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  • From: Christian Brandt <brandtc AT psi5.com>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] About the Core itself...
  • Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 07:36:25 +0100

sindi keesan schrieb:
I have marked what I understand the following to be used for (Steven please correct me). I don't know the hardware differences between Mac and x86, but I don't think you need to support such things as parallel or serial ports, and you may not need or want modem or ethernet or PCMCIA.

Wow, you investe much more effort than I expected. Thanks!

Some infos about my project: I am using several systems with m68k-cpus, none of them is a Mac :-) My workhorse is an Amiga3000/030-25/16MB-RAM but there is also an Atari with 030-16/4MB-RAM and a SinclairQL-Thor/020-16/4MB-RAM.

I am doing all this effort as Debian has simply lost those systems as possible architectures: The requirements for installation and usage right now are already at 32MB RAM and take ages on anything with less than a 68040/25Mhz and with the next releases this will become even more dramatic, I personally doubt Debian can even be installed on high-end m68k-systems in three or four years. I also started a topic on the debian-m68-Mailinglists "Re: More RAM - a bad trend for m68k debian" which quickly run into 100 replies, making it one of the most active topics on debian-m68k ever.

My aim is to create a very minimalistic system which runs from 10Mhz, 4MB-RAM and 100MB-HD upwards. It must have a shell, the most basic unix-tools and a compiler, everything else is up to the user.

Are you planning to use X? It won't work in 4MB, probably will in 12MB but rather slowly

m68k code has one big advantage: its a bit more compact than i386. So 4MB on m68k are worth 6MB on i386. But actually I don't plan using X.

114 May 1 2004 ./etc/fstab
27 Apr 11 1998 ./etc/host.conf
85 Oct 8 2000 ./etc/hosts
209 Feb 23 2004 ./etc/inittab
1180 Oct 6 2004 ./etc/issue
691 Feb 18 2004 ./etc/ld.so.cache
17 Feb 10 2004 ./etc/ld.so.conf
191 May 9 2004 ./etc/lilo.conf
21262 Feb 18 2004 ./etc/magic

What does this do?

about all the /etc/ configs, I have a pretty good idea how to handle these. I only like to point out some files which differ from usual linux-systems.

115 Mar 9 2004 ./etc/passwd

baslinux doesn't use fancy stuff like shadow passwords. as long as you do not have several users on your box everything is fine.

PCMCIA- Do Macs have PCMCIA slots?
Will you be using a modem with the computers?

Whoever needs these has to compile his stuff himself. In other words, no I won't need them.

396 Apr 26 2004 ./etc/profile
385 May 6 2004 ./etc/rc
438 May 6 2004 ./etc/rc.hd

If you ever had a look at the init-system of redhat or debian then the pretty short baslinux startup is simply scary. But efficient. Very BSDish in the very ancient way. Nonetheless I'll do it a little bit more advanced.

3162 Feb 20 2004 ./etc/termcap

the magic and termcap configs I plan stealing from baslinux as most alternatives I found have been many times more complex.

22340 Apr 9 1998 ./lib/ld-linux.so.1.9.7
>> 5796 Sep 8 2001 ./lib/libdl.so.1.9.9

thats the ELF-linker

580816 Apr 9 1998 ./lib/libc.so.5.4.44

the libc5 which I'll compare with ulibc.

>> 59396 Apr 9 1998 ./lib/libext2fs.so.2.3
>> 11493 Apr 27 2004 ./lib/libtermcap.so.2.0.8
>> 5576 Apr 9 1998 ./lib/libuuid.so.1.1
4236 Apr 9 1998 ./lib/libcom_err.so.2.0

mostly about ext2-filesystem. not directly necessary but without you lose most control.

>> 32168 Apr 9 1998 ./lib/libm.so.5.0.9

mathlib

I think these are essential

I am not too sure about them.

Do you have CD-ROM drive, ethernet card or chip? I have not seen a Mac with serial or parallel ports - what do they use instead? A friend's older Mac used SCSI, so you would need a SCSI-capable kernel, which I don't think the main BL kernel is (it won't boot to a SCSI drive).
Maybe you should start with a working Mac linux and pare it down?

Well, I expect only hardcore-users to put their fingers at my system. Whoever isn't able to create device-nodes with mknod isn't my "customer" in the first place.

9120 Mar 5 2004 ./lib/modules/2.2.16/misc/8390.o

And as I also expect the user to recompile the kernel by need I didn't dive too deep into this too. Yep, I am evil :-)

146 Mar 19 2004 ./root/.Xdefaults
67 Jan 8 2000 ./root/.less
172 Jan 8 2000 ./root/.lesskey
0 Apr 11 02:13 ./root/.links/bookmarks
129 Feb 23 2004 ./root/.links/html.cfg
843 Mar 13 2004 ./root/.links/links.cfg
0 Apr 11 02:13 ./root/.links/links.his
358 Mar 8 2004 ./root/.pmailrc
92 Oct 6 2004 ./root/.xinitrc
744 Apr 30 2003 ./root/hotlist.html
0 Mar 8 2004 ./root/mail/inbox
0 Mar 13 2004 ./root/mail/outbox
0 Mar 8 2004 ./root/mail/sent
1627 Mar 5 2004 ./root/netsetup
7856 Jun 24 1997 ./sbin/badblocks
59772 Jun 24 1997 ./sbin/e2fsck
12000 Apr 30 2004 ./sbin/ldconfig
66428 May 6 2004 ./sbin/lilo

Mostly local config. Up to the user.

Is there a way to boot from a Mac with loadlin?

we m68k-users actually always use something like amiload or macloadlin. They are available but quite a bit different from i386.

I have not used these. Is setserial relevant to a Mac?

It is not even relevant on i386 today. In ancient times it was necessary to "bind" a higher serial rate to a fake rate, in other words, unix officially topped out at 38400bps and to use 115200bps you needed to bind 115200 whenever someone called for 38400bps. only needed if you use some pretty ancient software.

12803 Feb 24 2004 ./usr/bin/e3pi
12803 Feb 24 2004 ./usr/bin/e3vi

Tiny wordprocessor.


27376 Feb 27 2004 ./usr/bin/eznet

Dialing program for modem


25356 Jan 9 2000 ./usr/bin/file
5924 Apr 30 2004 ./usr/bin/ldd
56544 Dec 1 2002 ./usr/bin/less


2293 Jul 21 2000 ./usr/bin/lesspipe.sh

What does this do?


428632 Oct 7 2000 ./usr/bin/links-0.90

browser


962 Mar 13 2004 ./usr/bin/mail
738 Mar 13 2004 ./usr/bin/mailto

little mail program/script


32 Feb 25 2004 ./usr/bin/man


14024 Mar 5 2004 ./usr/bin/microcom

Terminal program used to dial a bbs (but I can't get mine to be functional afterwards) or for nullmodem connection between computers.


819 Oct 6 2004 ./usr/bin/pkg
29556 Mar 4 2004 ./usr/bin/readmail
174 Mar 5 2004 ./usr/bin/send2mbox
9044 Jan 7 2000 ./usr/bin/setleds
812 Mar 7 2004 ./usr/bin/wp
49 May 19 1994 ./usr/bin/zless


6299 Oct 6 2004 ./usr/games/bombem.gz
6785 Feb 29 2004 ./usr/games/castlemaze.gz

Manpages, more X and modem-software: ignored.

1256 Jan 9 2000 ./usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm
1260 Jan 9 2000 ./usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-nic

For X?

Terminfo is a translation library and nearly always necessary.

Wow! This can't be the 4MB model

No, thats the i386 system which I used to analyse baslinux :-)

People keep giving us Macs, most recently a 100MHz desktop with 3GB HD, and a 1997 laptop which I read works with linux will be returning soon. Please report back on your progress.

Right now I have set up a cross-compiler-environment so I can compile m68k-binaries on my 2Ghz i386 system. The kernel already compiles but crashes while initialising. I'll look for fresher patches at debians m68k-kernels.

Christian Brandt




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