"Recently, the CE Linux forum has been working to revive the Linux-tiny project," stated Tim Bird on the Linux Kernel mailing list, adding that Michael Opdenacker has been selected as the project's new primary maintainer. The project's website explains:
"The linux-tiny patchset is a series of patches against the 2.6 mainline Linux kernel to reduce its memory and disk footprint, as well as to add features to aid working on small systems. Target users are developers of embedded system and users of small or legacy machines such as 386s and handhelds."
Andrew Morton suggested that patches should be sent to him to be merged into his -mm tree, aiming for inclusion in the mainline kernel, "seriously, putting this stuff into some private patch collection should be a complete last resort - you should only do this with patches which you (and the rest of us) agree have no hope of ever getting into mainline." Michael, the project's new maintainer, agreed, "you're completely right... The patches should all aim at being included into mainline or die." Tim added, "the patchkit gives a place for things to live while they are out of mainline, and still have multiple people use and work on them. Optimally the duration of being out-of-mainline would be short, but my experience is that sometimes what an embedded developer considers reasonable to hack off the kernel is not considered so reasonable by other developers (even with config options)."
From: Tim Bird <tim.bird@...>
Subject: [Announce] Linux-tiny project revival
Date: Sep 19, 2:03 pm 2007
Recently, the CE Linux forum has been working to revive the
Linux-tiny project. At OLS, I asked for interested parties
to volunteer to become the new maintainer for the Linux-tiny patchset.
A few candidates came forward, but eventually Michael Opdenacker
was selected as the new primary maintainer. A few other
people, including John Cooper of Wind River and myself
are working to support this effort.
Recently, many of the Linux-tiny patches have been brought up-to-date
and are now available for use with a 2.6.22 kernel. The intent
is to test these, and begin mainlining the most effective sub-patches,
in the next few months.
Some automated testing has already been set up, with some
preliminary results published at a CELF conference in Japan.
(See the linux-tiny page below for a link to the presentation.)
Hopefully, results publishing will also be automated soon.
We encourage anyone with interest in this project to get involved.
If you have ideas how to reduce the static or dynamic memory footprint
of Linux, or, even better, patches for this, please let us know about
them.
Please see http://elinux.org/Linux_Tiny
A related document: http://elinux.org/Kernel_Size_Tuning_Guide
is undergoing an update this week.
Thanks,
-- Tim
=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Corporation of America
=============================
-
From: Tim Bird <tim.bird@...>
Subject: Re: [Celinux-dev] [Announce] Linux-tiny project revival
Date: Sep 19, 5:41 pm 2007
Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:03:09 -0700
> Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> wrote:
>
>> Recently, the CE Linux forum has been working to revive the
>> Linux-tiny project. At OLS, I asked for interested parties
>> to volunteer to become the new maintainer for the Linux-tiny patchset.
>
> I volunteer! Send patches to me, cc linux-kernel and celinuv-dev.
>
> Seriously, putting this stuff into some private patch collection should
> be a complete last resort - you should only do this with patches which
> you (and the rest of us) agree have no hope of ever getting into mainline.
OK, I'll try to accelerate the effort to send these to you.
We'll still need some kind of bucket for the patches that
don't apply to recent kernels, but which no one has yet
had time to bring up-to-date (or evaluate for permanent
dismissal). And dribbling them out, fixing them up,
responding to issues - all take time that I can't
commit to personally for the next week or so.
I'll let Michael respond whether he can get to this
sooner rather than later, as planned.
=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Corporation of America
=============================
-
From: Michael Opdenacker <michael@...>
Subject: Re: [Celinux-dev] [Announce] Linux-tiny project revival
Date: Sep 19, 6:38 pm 2007
Tim Bird wrote:
> Andrew Morton wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:03:09 -0700
>> Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Recently, the CE Linux forum has been working to revive the
>>> Linux-tiny project. At OLS, I asked for interested parties
>>> to volunteer to become the new maintainer for the Linux-tiny patchset.
>>>
>> I volunteer! Send patches to me, cc linux-kernel and celinuv-dev.
>>
>> Seriously, putting this stuff into some private patch collection should
>> be a complete last resort - you should only do this with patches which
>> you (and the rest of us) agree have no hope of ever getting into mainline.
>>
>
> OK, I'll try to accelerate the effort to send these to you.
> We'll still need some kind of bucket for the patches that
> don't apply to recent kernels, but which no one has yet
> had time to bring up-to-date (or evaluate for permanent
> dismissal). And dribbling them out, fixing them up,
> responding to issues - all take time that I can't
> commit to personally for the next week or so.
> I'll let Michael respond whether he can get to this
> sooner rather than later, as planned.
>
Andrew, you're completely right... The patches should all aim at being
included into mainline or die.
I'm finishing a sequence of crazy weeks and I will have time to send you
patches one by one next week, starting with the easiest ones.
Thanks for your support.
Cheers,
Michael.
--
Michael Opdenacker
http://free-electrons.com
+33 621 604 642
-
From: Andi Kleen <andi@...>
Subject: Re: [Announce] Linux-tiny project revival
Date: Sep 19, 3:28 pm 2007
Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> writes:
> Recently, the CE Linux forum has been working to revive the
> Linux-tiny project. At OLS, I asked for interested parties
> to volunteer to become the new maintainer for the Linux-tiny patchset.
Not sure what the point is of a separate patchkit. If it's a reasonable
patch it should just be put into mainline. And hopefully all the patches
will be reasonable.
-Andi
-
From: Tim Bird <tim.bird@...>
Subject: Re: [Announce] Linux-tiny project revival
Date: Sep 19, 3:41 pm 2007
Andi Kleen wrote:
> Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> writes:
>
>
>> Recently, the CE Linux forum has been working to revive the
>> Linux-tiny project. At OLS, I asked for interested parties
>> to volunteer to become the new maintainer for the Linux-tiny patchset.
>
> Not sure what the point is of a separate patchkit. If it's a reasonable
> patch it should just be put into mainline. And hopefully all the patches
> will be reasonable.
I don't know the detailed history, but my understanding is that
for some of these, mainline attempts were made in the past.
The patchkit gives a place for things to live while they are out
of mainline, and still have multiple people use and work on them.
Optimally the duration of being out-of-mainline would be short, but
my experience is that sometimes what an embedded developer considers
reasonable to hack off the kernel is not considered so reasonable by
other developers (even with config options). Also, sometimes it
takes a while for a patch to mature to the point where it is
acceptable for general use, while still being usable for
special-purpose projects.
-- Tim
=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Corporation of America
=============================
-
floppy?
does this mean that you will finally be able to boot a 2.6 kernel from a floppy?
2.6 too big
The size of the 2.6 kernel is more than double than that of 2.4.
I remember that for a *minimal* monolithic the bzImage size was ~700KB and now it is >1.5MB. It makes sense for the kernel to grow together with the many configuration options added, but it is truly irrational when the build is minimal, with all new options disabled! That is the meaning of conditional compilation, that everything useless is excluded from the binary...
Makes me feel old
I remember booting a zImage (not a bzImage) from a 360K floppy. Those were the days.
(Heck, the zImage that came with SLS 1.03 was only 350724 bytes. It got smaller if you configured a tailored kernel for your system. :-) 0.99pl11 baby! Though I quickly upgraded to 0.99.14d.)
--
Program Intellivision and play Space Patrol!
A minimal 2.6.22 kernel can
A minimal 2.6.22 kernel can be as small as 900K or so (bzImage).
2.4 still available
The 2.4 kernel is still out there and available, so feel free to use it (I do, for my embedded projects). Alternatively, you could always contribute patches to the 2.6 kernel to get it to have all the features it has now with a smaller footprint. I'm sure they would be appreciated.
Interesting
Interesting topic. I wonder if this will eventually get merged into the mainline kernel.
Will sacrifices have to be made?
I am both hands for it. I
I am both hands for it. I still keep a good old Am386 / 8MB RAM for testing.
Seriously, it is great to make this iron do something useful :>
Alarm clock
You can make it a alarm clock or something with FreeDOS.
http://www.freedos.org/
You think alarm clock
You think alarm clock requires 32bit CPU and 8 MB RAM ?
I don't think it ever requires DOS :>
In 80s, 8 MB were enough to run multiterminal mainframe.
Especially when users only prepared sources and job scripts in editors, and then compiled&run their Fortran|COBOL programs in batch queue :>
Bwuahahah
You think it takes 8MB even for that? UNIX was developed on a machine with 64K of RAM. Heck, LUnix only needs that much. Of course, I like programming systems that have just over 1K of RAM.
As for an alarm clock, you could probably implement a super fancy one with one of these.
--
Program Intellivision and play Space Patrol!