Embedded Debian

No problem at all. see debootsrap man page and get a CF reader that you can plug into a debian machine...

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   /  `                   	Eric Valette
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Hm, don't think it's that easy. Just installing sarge (including X and fvwm95) eats up 380Mb, leaving not much space for som user-data. I had hoped there is a way to boil it down to something round 100Mb, without deleting things manualy. From the size point of view, this should be possible, e.g. look at Damn Small Linux.

Greetings, Stephan

Have you thought to embedded linux distributions ?

No. It you remove anything not needed keeping packages intact it fits in

256 MB. I'm running such a config actually. Install deborphan and locolepurge and you will get quite some extra free space after using them.

leaving not much space for som user-data. I had

I managed to reach 10 Mb without X11 once but did remove unneeded binary and files by hand.

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   /  `                   	Eric Valette
  /--   __  o _.          	6 rue Paul Le Flem
(___, / (_(_(__         	35740 Pace

Tel: +33 (0)2 99 85 26 76	Fax: +33 (0)2 99 85 26 76
E-mail: eric.valette@free.fr

Well, yes. I have looked around and found nothing that matches my needs, because I want full function _and_ reduced size (actually size doesn't matter that much, it's more about saving as much space as possible). If you buy s.th. commercial (actually, a commercial distibution lies on my desk...) you have to spend a lot of money for s.th. a standard distribution offers for free. I also like to keep up Package-management, it simplyfies updating and bugfixing I think, as running the same software on development- and target-platform does.

Greetings, Stephan

Sounds like Gentoo would suit your needs.

Petter

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distribution

I suggest you to see there too

There are some interesting commercial embedded distributions

My favorite is Koan Klinux

Their starter kit 'bronze' is very cheap, and is full GPL !!! I have used klinux 2.0 in a project and I save a huge amount of time. The application rewuired only 16M Disk On Module. Now I am planning to migrate to an ARM architecture and Klinux support almost all ARM processors. Moreover the version I've purchased can generate every target architecture with a single version, so now I can switch from x86 to ARM with no additional expenses ;-)

Regards /helix

Have you looked at Elinos? Their entry level option used not to be expensive. We have used version 2.x in our project as a starting point and integrated Xwindow (kdrive) and our own stuff. The application fitted in a 32M CF at that time. Eventually we switched to a home grown alternative but Elinos provided an excelent starting point.

I presume you looked at Emdebian/EmDebSys and QPlus.

I guess this link may be useful:

HTH.

I'm running Sarge on a small router (75 MHz Pentium, 16 MByte DRAM; that Toshiba Libretto does a lot more than just routing).

IMHO DRAM size limits the usability most... especially for X and JRE. Disk space shouldn't be that problem. Start with a debootstrapped core installation;

- use small apps where possible, e.g. Boa or Thy instead of Apache

- avoid caching Debian packages after updates

Maybe using a small Java interpreter such as JamVM (or even a KVM) could help?

Debian package jamvm ...

Does it really have to run X? There are some other GUI environments available for embedded which might be better suited, e.g. Microwindows

(but no Debian packages). If using X, you should take care to choose just a light window manager, not KDE nor Gnome.

Kolja