PTXdist ======= Intro ----- For the impatient: try out to compile your own Linux system for generic i386 machines with make i386-generic-glibc_config make world chroot root/ /bin/sh If you have more time to find out how it works, read on. Idea ---- PTXdist is a tool which can be used to generate a root tree for all kinds of Linux systems. It was written with embedded systems in mind, but there is no reason why you can't use it to configure your firewall, router or whatever dedicated "device" comes to your mind. The job works like this: you run 'make menuconfig' or 'make xconfig', configure what you need and get a .config file. Run 'make world' and you'll find a root tree in root/. Voila. Directory layout ---------------- bootdisk/ skeleton for bootdisk (if you need one) build/ Here all the packages are extracted and being built config/ Configuration system, ext. configuration scripts etc/ skeleton for /etc for the target system local/ tools which are installed locally go to this dir root/ root filesystem for the target rules/ Makefiles for all packages scripts/ several little helper scripts src/ original sources and patches src_ptx/ local sources state/ state files (show in which state packages currently are during the compilation) Installation Instructions ------------------------- The installation takes it's configuration from a config file in the toplevel directory: .config. You can either copy them to this location or enter "make menuconfig" or "make xconfig" to generate a configuration. For predefined board support packages you can use "make foobar_config" to bring the config file in place. When everything is configured just enter "make world" and wait... The resulting root filesystem will be in the root/ directory. Just chroot into it for local tests (if your build host has the same architecture as your target) or copy it to your embedded system. Bugs ---- - busybox: patch compiler config variable in configuration - check if all tools use the correct compilers - search for FIXMEs - before starting you should look at the .config file and fix PTXCONF_PREFIX to point to a directory where you want the local stuff to be builded (like cross compilers etc). Robert Schwebel