[CentOS] Centos 4.x and embeded x86 (wrap, pcengines)

Tue Dec 5 17:49:40 UTC 2006
Kevan Benson <kbenson at a-1networks.com>

On Tuesday 05 December 2006 07:10, Daniel de Kok wrote:
> On Tue, December 5, 2006 2:57 pm, Oliver Schulze L. wrote:
> > I'm looking for info about installing centos 4.4 on an embedded platform,
> > like wrap's pcengines or similar.
>
> You will definitely need a modified kernel, because the WRAP seems to have
> a 486 CPU. Besides that it depends a lot on the size of the CompactFlash
> cards that you are planning to use. It is possible to make a fairly
> minimal CentOS installation by picking packages by hand, though IIRC a
> minimal system is around 100MB compressed.

The higher end (48xx) Soekris box is a 586, and CentOS installs fine (PXE 
booting is the easy route).  I can't comment on the WRAP boxes, I haven't 
actually worked with one.

I think to actually get CentOS down that small there's a few RPMs you have to 
force remove.  It makes upgrading anything a pain because you have to 
manually add and force packages for install as well.

> With lower-end hardware it is usually easier to go with a custom Busybox
> setup. Busybox is small, and quite easy to set up.

I would second this.  CentOS' dependencies are pretty complex and intermingled 
when you get to a small set of installed RPMs.

-- 
- Kevan Benson
- A-1 Networks