Baslinux mailing list

[David Moberg <davidjmoberg AT gmail.com>]

sindi keesan wrote:
>
> With this info, I copied the source code .tar.gz file to the computer with
> /uclibc, which I had booted with David's 2.4.31 (large) kernel, and
> unpackaged it after chrooting to /uclibc.  I don't have any kernel headers
> for 2.4.31, just 2.2.16.

uclibc rootfs provides a minimal set of 2.4.x headers.

> It compiled perfectly with make allbareconfig and make.  No complaints
> about ar, or sed.  The uclibc that I recently downloaded has a non-busybox
> sed in /bin and a 343K ar in /usr/bin, in addition to a /bin/busybox which
> is 361k and version 1.00 in /bin.  Maybe they don't trust 1.01 or 1.10?

They weren't available when the uclibc people made the rootfs. It's
about half a year old.

> I can run programs from within the directory where it got compiled:
> ./busybox cp /etc/fstab /tmp
>
> cp works.  uname works ('Linux').
>
> ldd busybox - needs libc libm libcrypt and ld-uClibc all .so.0.

It will not work on 2.2 until you build it statically.

> I presume a static version would be somewhat larger.  libc is 280K and
> uclibc comes with libncurses, libpthread, libz, libutil, libgcc as well as
> the above.

To build statically, use make config or make menuconfig and select
the static build option. You will also want to remove unused applets.

> Can I simply copy over (cp -a to get the symlinks) all of the /lib/lib*.so
> files so as to use this dynamically compiled version (or a smaller one) or
> will it mess up BL2?  Most of these end in .so.0 but there is a
> libncurses.so.5.2 which needs libc and libgcc, for instance, and I would
> lose my links to the libncurses that I already have.

busybox does not require all of these libraries. I would start out with
the ones it needs.

There should be no conflict if you only copy over libc libm libcrypt
and ld-uClibc.

> Will other programs work with the uclibc ncurses?

I don't think that glibc programs will.

> If I did copy over the libraries listed by ldd, how would I install
> busybox to the non-uclibc part of BL2.1?  I suspect make install installs
> it to uclibc.

You can just copy the busybox binary over. make install puts busybox
in /bin and makes symlinks.

There is an option in make config which, when enabled, allows you
to use 'busybox --install -s' to install symlinks. Steven disabled it,
possibly because it is not needed in BL3.

> Do I need addgroup,

Only if you want a multi-user system.

> adjtimex,

No.

> arping,

ping works perfectly well. Why have two different protocols for
it?

> bbconfig,

Don't know what this is.

> ipcrm,

Probably not.

> mkfs.ext3,

ext2? BL3 comes with mkfs.ext2. The busybox version is
newer and probably larger (they haven't reduced its size yet).
So, no.

> mkfs.minix,

Old filesystem. Not used by BL. Requires a kernel module.
Probably not.

> mktemp,

Only useful for shell scripts that require it. No.

> pivot_root,

Useful for booting Linux from a CD, but not especially
useful for booting from a loopback or hard drive. No.

> pipe_progress,

I like this - it lets you watch the progress of a long gzip
or dd operation, if you use pipes. Tossup.

> readprofile,

I don't use it.

> start-stop-daemon,

Ditto.

> sha1sum,

Isn't md5sum good enough?

> runlevel....?

Useless.

> Are all the programs in Stephen's busybox 1.01 libc likely to be useful?

No, I think he just answered Y to everything.

> fsck.minix?

See mkfs.minix above.

> Should I compile without ar, or just remove any link to it?

I leave out ar and use the real thing. busybox ar cannot
create archives.

> So far uclibc has worked correctly only for pilot-link and busybox.  It
> seems designed to compile busybox with.

Actually, busybox might be the most popular package to be
compiled with uclibc. So the busybox developers optimize it
heavily for compiling it with uclibc.

Steven, since you have posted the Linux kernel config for BL3,
can you also post your config for busybox?

David