[oe] OE Booth during fosdem

[Jim Thompson]

On Feb 14, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Koen Kooi wrote:

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> Jim Thompson schreef:

>> Ya know, I'd consider donating hardware (see www.netgate.com for what
>> we have) and/or cash if someone would put up a
>> "build the bootable ISO so you can boot-n-install an OE image on a
>> HD on ye-olde-random PeeCee" set of patches, or even a recipe for  
>> same
>>
>> Or, equivalently, an image (complete with boot sector) that one could
>> DD onto a CF card or actual IDE drive that would boot a given root
>> image on ye-olde-PeeCee.
>>
>> OpenEmbedded would go a lot faster if people could experiment on
>> garden-variety PCs rather than go through the "fun" of getting it up-
>> n-running on more esoteric hardware.
>
> Marcin, Jamie, Phil, Gerwin and I are using OE to build for vairous  
> x86 machines
> (MACHINE={guinness,epia,x86). For some graphic pleasure:
> http://dominion.kabel.utwente.nl/koen/cms/madness

I know about the guinness and wrap MACHINEs.

What I'm looking for is a short-cut to getting a distro *onto* the disk.

Yes, I'm sure most people could "figure it out" with some time and  
effort, but what I want is to make it easier.

If OE would build an x86 disk image that could be 'dd'-ed to a CF  
card, then building OE images for Soekris or WRAP boards would be EZ.

If OE would build an x86 disk image that could be 'dd'-ed to an IDE  
drive (likely the same as above), then building OE images for  
"ordinary PCs" would be trivial.

If OE would build a bootable ISO image that could partition and label  
an attached IDE drive, then install the image *onto* that drive, ....  
well, I could see all *sorts* of uses for that.

And I'm willing to throw cash, hardware and time at this.

Yes, we sell WRAP boards, but I'm not looking to get a bunch-o-free  
development out of the process.  (We sell a Gateworks ixp42x board  
too, just to be perfectly honest.)

Years ago, I ran (and owned) 'musenki' (google for it or look here:  
http://he-colo.netgate.com/~jim/Musenki/.  We had build a  set of  
Motorola 8245/8241 boards, and I'd made linux run on them.  I  
remember spending a horrific amount of time with a (very) early  
version of "buildroot".  OE is so much more sophisticated that I'm a  
bit taken aback.

The OE learning curve is still quite steep, but I think it would be  
less steep with a) a bit more documentation and b) an EZ way to start  
creating "little distros" that
run on PCs using it.

Jim