Hello, I would like to have your thoughts on the Scalability of SuSE Linux. I heard from a collegue that they managed to scale SuSE down to 30Megabytes, and that was a good achievement.... Now, I am wondering if I could use SuSE in an embedded application, and go down to 2-3Megabytes in kernel size, pretty much like a Montavista kernel? Has anybody any experience in using SuSE in embedded applications, like e.g. Ethernet Switch? Cheers // Matias
I would like to have your thoughts on the Scalability of SuSE Linux. I heard from a collegue that they managed to scale SuSE down to 30Megabytes, and that was a good achievement....
What they meant I suspect was that they installed it on a system with 30 (or more likely 32) megabytes of RAM - which is doable in spite of what the box may tell you...
Now, I am wondering if I could use SuSE in an embedded application, and go down to 2-3Megabytes in kernel size, pretty much like a Montavista kernel?
No, that's not what it's for ,if you want to build a Linux-based embedded system, you don't want a full desktop/server distro like SuSE. And it's not just about kernel size, I just checked the size of the Athlon kernel in SuSE 8.2 and it's 1.2M, it's about having small libs and apps, built specifically for the hardware when it comes to doing embedded stuff. Moreover, you don't want to have to install the software in the same way as you do with SuSE for an embedded system, you want to have it installed in firmware I would think - with embedded stuff, you want to avoid moving parts like hard drives, as they are likely to fail long before the rest of a piece of kit would. -- James Ogley, Webmaster, Rubber Turnip james@rubberturnip.org.uk http://www.rubberturnip.org.uk Jabber: riggwelter@myjabber.net Using Free Software since 1994, running GNU/Linux (SuSE 8.2). GNOME updates for SuSE: http://www.usr-local-bin.org
On Monday 26 May 2003 10:25 am, James Ogley wrote:
I would like to have your thoughts on the Scalability of SuSE Linux. I heard from a collegue that they managed to scale SuSE down to 30Megabytes, and that was a good achievement....
What they meant I suspect was that they installed it on a system with 30 (or more likely 32) megabytes of RAM - which is doable in spite of what the box may tell you...
Now, I am wondering if I could use SuSE in an embedded application, and go down to 2-3Megabytes in kernel size, pretty much like a Montavista kernel? My DSL modem- Speedstream 5260 has built in telnet and such. Its actually a firmeware crippled 5660 which has full Router/firewall capabilities. Out of curiosity i telnetted in and found a secret shell.
And to my surprise they are running a stripped unix/linux kernel! Some of the routing and netwrok commands are completely similar too. There is even a way to run GDB on it. I think it has about 4MB of ram. HMmm go figure. Its really fun to play with.... People have posted all sorts of things about hacking these "crippled" boxes and upgrading them to 5660 firewall/router functionality even though thats not what they were put out of the factory for. I even found instructions on how to solder a serial port into it in case you REALLY break it, you can telnet in via serial and fix it. All sorts of neat devices are actually running kernels with processors/ram/flash roms these days. I thought my DSL modem was a simple ATM bridge, but lo and behold it was smarter than i THOUGHT! Kind of scary to see what kinda of software they are actually putting in devices I thought were actually quite simple. On that thought I tried to telnet to my toaster with no luck. I think i have an earlier model... The Microwave does have an IP though....im portscanning it as we speak to see what services ITS running. No luck w/ telnet. ---------------------- Eric Bambach Eric@CISU.net ----------------------
I have run some tests that may be close to the information you are looking for. First. This is Suse 8.1 November 2002 distribution running under z/VM 4.2. Yep, mainframes. It is the same code as the regular Suse base, plus the addition of about 20,000 lines of "IBM Additional Code" which allows Linux to run unmodified on mainframes. Of course, everything had to be recompiled with a mainframe compiler to produce the executable code. This is a pure ASCII system on the mainframe. Using the standard defaults upon installation, I brought up Linux in 128 MBs of ram. I then detached the Swap drive and redefined the memory available to the system and rebooted. 64 MBs, the system booted properly. Everything I tried seem to work. 32 MBs, the system booted properly. Everything I tried seem to work. 16 MBs, the system booted properly. Most things worked. However, "man rpm" (the first time this manual was requested since the system was installed, and there fore had to go through "reformatting") failed. 14 MBs, the system booted properly. But the IP connection wouldn't start. 12 MBs, the system wouldn't boot. I added back the swap disk. I still had the same problems with 12 and 14 MBs, but everything seemed to work fine with 16 MBs. Although I could notice it was slower as not much caching/bufferring could be done and the additional overhead of swapping. The maximum amount of swap space I used was about 15 MBs when I was doing "find / -name 'rpm.*' (used to find the resulting RPM manual that was corrupted when being reformatted) Now I don't have a gui running, command line only. But it looks like Suse 8.1 will run on a small memory system. Of course, small memory usually also means small speed systems 486 or early Pentiums. Memory is what will make these things go. Usually this is a big problem during installation and Yast updates, but if you can afford waiting during those periods, small memory systems may be usable for "dedicated" applications. (firewalls, DNS servers etc.) I've read about Linux application servers that run in small memory boxes. But I assume that the people that set those up really know Linux a lot better then the average home user. For the rest of us, it pays to add any needed memory, if available, to get the job done quicker. Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting Eric wrote:
On Monday 26 May 2003 10:25 am, James Ogley wrote:
I would like to have your thoughts on the Scalability of SuSE Linux. I heard from a collegue that they managed to scale SuSE down to 30Megabytes, and that was a good achievement....
What they meant I suspect was that they installed it on a system with 30 (or more likely 32) megabytes of RAM - which is doable in spite of what the box may tell you...
Now, I am wondering if I could use SuSE in an embedded application, and go down to 2-3Megabytes in kernel size, pretty much like a Montavista kernel?
My DSL modem- Speedstream 5260 has built in telnet and such. Its actually a firmeware crippled 5660 which has full Router/firewall capabilities. Out of curiosity i telnetted in and found a secret shell.
And to my surprise they are running a stripped unix/linux kernel! Some of the routing and netwrok commands are completely similar too. There is even a way to run GDB on it. I think it has about 4MB of ram. HMmm go figure. Its really fun to play with....
People have posted all sorts of things about hacking these "crippled" boxes and upgrading them to 5660 firewall/router functionality even though thats not what they were put out of the factory for. I even found instructions on how to solder a serial port into it in case you REALLY break it, you can telnet in via serial and fix it. All sorts of neat devices are actually running kernels with processors/ram/flash roms these days.
I thought my DSL modem was a simple ATM bridge, but lo and behold it was smarter than i THOUGHT! Kind of scary to see what kinda of software they are actually putting in devices I thought were actually quite simple.
On that thought I tried to telnet to my toaster with no luck. I think i have an earlier model... The Microwave does have an IP though....im portscanning it as we speak to see what services ITS running. No luck w/ telnet. ---------------------- Eric Bambach Eric@CISU.net ----------------------
participants (4)
-
Eric -
James Ogley -
Matias Sundman (EAB) -
Tom Duerbusch