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Mastering Embedded Linux Development

Mastering Embedded Linux Development

By : Frank Vasquez, Mr. Chris Simmonds
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Mastering Embedded Linux Development

Mastering Embedded Linux Development

By: Frank Vasquez, Mr. Chris Simmonds

Overview of this book

Mastering Embedded Linux Development' is designed to be both a learning resource and a reference for your embedded Linux projects. The book starts by breaking down the fundamental elements that underpin all embedded Linux projects: the toolchain, the bootloader, the kernel, and the root filesystem. First, you will download and install a pre-built toolchain. After that, you will cross-compile each of the remaining three elements from scratch and learn to automate the process using Buildroot and the Yocto Project. The book progresses with coverage of over-the-air software updates and rapid prototyping with add-on boards. Two new chapters tackle modern development practices including Python packaging and deploying containerized applications. These are followed by a chapter on writing multithreaded code and another on techniques to manage memory in an efficient way. The final chapters demonstrate how to debug your code, whether it resides in user space or in the Linux kernel itself. In addition to GDB, the book also covers the different tracers and profilers that are available for Linux so that you can quickly pinpoint any performance bottlenecks in your system. By the end of this book, you will be able to create efficient and secure embedded devices with Linux that will delight your users.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
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1
Part 1: Elements of Embedded Linux
7
Part 2: Building Embedded Linux Images
11
Part 3: System Architecture and Design Decisions
18
Part 4: Developing Applications
23
Part 5: Debugging and Optimizing Performance

Using Mender for local updates

So much for the theory. In the remaining sections of this chapter, I will demonstrate how these principles work in practice. The first set of examples involves Mender. Mender uses a symmetric A/B image update mechanism with a fallback in the event of a failed update. It can operate in standalone mode for local updates or in managed mode for OTA updates. I will begin with standalone mode.

Mender is written and supported by Northern.tech. There is much more information about the software in the Documentation section of the website (https://mender.io). I will not delve deeply into the configuration of the software here since my aim is to illustrate the principles of software updates. Let’s begin with the Mender client.

Building the Mender client

The Mender client is available as a Yocto meta layer. These examples use the scarthgap release of The Yocto Project, which is the same one that we used in Chapter 6.

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