CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxroot
beandigital
beandigital

Reputation: 99

embedded linux root filesystem on disk

I would like to know how to create a root file system for an embedded Linux system that is stored on a hard drive. Would this be the same procedure if it was on a flash card?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 490

Answers (2)

user3015660
user3015660

Reputation: 1

Typically Linux embedded system is not operate directly in disk based filesystem, but use a mechanism to load the OS from a persistent storage (hard drive, flash card or memory, etc.) to volatile memory space (RAM). In general, these OS's file (commonly called as firmware) are kernel image file and a initrd (Initial RAM Disk) file, the initrd file contains root filesystem's files and any system's related files, upon boot the initrd will be uncompressed and deployed into a RAM based filesystem such as tmpfs, once completed, the system will use the tmpfs filesystem just like any disk based filesystem (ext3, btrfs), for example to run init program or script to do system initialization. Embedded system is tend to minimize I/O on persistent storage for some advantages: reliability, speed and cost.

You can learn how to accomplish this by learning any general Linux distribution on how to create and modify a initrd file.

Upvotes: 0

Peter L.
Peter L.

Reputation: 1041

No, your boot loader would need to know how to initialize the hard drive. With flash cards the boot loader initializes as an MTD and can understand the file system.

You might be able to make progress with an IDE HD and IDE support in the boot loader.

On a regular computer (e.g., PC) the BIOS takes care of initializing all peripherals, like a primary HD.

Upvotes: 1

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