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

Using LTTng

The Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) project was started by Karim Yaghmour as a means of tracing kernel activity and was one of the first trace tools generally available for the Linux kernel. Later, Mathieu Desnoyers took up the idea and re-implemented it as a next-generation trace tool, LTTng. It was then expanded to cover user space traces as well as the kernel. The project website is at https://lttng.org/ and contains a comprehensive user manual.

LTTng consists of three components:

  • A core session manager
  • A kernel tracer implemented as a group of kernel modules
  • A user space tracer implemented as a library

In addition to those, you will need a trace viewer such as Babeltrace (https://babeltrace.org) or the Eclipse Trace Compass plugin to display and filter the raw trace data on the host or target.

LTTng requires a kernel configured with CONFIG_TRACEPOINTS, which is enabled when you select Kernel hacking | Tracers | Kernel Function Tracer.

The description...