Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

By : Frank Vasquez, Chris Simmonds
5 (3)
Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

5 (3)
By: Frank Vasquez, Chris Simmonds

Overview of this book

If you’re looking for a book that will demystify embedded Linux, then you’ve come to the right place. Mastering Embedded Linux Programming is a fully comprehensive guide that can serve both as means to learn new things or as a handy reference. The first few chapters of this book will break down the fundamental elements that underpin all embedded Linux projects: the toolchain, the bootloader, the kernel, and the root filesystem. After that, you will learn how to create each of these elements from scratch and automate the process using Buildroot and the Yocto Project. As you progress, the book will show you how to implement an effective storage strategy for flash memory chips and install updates to a device remotely once it’s deployed. You’ll also learn about the key aspects of writing code for embedded Linux, such as how to access hardware from apps, the implications of writing multi-threaded code, and techniques to manage memory in an efficient way. The final chapters demonstrate how to debug your code, whether it resides in apps or in the Linux kernel itself. You’ll also cover the different tracers and profilers that are available for Linux so that you can quickly pinpoint any performance bottlenecks in your system. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to create efficient and secure embedded devices using Linux.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
1
Section 1: Elements of Embedded Linux
10
Section 2: System Architecture and Design Decisions
18
Section 3: Writing Embedded Applications
22
Section 4: Debugging and Optimizing Performance

Summary

Being able to update the software on devices in the field is at the very least a useful attribute, and if the device is connected to the internet, it becomes an absolute must. And yet, all too often it is a feature that is left until the last part of a project, on the assumption that it is not a hard problem to solve. In this chapter, I hope that I have illustrated the problems that are associated with designing an effective and robust update mechanism, and also that there are several open source options readily available. You do not have to reinvent the wheel anymore.

The approach used most often, and also the one with the most real-world testing, is the symmetric image (A/B) update, or its cousin, the asymmetric (recovery) image update. Here, you have the choice of SWUpdate, RAUC, Mender, and fwup. A more recent innovation is the atomic file update, in the form of OSTree. This has good characteristics in reducing the amount of data that needs to be downloaded and the amount...