COMP 3000 2011 Report: ttylinux

Part 1

Background

The distribution I chose is ttylinux, named for its initial orientation towards TeleTYpewriter, or TTY serial interfaces. It caters itself to a target audience that includes both users, looking either to get older hardware up and running on the web or for a lightweight portable system they can boot off a USB stick, and developers who are either looking for an OS they can use on embedded systems or for one to base their own variant of Linux on. It was initially developed in 2001 by Pascal Schmidt, who focused on getting it running on serial interfaces over networks, but when Douglas Jerome took his place in 2008, the focus of the project moved away from connecting to serial interfaces and towards its intended purpose to be "one of the smallest up-to-date Linux systems that is similar to a larger distribution", as stated on its website.

You can download ttylinux on the [project website], or from one of a number of the mirrors it lists. Derived from scratch, ttylinux has a file system that can be as small as ~8 megabytes, making it as little as ~12 megabytes with the kernel; however, the full default install uses ~25 megabytes.

Installation/Startup

Installation

To test this distribution, I used Oracle VM VirtualBox Version 4.1.0r73009 and created a new VM using the Linux 2.6 presets and 2 gigabytes of storage, and configured it to have 16 megabytes of video memory, 64 megabytes ram and a bridged ethernet device to connect directly through my network's router. I then used the virtual media manager to mount ut-ttylinux-i686-12.6.iso, which is an image of the most recent version of the i686 compatible install, and booted the virtual machine:

login (image)

edit install.conf fstab: 2048 (2031 for some reason)

 /	P /dev/sda1 512M	    Linux	ext4
 swap	P /dev/sda2 128M	    Linux Swap	swap
 /boot	P /dev/sda3 24M	  *Bootable Linux	ext4
 /home	E /dev/sda5 1128M	    Linux	ext4
 /tmp	E /dev/sda6 128M	    Linux	ext4
 /var	E /dev/sda7 111M	    Linux	ext4

fdisk harddrive ttylinux-installer --config=install.conf /dev/hdc umount cdrom + reboot

Startup

added /etc/resolv.conf with router listed -> nameserver 192.168.0.1

Basic Operation

/etc/inetd.conf -> services to start at boot via INETD TCP/IP super server. /etc/modtab -> seems to be for loading modules on boot /etc/sysconfig -> seems to be system settings ala /etc/conf.d /sbin/init startup script setup -> uses /etc/inittab which uses /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

describe experience in a number of use cases, focusing on intended purpose + write about any problems + add screenshot of typical/interesting activities

Usage Evaluation

"This small system has an 8 MB file system and runs on i486 computers within 28 MB of RAM, but provides a complete command line environment and is ready for internet access" does the distro meet its intended goals? whats my impression? be candid and specific in critique or priase

References

"Ttylinux Homepage." Minimal Linux. Web. 19 Oct. 2011. <http://www.minimalinux.org/ttylinux/>