Mastering Embedded Linux Programming
Language: English
Pages: 418
ISBN: 1784392537
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Key Features
- Create efficient and secure embedded devices using Linux
- Minimize project costs by using open source tools and programs
- Explore each component technology in depth, using sample implementations as a guide
Book Description
Mastering Embedded Linux Programming takes you through the product cycle and gives you an in-depth description of the components and options that are available at each stage. You will begin by learning about toolchains, bootloaders, the Linux kernel, and how to configure a root filesystem to create a basic working device. You will then learn how to use the two most commonly used build systems, Buildroot and Yocto, to speed up and simplify the development process. Building on this solid base, the next section considers how to make best use of raw NAND/NOR flash memory and managed flash eMMC chips, including mechanisms for increasing the lifetime of the devices and to perform reliable in-field updates. Next, you need to consider what techniques are best suited to writing applications for your device. We will then see how functions are split between processes and the usage of POSIX threads, which have a big impact on the responsiveness and performance of the final device The closing sections look at the techniques available to developers for profiling and tracing applications and kernel code using perf and ftrace.
What you will learn
- Understand the role of the Linux kernel and select an appropriate role for your application
- Use Buildroot and Yocto to create embedded Linux systems quickly and efficiently
- Create customized bootloaders using U-Boot
- Employ perf and ftrace to identify performance bottlenecks
- Understand device trees and make changes to accommodate new hardware on your device
- Write applications that interact with Linux device drivers
- Design and write multi-threaded applications using POSIX threads
- Measure real-time latencies and tune the Linux kernel to minimize them
About the Author
Chris Simmonds is a software consultant and trainer who lives in southern England. He has been using Linux in embedded systems since the late 1990s, during which he has worked on many interesting projects, including a stereoscopic camera, intelligent weighing scales, various set-top boxes and home routers, and even a large walking robot.
He is a frequent presenter at open source and embedded conferences, including the Embedded Linux Conference, Embedded World, and the Android Builders' Summit. He has been conducting training courses and workshops in embedded Linux since 2002 and in embedded Android since 2010. He has delivered hundreds of sessions to many well-known companies. You can see some of his work on the "Inner Penguin" blog at www.2net.co.uk.
Table of Contents
- Starting Out
- Learning About Toolchains
- All About Bootloaders
- Porting and Configuring the Kernel
- Building a Root Filesystem
- Selecting a Build System
- Creating a Storage Strategy
- Introducing Device Drivers
- Starting up - the init Program
- Learning About Processes and Threads
- Managing Memory
- Debugging with GDB
- Profiling and Tracing
- Real-time Programming
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(https://maemo.gitorious. org/scratchbox2). It was developed by Nokia to build their Maemo Linux operating system, and is used today by the Mer project and the Tizen project, among others. Meanwhile, in this chapter, I will focus on the more mainstream cross compiler environment, which is relatively easy to set up and administer. CPU architectures The toolchain has to be built according to the capabilities of the target CPU, which includes: • CPU architecture: arm, mips, x86_64, and so on •
most common option. There is more information about the different types of mass storage in Chapter 7, Creating a Storage Strategy. • network filesystem: the staging directory can be exported to the network via an NFS server and mounted by the target at boot-time. This is often done during the development phase in preference to repeated cycles of creating a disk image and reloading it onto the mass storage device, which is quite a slow process. I will start with ramdisk and use it to illustrate a
including raw flash chips and embedded MMC or eMMC packages. It describes the filesystems that are applicable to each type of technology. It also covers techniques on how to update the device firmware in the field. [ xiv ] Preface Chapter 8, Introducing Device Drivers, describes how kernel device drivers interact with the hardware with worked examples of a simple driver. It also describes the various ways of calling device drivers from the user space. Chapter 9, Starting up - the init
Let's begin by building a default configuration that you can run on the ARM QEMU emulator: $ cd buildroot $ make qemu_arm_versatile_defconfig $ make [ 133 ] Selecting a Build System Note that you do not tell make how many parallel jobs to run with a -j option: Buildroot will make optimum use of your CPUs all by itself. If you want to limit the number of jobs, you can run make menuconfig and look under Build options. The build will take half an hour to an hour, depending on the capabilities
Heartbleed (a bug in the OpenSSL libraries) and Shellshock (a bug in the bash shell) go unfixed. I will talk more about this later in this chapter under the topic of security. What can you do about it? First, ask questions of your vendors: what is their update policy, how often do they revise kernel versions, what is the current kernel version, what was the one before that? What is their policy for merging changes up-stream? Some vendors are making great strides in this way. You should prefer
