "mount" the rest
> > of
> > the stuff such as gcc/python etc.. as with portage. So this way the
> > system would be completely clean and when it needs to be updated a
> > script would mount/link the tools from a remote system and after its
> > done upgrading it would unlink and we are left with a lean clean
> > system.
> 
> http://ovlfs.sf.net/  (if I recall correctly)  might be the thing here.

What an idea! Never thought of such a thing. Definitly worth a look.

> Another alternative is to use a staging machine to build binaries, then
> simply untar the .tbz2 files, instead of using portage to do it. (evil
> solution actually ;)  

> After that, some manual pruning should get the things in order.

Yeah really evil. I guess this is what some people do. But I would
prefer to have portage do the stuff instead of getting worries that I
might have forgotten to fix a file or something..

> Though, for a server you don't gain anything in security by removing
> compilers and development tools. perhaps in complexity and size, though.

Well. Regarding security that is a bit relative. You do gain in the
sense that the cracker has one less tool/option at hand and hence you
gain a little bit more of the higher ground against the attacker. The
less options/possibilites the cracker has the harder (even if its only a
little bit) it gets to penetrate (although not impossible of course). 

Also as you state it is nice to have a simple clean lean system with a
small footprint.

I really don't know how valid my assumptions are, but I am willing to
give it a shot to see what comes out of a de-Gentooizable Gentoo ;)

Cheers,

Vano


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Spider]

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On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:35:37 +0100
Vano D <gentoo-dev@europeansoftware.com> wrote:


> > Another alternative is to use a staging machine to build binaries,
> > then simply untar the .tbz2 files, instead of using portage to do
> > it.(evil solution actually ;)  
> 
> > After that, some manual pruning should get the things in order.
> 
> Yeah really evil. I guess this is what some people do. But I would
> prefer to have portage do the stuff instead of getting worries that I
> might have forgotten to fix a file or something..

Yes, perhaps. But one thing that struck me is how build dependencies and
run dependencies are different, and one can fairly simply modify a
binary package to not include the things you don't want (or portage to
remove it before checksumming/merge-ing )  And therefore still have
portage do its stuff, but no... real portage.

Though, you still need python and the portage software, even if you
might not need the tree.  


> > Though, for a server you don't gain anything in security by removing
> > compilers and development tools. perhaps in complexity and size,
> > though.
> 
> Well. Regarding security that is a bit relative. You do gain in the
> sense that the cracker has one less tool/option at hand and hence you
> gain a little bit more of the higher ground against the attacker. The
> less options/possibilites the cracker has the harder (even if its only
> a little bit) it gets to penetrate (although not impossible of
> course). 


well, sense in this case is purely relative. Checking the honeypot
project and dissection competitions will give you a further sense on
what the crackers actually do.  The interesting one was compiled against
a slackware 2.0 system , and statically linked there (using gcc 2.7 , I
think ) To be imported and run on the victim machine.. Just because that
makes for a smaller footprint on the actual payload.


> Also as you state it is nice to have a simple clean lean system with a
> small footprint.
yeah, this would be interesting for installing Gentoo on that 240 Mb
drive ....  ;)

 
> I really don't know how valid my assumptions are, but I am willing to
> give it a shot to see what comes out of a de-Gentooizable Gentoo ;)


See it as this: at least you'll learn something.  That means its a pure
gain from my perspective. :)

//Spider

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Dejan Nikic]

Acctually I think this should work.  I'm not really interested with
updates anyways.  The computer (like most real embedded devices) will
not be connected to the outside world, so no security risks and need to
upgrade without doing a complete overhaul. I just need something stable
that works. I just have to see how it will behave with my RT kernel.

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 01:10, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Tuesday 28 October 2003 03:30, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> > hmm that's too bad.  I wish there is some way of acctually chrooting
> > into a portage-less system, but still be able to compile everything
> > from scratch using the flags and such.  Otherwise I'll have to go LFS
> > way, and I'd really hate to do that, since I really don't have that
> > much time on my hands.
> 
> You could bind mount the portage tree into the root system (of course 
> updates will be out of the question). After you're done unmerge portage 
> and it works.
> 
> Paul
> 
> - -- 
> Paul de Vrieze
> Gentoo Developer
> Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
> Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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> XeoSxlZM0kfGqRGu+MA9yOs=
> =K6ne
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
> 


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[david]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 09:11:44AM -0800, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> Acctually I think this should work.  I'm not really interested with
> updates anyways.  The computer (like most real embedded devices) will
> not be connected to the outside world, so no security risks and need to
> upgrade without doing a complete overhaul. I just need something stable
> that works. I just have to see how it will behave with my RT kernel.
> 

I have a script I put together that will 'emerge' packages into an
alternate root using portage.  My goal was a machine 'image' that I
could stick in an embedded device, and if upgrades were needed I would
upgrade the 'image' not individual packages.
At the smallest so far, i put busybox+glibc+kernel in 50 megs(i know
that's huge i compiled in locales and other junk), but right now I'm
working on building a uclibc toolchain.  And I should have that
finished in about a week. My earlier postings about the "-doc" use
flag, which has turned into a FEATURE were related to this.
At any rate, if you are interested I could show you a copy of what
i've been working on.

On a side note if i compile busybox statically everything fits in
about 5 megs.

One thing that is clear... gentoo(portage) needs better cross compilation and
alternate libc support.  I have some hacked code from aiken and
zwelch(gcc-config-1.4.5) that I can *sorta* work with.  But there are
some intricacies of portage I don't understand... that I cannot get around.

Dave

> On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 01:10, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > On Tuesday 28 October 2003 03:30, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> > > hmm that's too bad.  I wish there is some way of acctually chrooting
> > > into a portage-less system, but still be able to compile everything
> > > from scratch using the flags and such.  Otherwise I'll have to go LFS
> > > way, and I'd really hate to do that, since I really don't have that
> > > much time on my hands.
> > 
> > You could bind mount the portage tree into the root system (of course 
> > updates will be out of the question). After you're done unmerge portage 
> > and it works.
> > 
> > Paul
> > 
> > - -- 
> > Paul de Vrieze
> > Gentoo Developer
> > Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
> > Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
> > 
> > iD8DBQE/njJwbKx5DBjWFdsRAiS8AKCpP1mRGgGsWUh5jhsUf/669IucfACeP0HX
> > XeoSxlZM0kfGqRGu+MA9yOs=
> > =K6ne
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
> > 
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
> 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Vano D]

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 19:02, david@futuretel.com wrote:

> I have a script I put together that will 'emerge' packages into an
> alternate root using portage.  My goal was a machine 'image' that I
> could stick in an embedded device, and if upgrades were needed I would
> upgrade the 'image' not individual packages.
> At the smallest so far, i put busybox+glibc+kernel in 50 megs(i know
> that's huge i compiled in locales and other junk), but right now I'm
> working on building a uclibc toolchain.  And I should have that
> finished in about a week.

I would be very interested in seeing how you went about doing this. As I
understand you use a host gentoo installation to "emerge" packages into
a clean root. What I wonder is what that root contains? Do you start
with a skeleton? If so what? and finally do you use the bin package
feature portage provides to carry this out?

My eventual goal as I stated before is to have as lean/clean server
enviornment as possible and as a secondary consequence try to make
bootable CDs with custom selectable tools/apps.

Regarding the -doc flag... I wonder how many packages support it.

Cheers,

Vano.



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Dejan Nikic]

well i'm trying to maybe use a bunch of different partitions and mount
everything to a separate one say mount /usr/portage to something like
/dev/hda5 or whatever and then when i'm done I should hopefully have a
fully working / at one of the partitions, and then I can use dd to copy it
to a flash.



On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Vano D wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 19:02, david@futuretel.com wrote:
>
> > I have a script I put together that will 'emerge' packages into an
> > alternate root using portage.  My goal was a machine 'image' that I
> > could stick in an embedded device, and if upgrades were needed I would
> > upgrade the 'image' not individual packages.
> > At the smallest so far, i put busybox+glibc+kernel in 50 megs(i know
> > that's huge i compiled in locales and other junk), but right now I'm
> > working on building a uclibc toolchain.  And I should have that
> > finished in about a week.
>
> I would be very interested in seeing how you went about doing this. As I
> understand you use a host gentoo installation to "emerge" packages into
> a clean root. What I wonder is what that root contains? Do you start
> with a skeleton? If so what? and finally do you use the bin package
> feature portage provides to carry this out?
>
> My eventual goal as I stated before is to have as lean/clean server
> enviornment as possible and as a secondary consequence try to make
> bootable CDs with custom selectable tools/apps.
>
> Regarding the -doc flag... I wonder how many packages support it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Vano.
>
>
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[david]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 07:42:50PM +0100, Vano D wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 19:02, david@futuretel.com wrote:
> 
> I would be very interested in seeing how you went about doing this. As I
> understand you use a host gentoo installation to "emerge" packages into
> a clean root. What I wonder is what that root contains? Do you start
> with a skeleton? If so what? and finally do you use the bin package
> feature portage provides to carry this out?
> 

Turns out portage creates a few things it seems to need.  /var/db/
type of files and a couple others.  But nothing massive.  I don't even
bother emerging portage to the 'fake root'.

If there is interest from more than a couple of people.  I can clean
up the code a bit and post 'submerge' to the list.

>
> My eventual goal as I stated before is to have as lean/clean server
> enviornment as possible and as a secondary consequence try to make
> bootable CDs with custom selectable tools/apps.
> 

I have done the latter here as well. Hacking boot CD's with your own
 apps isn't easy. It took me about a week of messing with 'livecd-ng'
 which doesn't appear to be maintained anymore.  But I hear rumors
 that drobbins and some other people are working on a new system.

> Regarding the -doc flag... I wonder how many packages support it.
> 

They don't, see the thread from last week "USE Flags"

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Vano D]

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 19:55, david@futuretel.com wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 07:42:50PM +0100, Vano D wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 19:02, david@futuretel.com wrote:
> > 
> > I would be very interested in seeing how you went about doing this. As I
> > understand you use a host gentoo installation to "emerge" packages into
> > a clean root. What I wonder is what that root contains? Do you start
> > with a skeleton? If so what? and finally do you use the bin package
> > feature portage provides to carry this out?
> > 
> 
> Turns out portage creates a few things it seems to need.  /var/db/
> type of files and a couple others.  But nothing massive.  I don't even
> bother emerging portage to the 'fake root'.
> 
> If there is interest from more than a couple of people.  I can clean
> up the code a bit and post 'submerge' to the list.

But do you start from a stagex install on the destination root (which I
doubt)? or do you manually create a minimal root system? or is it that
you just emerge baselayout and what is needed into the root and let
portage create the whole thing for you? (I am speaking of /etc /bin /usr
/dev etc. here.)

And yes, you have my vote for the script.

-- 
Vano D <gentoo-dev@europeansoftware.com>


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[david]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 08:06:56PM +0100, Vano D wrote:
> But do you start from a stagex install on the destination root (which I
> doubt)? or do you manually create a minimal root system? or is it that
> you just emerge baselayout and what is needed into the root and let
> portage create the whole thing for you? (I am speaking of /etc /bin /usr
> /dev etc. here.)
> 

nope, no stage installs.  I've experimented a bit, but baselayout is
even a bit too heavy for my uses(in addition it requires gawk).

how a small image works for me is:

sys-kernel/linux-headers
=glibc-2.2.5-r8
=busybox-0.60.5-r1
sys-apps/tinylogin

then I unmerge linux-headers after glibc is built.  I should note that
I primarily do cross compiling, so recreating things like glibc
everytime is a necessity for me.
Those ebuilds are also hacked to do exactly what I need(ex: busybox
actually creates all the busybox links, unlike the stock gentoo one)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Tuesday 28 October 2003 15:45, david@futuretel.com wrote:
> sys-kernel/linux-headers
> =glibc-2.2.5-r8
> =busybox-0.60.5-r1
> sys-apps/tinylogin

considering your current requirement list why not use uclibc ?
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Andrew Gaffney]

david@futuretel.com wrote:
> If there is interest from more than a couple of people.  I can clean
> up the code a bit and post 'submerge' to the list.

I would definately be interested in seeing this script.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Dejan Nikic]

same here.



On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Andrew Gaffney wrote:

> david@futuretel.com wrote:
> > If there is interest from more than a couple of people.  I can clean
> > up the code a bit and post 'submerge' to the list.
>
> I would definately be interested in seeing this script.
>
> --
> Andrew Gaffney
>
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Vano D]

On another note, I wonder how easy/hard it would be to add an
option/patch to Portage so as to have a --root option. You then specify
a path and all actions of merging and unmerging would be carried out
there instead of /.

Got to learn Python one of these days.

Cheers,

Vano.



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[david]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 09:22:21PM +0100, Vano D wrote:
> On another note, I wonder how easy/hard it would be to add an
> option/patch to Portage so as to have a --root option. You then specify
> a path and all actions of merging and unmerging would be carried out
> there instead of /.
> 

This is what I've done but no hackage required.
ROOT=/tmp/rootme emerge my-package
only problem is ebuild crashes when you use this same syntax.


I'll clean up submerge and post it in a couple of days.  Hopefully
other people will find it useful.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Embedded

[Brian Jackson]

On Monday 27 October 2003 08:30 pm, Dejan Nikic wrote:
> hmm that's too bad.  I wish there is some way of acctually chrooting into
> a portage-less system, but still be able to compile everything from
> scratch using the flags and such.  Otherwise I'll have to go LFS way, and
> I'd really hate to do that, since I really don't have that much time on my
> hands.

Chiming a little late here (I've had email trouble the last few days), but 
there is an option to tell portage to install packages to a different root, 
but I'd watch it carefully, I'm fairly certain there are ebuilds that don't 
follow the rules.

--Iggy

<snip>
-- 
Home -- http://www.brianandsara.net
Gentoo -- http://gentoo.brianandsara.net

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