Embedded Linux system basis

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Revision as of 09:58, 11 June 2010 by JulienB (Talk | contribs) (The kernel)

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An embedded Linux system is very similar (when speaking about software) to a Desktop one, thanks to the power of the latest embedded microprocessor, like the ARM9 one. It is composed of:

  • a bootloader, which is the first bits of code executed when the processor starts. It behaves like the BIOS+Grub combination on Desktop PCs.
  • an operating system = the Linux kernel
  • many programs and librairies organised in a filesystem = the rootfs

The bootloader

In our case our bootloader is U-Boot. It's main role is to initialize the hardware, load the Linux kernel and launch it with the correct parameters

The kernel

In our case Linux.

The rootfs

It is composed of:

  • a C library
  • basic utilities (in our case regroup as one executable through Busybox)
  • additionnal librairies and tools