Additional resources

Internet

The internet usually provides information faster than books and magazines if there is a connection to it at hand. But there is still a level of uncertainty. Perhaps a website is no longer available or the operator has restructured its site and the linked content is now available through a different URL.

Sometimes I can find the page in question in the Internet Archive, the so-called Wayback Machine. Unfortunately this site doesn’t store all of the web pages.

Therefore this book has an accompanying web page that contains some material used in this book and a list of web links. You can find this page at:

[http://buecher.mamawe.net/books/headless-linux-en/]

Bootloader

lilo.alioth.debian.org
is the homepage for the LILO bootloader.
www.gnu.org/software/grub
is the homepage of the GRUB bootloader.
www.syslinux.org
is the homepage of the SYSLINUX project.

Most distributions provide SYSLINUX as a software package. Often you can find the documentation in the directory /usr/share/doc/syslinux/. The most interesting files have the suffix .txt (pxelinux.txt, syslinux.txt, …).

PXE boot

www.pix.net/software/pxeboot/archive/pxespec.pdf
Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) Specification Version 2.1 is the specification for PXE published by Intel in 1999.
RFC3679
contains DHCP options that are used with PXE.

File systems

www.7-zip.org
is the homepage of the file archiver 7-Zip. Normally this has nothing to do with file systems, but this archiver is able to read SquashFS using an MS Windows computer.
squashfs.sourceforge.net
the homepage for SquashFS.
www.squashfs-lzma.org
SquashFS with LZMA compression. This is used, among other things, in the SLAX project.

ALIX hardware

www.twam.info/hardware/alix/leds-on-alix3d3
this article contains details about using the LEDs on ALIX boards.
www.twam.info/…/alix/temperature-sensor-on-alix3d3
this article goes into detail about using the temperature sensors on ALIX devices.
www.lm-sensors.org
the homepage of the lm-sensors project.

Additional hardware

1wt.eu/articles/alix-rtc
How to add a capacitor to keep RTC running on PC Engines ALIX

An article by Willy Tarreau about how to keep the real time clock running on a switched-off ALIX device using a large capacitor instead of a battery.

1wt.eu/articles/alix-ups
How to build a cheap UPS for PC Engines ALIX

An article by Willy Tarreau about how to build a simple and inexpensive UPS for an ALIX computer. This article inspired me to create an extended UPS circuit with signaling in the chapter on additional hardware.

www.twam.info/…ng-additional-i2c-sensors-to-alix3d3
Tobias Müller writes in this blog entry about connecting further sensors to the I²C bus.
www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/i2cToolsDocumentation
the documentation for the i2c-tools on the lm-sensors project’s website.

Linux

buildroot.uclibc.org
Buildroot: making Embedded Linux easy

The homepage of the Buildroot project which helps to create complete embedded Linux systems.

wiki.linz.funkfeuer.at/funkfeuer/HowTo/AlixBoards
(German) this page contains a lot of useful information about ALIX boards and Linux.
www.tldp.org/HOWTO/IO-Port-Programming.html
the Linux I/O port programming mini-HOWTO from Riku Saikkonen, written in 2000 but still useful as an introduction to programming I/O-Ports for Linux.
www.debian.org
the homepage for Debian GNU/Linux
bugs.debian.org
the Debian Project’s bugs database. If you find information about a bug number in Debian, you can append the number to this URL to find the entry. Otherwise you can search for bugs using the start page.
kernel-handbook.alioth.debian.org
the Debian Linux Kernel Handbook answers many questions regarding the compilation of the Linux kernel using Debian GNU/Linux.
wiki.debian.org
the Debian wiki.

You can find many interesting articles here about various aspects of this distribution. For instance:

www.imedialinux.com
the homepage of iMedia Embedded Linux.
forums.imedialinux.com/index.php?topic=49.0
Alix3c3 USB CD-Rom Install … How do you boot???

This forum thread explains how to install iMedia Linux from a USB CD-ROM drive. To do this a minimal system is loaded from the CF card which accesses the CD-ROM drive and starts the installation process.

www.linuxfromscratch.org
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is not a distribution but instead a project which provides step-by-step instructions on building your own customized Linux system directly from the sources.
openwrt.org
the homepage of the OpenWrt project which supports among other hardware ALIX devices starting from the Kamikaze version.
wiki.openwrt.org
this is the place to go for questions concerning OpenWrt. Under the menu entry Documentation you can find information on various aspects of this distribution.
forum.openwrt.org
OpenWrt forums provide help with questions that can’t be answered using the documentation.
wiki.openwrt.org/doc/uci
this page contains the documentation about OpenWrt’s Unified Configuration Interface (UCI).
www.slax.org
Slax - your pocket operating system

Using Slax you can assemble small graphical Linux systems which can boot from CD-ROM or USB.

www.linux-live.org
Linux Live scripts

This is a companion website for Slax containing scripts for Live Linux systems.

linux.voyage.hk
the homepage of Voyage Linux, a derivative of Debian GNU/Linux which works best on X86 embedded platforms.
www.mail-archive.com/voyage-linux@…/msg02535.html
in this posting Jeff R. Allen announced jra-initrd on the mailing list [voyage-linux] and explained its usage.
nella.org/jra/geek/jra-initrd
the download address for jra-initrd.

Compiling software yourself

GNU Build System
Wikipedia’s page about the GNU Build System provides an introduction with hints and links that allow you to go more in-depth.

Literature

Cheshire, Stuart and Steinberg, Daniel H.; Zero Configuration Networking;
O’Reilly Media, 2006, ISBN 0-596-10100-7
Sloan, Joe; Network Troubleshooting Tools;
O’Reilly & Associates, 2001, ISBN 0-596-00186-X

RFC - Requests for Comment

RFCs form the basis of Internet standards. Traditionally they are published by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

You can find a directory of RFCs under tools.ietf.org.

The official website for RFCs is the RFC editor.

RFC 826
An Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol – or – Converting Network Protocol Addresses

Using this protocol, internet addresses (IP) are mapped to ethernet addresses.

RFC 1034
DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES

an introduction to the DNS.

RFC 1035
DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION

details about the implementation of DNS.

RFC 1350
THE TFTP PROTOCOL (REVISION 2)

describes the principal courses of actions in a file transfer using TFTP.

RFC 2131
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

describes DHCP for IPv4.

RFC 2347
TFTP Option Extension

describes a simple extension of TFTP to negotiate options before sending the data.

RFC 2349
TFTP Timeout Interval and Transfer Size Options

describes, among other things, the tsize option needed by PXELINUX.

RFC 2782
A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)
RFC 3315
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6)
RFC 3679
Unused Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Option Codes

contains DHCP options which are used for PXE.

RFC 3827
Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses
RFC 4122
A Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace

describes a technique to generate UUIDs.

RFC 4862
IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration

describes in detail the automatic configuration of IPv6 addresses for hosts.

RFC 5905
Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms Specification

is the current version of the protocol which is used to synchronize the clocks of the computers in the network.

Up next

Colophon