About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[wu zhangjin]

Hi, embedded folks

"Linux has gained more and more new features in recent years but at
the same time has increased the kernel image size bit by bit. The new
features do expand the applications a lot but their increased size
also limit the application of Linux in some specific places."

So, I have launched a new "Tiny Linux Kernel" project, which was a
'continuator' of the forthgoer: Linux-Tiny[1]. This project was
sponsored by the "CELF Open Project 2011"[2] and its main development
will happen in the coming 4 months and of course, I hope this will be
maintained forever from now on.

1. Proposal

http://elinux.org/Work_on_Tiny_Linux_Kernel

2. Developmenet management

http://tinylab.org/index.php/projects/tinylinux/

3. Git repository

git://gitorious.org/tinylab/tinylinux.git

@https://gitorious.org/tinylab/tinylinux

The primary development effort have been put into the 2.6.35/dev/*
branches, most of the arch related parts are only for MIPS platform
currently, they will be migrated for another 3 main architectures:
ARM, PowerPC and X86. After getting enough patches of cleaning up and
fixing up, will create 2.6.35/stable/* branches and then
linux-next/dev/*, linux-next/upstream/* and at last maintain a branch
for the long-term 2.6.35 and upstream some of them to the mainline
3.x.y.

Most of the existing patches in the 2.6.35/dev/* branches are
experimental and some of them may even be 'ugly', they are only demos
for the ideas proposed. Welcome your comments, tests, defect reports
and even patches.

Thanks & Best Regards,
Wu Zhangjin

--
[1] http://elinux.org/Linux_Tiny
[2] http://elinux.org/CELF_Open_Project_Proposal_2011

Re: About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[Tim Bird]

On 06/10/2011 09:41 AM, wu zhangjin wrote:
> Hi, embedded folks
> 
> "Linux has gained more and more new features in recent years but at
> the same time has increased the kernel image size bit by bit. The new
> features do expand the applications a lot but their increased size
> also limit the application of Linux in some specific places."
> 
> So, I have launched a new "Tiny Linux Kernel" project, which was a
> 'continuator' of the forthgoer: Linux-Tiny[1]. This project was
> sponsored by the "CELF Open Project 2011"[2] and its main development
> will happen in the coming 4 months and of course, I hope this will be
> maintained forever from now on.
> 
> 1. Proposal
> 
> http://elinux.org/Work_on_Tiny_Linux_Kernel
> 
> 2. Developmenet management
> 
> http://tinylab.org/index.php/projects/tinylinux/
> 
> 3. Git repository
> 
> git://gitorious.org/tinylab/tinylinux.git
> 
> @https://gitorious.org/tinylab/tinylinux
> 
> The primary development effort have been put into the 2.6.35/dev/*
> branches, most of the arch related parts are only for MIPS platform
> currently, they will be migrated for another 3 main architectures:
> ARM, PowerPC and X86. After getting enough patches of cleaning up and
> fixing up, will create 2.6.35/stable/* branches and then
> linux-next/dev/*, linux-next/upstream/* and at last maintain a branch
> for the long-term 2.6.35 and upstream some of them to the mainline
> 3.x.y.
> 
> Most of the existing patches in the 2.6.35/dev/* branches are
> experimental and some of them may even be 'ugly', they are only demos
> for the ideas proposed. Welcome your comments, tests, defect reports
> and even patches.

Wu,

Thanks very much for making this announcement.  I'm very excited
about this work.

I had a chance this week to meet with some of my colleagues inside
Sony, who are working on projects with Linux that have a RAM budget
of 3 meg. This and related size work is really important for us.

 -- Tim

P.S. For those wondering, while our RAM budget is only 3M, we
have 8M of NOR flash, and we are using both kernel and application
XIP.  The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
monitoring software, and a web browser.

=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Network Entertainment
=============================

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[Tim Bird]

On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
> The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
> monitoring software, and a web browser.
Oops. Should be "web server".  I don't know of a modern
browser that fits in less than 3 meg.
 -- Tim

=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Network Entertainment
=============================

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[wu zhangjin]

Hi, Tim

On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> wrote:
> On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
>> The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
>> monitoring software, and a web browser.
> Oops. Should be "web server".  I don't know of a modern
> browser that fits in less than 3 meg.

For such a system, I suggest you use the idea in another project
launched by me ;-)

It is vnstagsvg: http://vnstatsvg.sourceforge.net/

"vnStatSVG is a web front-end to vnStat(a network traffic logger). it
only requires a cgi-supported http server setup but also generates a
graphical report with SVG. and with the support of AJAX, it has a very
scalable architecture, hence, it is suited to the resource-limited
distributed & embedded linux system."

So, the httpd web server provided by busybox is enough, therefore you
can simply ignore the "web server" ;-)

If you want the background idea of this project, welcome to read my
paper: "A CGI+AJAX+SVG based monitoring method for distributed and
embedded system".

Best Regards,
Wu Zhangjin

>  -- Tim
>
> =============================
> Tim Bird
> Architecture Group Chair, CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation
> Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Network Entertainment
> =============================
>
>

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[wu zhangjin]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> wrote:
> On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
>> The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
>> monitoring software, and a web browser.
> Oops. Should be "web server".  I don't know of a modern
> browser that fits in less than 3 meg.

For web browser, what bout lynx, links2 and w3m?  ;-)

Regards,
Wu Zhangjin

>  -- Tim
>
> =============================
> Tim Bird
> Architecture Group Chair, CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation
> Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Network Entertainment
> =============================
>
>

Re: About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[Nicholas Mc Guire]

On Sat, 11 Jun 2011, wu zhangjin wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Tim Bird <tim.bird-mEdOJwZ7QcZBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
> >> The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
> >> monitoring software, and a web browser.
> > Oops. Should be "web server". ?I don't know of a modern
> > browser that fits in less than 3 meg.
> 
> For web browser, what bout lynx, links2 and w3m?  ;-)
>
and if limited functionality is needed a custom browser can be 
built easily (even netcat + shell could do) - for web servers
there are plenty of very small servers for serving static pages
combined with a process to updated the pages (i.e. cron/shell loop)
this is fine for monitoring a system  (thttp or the like - 20k)
the static page limit is actually advisable due to security issues
or it starts getting really complicated.

hofrat 

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[Joaco]

I am happy with elinks-13.0 text mode browser.  At 2.9Mb, it fits nicely  
in a less than 128Mb compact flash image. I use it with my Advantech 
board.

I can even connect with Yahoo Mail Classsic to read mail and 
have had very few problems browsing most sites.  I can always connect, 
its just the quality of the browse that is not as good, as say Opera11!
But its nicely functional in a less than 80Mb Linux FS.

TonyB

> 
> On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
> > The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
> > monitoring software, and a web browser.
> Oops. Should be "web server".  I don't know of a modern
> browser that fits in less than 3 meg.
>  -- Tim
> 
> =============================
> Tim Bird
> Architecture Group Chair, CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation
> Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Network Entertainment
> =============================
> 
> --
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Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Tim,

On 6/10/11, Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> wrote:
> On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
>> The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
>> monitoring software, and a web browser.
> Oops. Should be "web server".  I don't know of a modern
> browser that fits in less than 3 meg.

Although I didn't test it yet with 3MB, I'm pretty sure that Dillo2
(www.dillo.org) could fit in 3MB of RAM. The binary size is less than
1MB. But it depends what you mean by modern. It doesn't support HTML5,
but support current HTML4 and CSS.

Best Regards,

Alan

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[wu zhangjin]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Alan Carvalho de Assis
<acassis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tim,
>
> On 6/10/11, Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com> wrote:
>> On 06/10/2011 05:16 PM, Tim Bird wrote:
>>> The system has a full network and bluetooth stack, sensor
>>> monitoring software, and a web browser.
>> Oops. Should be "web server".  I don't know of a modern
>> browser that fits in less than 3 meg.
>
> Although I didn't test it yet with 3MB, I'm pretty sure that Dillo2
> (www.dillo.org) could fit in 3MB of RAM. The binary size is less than
> 1MB. But it depends what you mean by modern. It doesn't support HTML5,
> but support current HTML4 and CSS.

midori and arora are another two candidates:

$ ls -lh /usr/bin/midori
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 550K 2010-06-23 03:00 /usr/bin/midori

$ ls -lh /usr/bin/arora
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.3M 2010-07-21 17:23 /usr/bin/arora

Regards,
Wu Zhangjin

>
> Best Regards,
>
> Alan
>

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Wu,

On 6/13/11, wu zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Although I didn't test it yet with 3MB, I'm pretty sure that Dillo2
>> (www.dillo.org) could fit in 3MB of RAM. The binary size is less than
>> 1MB. But it depends what you mean by modern. It doesn't support HTML5,
>> but support current HTML4 and CSS.
>
> midori and arora are another two candidates:
>
> $ ls -lh /usr/bin/midori
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 550K 2010-06-23 03:00 /usr/bin/midori
>
> $ ls -lh /usr/bin/arora
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.3M 2010-07-21 17:23 /usr/bin/arora
>

I think midori and arora cannot it in 3MB because they are linked
against my shared libraries, please take a look on return of:
$ ldd /usr/bin/midori

Dillo2 is statically linked with FLTK (by default FLTK applications
are statically linked) and even statically linked it have less than
1MB.

BR,

Alan

Re: [Celinux-dev] About the "Tiny Linux Kernel" project

[wu zhangjin]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 11:54 PM, Alan Carvalho de Assis
<acassis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Wu,
>
> On 6/13/11, wu zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Although I didn't test it yet with 3MB, I'm pretty sure that Dillo2
>>> (www.dillo.org) could fit in 3MB of RAM. The binary size is less than
>>> 1MB. But it depends what you mean by modern. It doesn't support HTML5,
>>> but support current HTML4 and CSS.
>>
>> midori and arora are another two candidates:
>>
>> $ ls -lh /usr/bin/midori
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 550K 2010-06-23 03:00 /usr/bin/midori
>>
>> $ ls -lh /usr/bin/arora
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.3M 2010-07-21 17:23 /usr/bin/arora
>>
>
> I think midori and arora cannot it in 3MB because they are linked
> against my shared libraries, please take a look on return of:
> $ ldd /usr/bin/midori
>
> Dillo2 is statically linked with FLTK (by default FLTK applications
> are statically linked) and even statically linked it have less than
> 1MB.

Yes, but will libopt[1] help If most of the functions in your shared
libraries are not really used?

"The Library Optimizer Tool is used to reduce the size of shared
libraries for an embedded system or other size-contrained environment.
"

Best Regards,
Wu Zhangjin

---
http://libraryopt.sourceforge.net/use.html

>
> BR,
>
> Alan
>