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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
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Part 2: Building Embedded Linux Images
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Part 3: System Architecture and Design Decisions
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Part 4: Developing Applications
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Learning about Processes and Threads
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Part 5: Debugging and Optimizing Performance
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Index
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Moving from the bootloader to the kernel

When the bootloader passes control to the kernel, it has to pass some basic information, which includes the following:

  • The machine number, which is used on PowerPC and Arm platforms without support for a device tree, to identify the type of the SoC
  • Basic details of the hardware that’s been detected so far, including (at the very least) the size and location of the physical RAM and the CPU’s clock speed
  • The kernel command line
  • Optionally, the location and size of a device tree binary
  • Optionally, the location and size of an initial RAM disk, called the initial RAM file system (initramfs)

The kernel command line is a plain ASCII string that controls the behavior of Linux by giving it, for example, the name of the device that contains the root filesystem. We will look at the kernel command line in detail in the next chapter. It is common to provide the root filesystem as a RAM disk, in which...

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