Installing and running nanobsd on embedded systems.

Cor Hilbrink, Paul Schenkeveld

Abstract

Small, low-power or specialized computers are gaining popularity for
all kinds of computing tasks ranging from small firewalls, (wireless)
routers, storage serves and software telephone switches to process
control and environmental measurement systems. Many tools have shown up
to adapt your favorite open source operating system for getting the most
out of an embedded system.

This half-day tutorial first addresses the challenges faced when
building up and using embedded systems in general and then focusses
on nanobsd, a build tool that comes with FreeBSD to ease the complete
process of building such systems with FreeBSD. During the tutorial
nanobsd will be used to build up a complete system on Soekris hardware
and many practical tips and tricks will be presented to efficiently
build and maintain embedded systems using nanobsd.

Speakers

Cor Hilbrink has about 20 years experience with UNIX, 10 years with
FreeBSD and recently deployed his first nanobsd Soekris net5501.
Since 1997, Cor is a self-employed independent UNIX consultant.

Paul Schenkeveld has about 25 years experience with UNIX, 15 years
with FreeBSD and uses nanobsd on Soekris hardware since nanobsd
hit the tree, Paul currently maintains (next to a large number of
other FreeBSD and UNIX systems) more than 25 Soekris boxes running
nanobsd.