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On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 11:13:46AM -0000, Gareth McClean wrote: |
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> a) Do any open source projects target the initial setup of an embedded |
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> system i.e. basics like manually configuring an Ethernet port, configuration |
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> of wireless networking or possibly other essentials like hostname, timezone, |
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> etc? |
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I either use Gentoo's baselayout or openrc, or write my own simple init |
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script, depending on what I'm doing. I don't know of any init system |
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projects that are targeted specifically at embedded. |
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> b) If not, do you perform your 'out-of-the-box setup' i.e. did you create |
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> your own set of tools using packages like awk, sed, perl etc? |
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Again, depending on the scale of the project, I use either a stripped |
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down Gentoo system or a simple Busybox-based system. |
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> c) How are you communicating with the user during the installation process? |
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Most of the systems I'm used to aren't designed to be installed by a |
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user - at least the software side of things. |
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> c) Are there any intentions to migrate the Linux 'system configuration' into |
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> a machine readable format like XML. |
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No. Do you have any idea how long it takes to read and write XML? |
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> Ignore that that might sound like a call to implement the equivalent |
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> of the windows registry |
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It doesn't, although it does sound like unnecessary overhead. |
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> and focus on the fact I am concerned about the potential issues of |
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> processing unstructured, human readable text files |
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Which issues? All of the base system configuration files seem fairly |
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structured to me. At any rate I'd much rather be parsing simple text |
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files than XML. Which files are you having trouble with? |
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> and want an easy/reliable way to programmatically change the system |
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> configuration and manage future system updates. |
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Most people that I know of solve these problems with shell or |
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perl/python/language-of-the-moment scripts. |
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Bear in mind that these are just my opinions; other people on the list |
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will doubtless disagree with them. :) |
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Thanks, |
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Ryan |