build very minimal system with arch/ABS

madeye · 2010-08-25 21:25:08

I've gotten one of my "brilliant" ideas again. Something that I just need to checkout.

Would it be possible to make a mini system with only a kernel and a command line? And nothing else?

I made some tests with just booting the kernel and initrd from a virtual machine. I'm of course dropped in a shell with an error that /sbin/init can not be found.
But could I expand on this?

What I would try to do is make it boot directly to bash instead of /sbin/init. But I am unsure how to get started.
I was thinking about compiling the needed files with static libraries.

Can I use ABS for this? Or do I need to use LFS for something like this?
I am working on a 64bit architecture. Can I tell ABS to make it usable on i686?

karol · 2010-08-25 21:31:21

Alternatively you can check
http://minimalinux.org/ttylinux/ - ramdisk instead of initrd
http://tinycorelinux.com/ - small and smaller (microcore)

xc1024 · 2010-08-25 21:33:07

LFS is really just a how-to with bells and whistles for making a basic system. And yes, I think it would be a good place to start.

Command line is just a shell. It has some built-in commands but overall is useless by itself. You would need to compile and include some good stuff to make it useful. Stuff like nano, links, top, et cetera.

bernarcher · 2010-08-25 21:38:38

Another good source of informations for small systems is K. Mandla's Blog

madeye · 2010-08-25 21:52:31

Will check them out. Thanks.

Stefan Husmann · 2010-08-25 21:57:34

xc1024 wrote:

LFS is really just a how-to with bells and whistles for making a basic system. And yes, I think it would be a good place to start.
Command line is just a shell. It has some built-in commands but overall is useless by itself. You would need to compile and include some good stuff to make it useful. Stuff like nano, links, top, et cetera.

That is correct, but your examples are quite "high level". First things like rm, mv, cp, ls are needed, i.e. the package "coreutils" or equivalents.

karol · 2010-08-25 22:08:56

ttylinux can be "remastered" with their build system http://minimalinux.org/ttylinux/source.html
I'm not sure if those add-ons work w/ current versions, but you can give it a shot http://devel.zzl.org/ttyl/8/

Arch Linux

#1 2010-08-25 21:25:08

build very minimal system with arch/ABS

#2 2010-08-25 21:31:21

Re: build very minimal system with arch/ABS

#3 2010-08-25 21:33:07

Re: build very minimal system with arch/ABS

#4 2010-08-25 21:38:38

Re: build very minimal system with arch/ABS

#5 2010-08-25 21:52:31

Re: build very minimal system with arch/ABS

#6 2010-08-25 21:57:34

Re: build very minimal system with arch/ABS

#7 2010-08-25 22:08:56

Re: build very minimal system with arch/ABS

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