We wrote about keylogging in this article, and used gcc and Linux to intercept and decode a key push via the parallel port. We have also written in the past about various homebrew projects where a limited development system would be very useful. The perfect platform for many of these projects is discarded PCs that […]

We wrote abut uClibc in this article. In this article we will build an entire Linux system using uClibc that has gcc, system utilities, a 2.4.20 kernel, and uses less than 63 megs total for the entire system. The intent is for us to write homebrew articles on a stable system that can run with […]

In this article, we built up a uClibc system. In this article, we will transfer the filesystem to a 100 meg zip disk. What this means is that if you have an old parallel port zip drive laying around, you can bring up a development system running Linux without touching your hard drive. There are […]

There is a new section on NetAdminTools, now, called GIAGD. In this section we will configure a system based on uClibc. Now, we aren’t planning on updating the system beyond what is needed, so we will probably be staying with the uClibc root filesystem as of March 01, 2003. There are newer versions out there, […]

Housey is hooked up to the 8048 dev system. Housey wasn’t very smart at startup, so I added some init scripts. uClibc uses System V init, which means (among other things) that S scripts in /etc/init.d are executed in ASCII order. So, S10 runs before S20. I put two scripts in /etc/init.d. In S40net I […]

The default uClibc install doesn’t have hdc devices. You can’t make an ext3 filesystem or use fdisk either, for that matter. The first task is to create the hdc devices using mknod: mknod hdc b 22 0 mknod hdc1 b 22 1 mknod hdc2 b 22 2 mknod hdc3 b 22 3 Not too painful. […]

Now, you could consider this an article about how to set up a web cam using GNU/Linux or something… Naw… We want to write a story involving chickens. Crackers is Agatha’s new GIAGD machine that she uses to put up pictures of the chickens living in her moveable chicken coop. We bought a used SE440BX-2 […]

The uClibc dev system includes SSHD, but you need to set up host keys in /etc first: [root@crackers /]# ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key Generating public/private dsa key pair. Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key. Your public kkey has been saved in /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub. The […]

For more information on the fabulous furry GIAGD fun, see this article. I revisited this, because there is a new root filesystem available at uclibc that includes perl and ssh. I nosed around for new versions of the extra source code I needed to get housey to boot. Here are some links: Lilo NASM GPM […]

We have used our GIAGD distribution for our various utility computers that run stuff like our 8048 dev system and our chicken cam. It is a bit of a pain to maintain our own distribution based on uClibc; however, there is a fabulous new development. You can now get a port of Debian woody compiled […]

In this article we discussed the Debian port to uClibc, and we created an ext3 filesystem on a USBCard. Now, we need to transfer the filesystem from the tarball to the USBCard. First, let’s mount our newly created filesystem: root@srv-1 / # mount -t ext3 /dev/sdc1 /mnt root@srv-1 / # mount /dev/hda3 on / type […]

In this article we transferred the filesystem to our UBCard. Now, we need to create a kernel. Before we create our kernel, though, we need to know what options to compile in. We are starting with our GIAGD .config from this article. Now, we are using VMware to bring this filesystem up. Since we don’t […]

In this article we created a kernel for our USBCard system. Once we have the kernel in place we need to run lilo and adjust some other configuration files. To do this, just boot off of the Superrescue CD again and: mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt chroot /mnt Now, we can edit /etc/lilo.conf: boot = […]

We have a number of utility computers running that are based on uClibc. Every time we rebuild the devices, we have to basically create a new distribution. It appears that the Debian packages are no longer being maintained. That is OK, though, because we have figured out most of the tricks to getting this to […]

Check out the GTK on DirectFB project, if running an app like the GIMP without X11 excites you. DirectFB uses the framebuffer device in the Linux kernel, and can replace X as a “Window System”, or at least, the basic parts of one. The fact that an app as complicated as the GIMP can run […]