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Linux Appliance Design
Posted by
samzenpus
on Mon Apr 30, 2007 02:15 PM
from the do-it-yourself dept.
from the do-it-yourself dept.
s1axter writes "A week and a half ago I received Linux Appliance Design by Bob Smith, John Hardin, Graham Phillips and Bill Pierce, published by No Starch Press. This is one of No Starch's latest titles and was released in the beginning of April. As a hardware/embedded systems guy I was really eager to get my hands on the book. For those who don't know what the book is about, it's about making an application specific utility, an electronic tool or "appliance" that can be used for a specific task. The book defines an appliance as "A device designed to primarily perform a single function" and that's exactly what they do." Read on for the rest of S1axter's review.
| Linux Appliance Design | |
| author | Bob Smith, John Hardin, Graham Phillips and Bill Pierce |
| pages | 344 |
| publisher | No Starch Press |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | s1axter |
| ISBN | 1-59327-140-9 |
| summary | A text on developing an application specific device, very informative |
The book revolves around Laddie, an example alarm system for a building. The book includes a complete explanation of the system, what design features it uses, and a LiveCD with the final application for your hacking pleasure.
I have to say, Linux Appliance Design is well written and very, very thorough. This is not a beginner text, the authors focus on Linux programmers who understand C and Linux systems and want to take it a step further than conventional software. If you think this is a book for you, you should be a C/Linux guru, or dust off those old textbooks and brush up on your stuff before you pick it up.
When a friend asked me what was in the book I gave him the response, "Everything you need to make a sweet daemon with any interface you want". This is exactly what Linux Appliance Design is, a library in a book. Nostarch.com has a chapter list for the text, so you can see what I mean.
The layout for the text is well organized and starts where every project should, architecture and design. Personally I felt the authors were beating the dead horse after a couple of pages when everything kept coming back to separating interface from implementation, but hey, it's an important point that a lot of people seem to miss.
An interesting chapter is the explanation of the Run-time-access library the authors developed. Modeled from PostgreSQL, the RTA lib is an impressive solution that allows for daemon communication and configuration from any language that can talk to a database. This library is released under the GPL and can be downloaded from the companion site of the book The RTA is also used for the rest of the book, so don't skip it or you'll have no idea what they are talking about.
The text is not only an explanation of the Laddie system using the RTA, it is an all encompassing design text, which I really like. There are chapters dedicated to building different frontend UIs for the system and communication protocol discussion. This is what transforms the text from book into library. Each chapter can almost stand on its own as an application of that language or program. I was quite impressed with the web interface chapter and how the authors compared web servers and designed a system, and also with the framebuffer chapter on how to make a cool graphical interface.
A common theme for all the chapters is the structure. The authors discuss and design each element they use in the system before looking at one program or daemon. For anyone who has written or read development reports the format is very similar; explain what you designed, why you chose those components, why you passed on others, how the systems works and finally what you would do different next time. This format kind of reminded me lab reports in school, cover all question you think your professor audience might ask.
Overall Linux Appliance Design is a well written, detailed and thorough book with a lot of information. I would recommend this title mainly to someone who is interested in daemon development or server design however it can be read by anyone who wants to see a full project develop cycle.
s1axter is the main poster for Geeksinside.com. Geeksinside.com is a DIY, hardware hacking, technology blog that showcases links, reviews and project
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Looking forward to reading it... (Score:5, Funny)
Tux gets everywhere.
Re:Looking forward to reading it... (Score:5, Funny)
Nifty book (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps useful for some systems (Score:3, Interesting)
Many embedded systems need very high levels of responsiveness (sub-millisecond) which RTA is unlikely to provide. I've worked on Linux embedded systems that could reliably crank events within 50 microseconds, but that required the use of custom drivers.This responsiveness is why RTOSs and "no OS" solutions will dominate embedded space for a long time yet.
Toasting break with your Linux toaster (Score:2)
Configuring For Toasting:
Change directory to
make menuconfig
This will build a few programs and then quickly pop up a window. The window menu lets you alter many aspects of toast configuration.
After you have made any necessary changes, save the configuration and follow these instructions--do a
make dep; make clean...
and then, if you are on a toaster slower than 200MHz, go and make a cup of tea. This takes about 20 minutes on a Pentium 90...the toasting kernel has a lot of source code as you may have noticed when downloading it. When this is complete do a:
make modules
This will not take as long.
Installing a New Toast:
Phew, finally! The last step is installing the new kernel to the right place in
cp
then
make modules_install
This will install the modules in
image =
label = new
read-only
At the next reboot, select the kernel 'new' in lilo, and it will load the new kernel. If it works fine, move it to the first position in the lilo.conf so it will boot every time by default.
Summary:
Preparing a toast with your Linux appliance is a relatively simple operation - if you have done it before! At first it can seem daunting, but well within the capabilities of today's average housewife.
Re:Toasting break with your Linux toaster (Score:5, Funny)
1. Prepare the soil.
2. Plant the wheat.
3. Weed, fertilize, water.
4. Harvest.
5. Build a flour mill.
6. Grind wheat into flour.
7. Cultivate some wild yeast.
8. Build a brick oven.
9. Mix flour, yeast and water.
10. Bake dough to make bread.
11. Make a knife.
12. Slice bread.
13. Insert bread into *NIX toaster.
Could someone tell me why (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday November 14 2003, @03:56PM)
This paradigm was overwhelming to me when I was in corporate... this obsession of making simple things, like tying shoelaces, into a federal affair.
For years, I have used simple microcontrollers, like the PIC or AVR to do this stuff. For microwatts. Highly reliable, and I *know* exactly what I told that microcontroller to do. Simple things, like keep the soda pop cold and nag me if I need to service the vending machine. Tell me whats wrong. That sort of thing.
It puzzles me to see major corps use way, way, way overpowered/overpriced solutions to the simplest stuff.
These days, it only takes a microcontroller to do simple stuff, and yes, given a simple TCPIP stack, it commmunicates with the web, pooh, its not that much more than a UART for serial, no??? Especially given one can use IM type protocols for simple quick messages? Sending email is just a little step up.
I shake my head in pity when I see people trying to use sledgehammers to swat flies.
Is this just me, or does every other thinking person on Slashdot see it too?
Yes! Finally! (Score:1)
(http://www.hyperic.com/ | Last Journal: Friday November 03 2006, @02:04PM)
This marks the 2nd time in a couple weeks that a No Starch book has been featured here. I hope to see a bunch more.
-JM
Re:Rejoice! (Score:2)
(http://www.repvik.org/)