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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!mr.net!winternet.com!n1ott.istar!ott.istar!istar.net!gateway.qnx.com!not-for-mail From: doug@qnx.com (Doug Santry) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Embedded FreeBSD Date: 19 Dec 1996 16:48:23 -0500 Organization: QNX Software Systems Lines: 46 Message-ID: <59cd77$e9m@qnx.com> References: <32B744C0.2DA9@wdc.net> <597m7n$abh@fridge-nf0.shore.net> <59c6mk$1jq@delphi.cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: qnx.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32841 In article <59c6mk$1jq@delphi.cs.ucla.edu>, Scott Michel <scottm@taliesin.cs.ucla.edu> wrote: >Nathan V. Patwardhan (nvp@shore.net) wrote: >: Darren Bordelon (darren@wdc.net) wrote: > >: : First, we would like to have about 4megs of ram. What are the best >: : methods of minimizing kernel usage? Of course, we will not be using > >: With 4 megs of ram, you'll likely be brought to your knees, particularly I run it in 4 megs on a 386-25 notebook. Gets the job done... >: since you're not using swap. Forget about running X. Before I got >: 16M ram, I ran with 8 and that was torture. > >Let's keep in mind that the original poster said "embedded" system. >At my employer, The Aerospace Corporation (yes, it's a real company, >and it's a FFRDC), an "embedded" system goes up on a Titan IV payload. >So you don't need X. You don't need a lot of the other trivia that >you brought up. The requirements for an embedded system are a lot >different from an interactive one. I shudder to think about FreeBSD >being used to run a 777. OTOH, I could see FreeBSD being used to run >an ATM switch. > >The question was: Can FreeBSD, appropriately stripped down and a new >file system driver installed, be comfortably run in 4M? I'd like to Well, I gotta say that if you are interested in embedded systems based on x86 hardware, you'd probably be much better off just going and buying QNX or Neutrino. Neutrino in particular was designed for embedded applications from day 1. QNX being so scalable is really good at embedded applications but Neutrino has lots more features. Plus both give hard real-time capabilities commonly needed in emedded apps. Unix can't... >say "yes", since I remember running a pretty stripped down SCO a few >years ago in 4M. FreeBSD can't be much worse. You'd really have to >mess with the configuration of the kernel. It (probably) can be done. > >It might be a little tricky to run w/o a swap area, since that's >the real core of the VM. It'll be interesting to see the results if you do it. Please share them and give us updates on your work. DJS