Spot on.

Noted, thank you for the suggestion!

Perfectly valid choice too!

Why use a downstream distro when you can use Debian? Who cares about the init system

@@marcogenovesi8570 Because of less resources used. While on PC it's less relevant, on embedded it is a valid concern.

@@Yasen6275 Afaik not in this case, they have 1-2GB of RAM, using a few MB more isn't significant and not worth the tradeoff of losing systemd features. We are reaching a point where even routers have GBs of RAM, just because that's the smallest RAM chip they can buy at all.

@@marcogenovesi8570 What features exactly are so important on embedded system?

Same hahaha

A good question indeed. This tutorial was a bit more, let's say _general_ in scope/approach, rather than highly specific for our board. We are reviewing how other devices of a similar class and functionality are solving this issue, because we need to support both, so tinkerers like myself, who prefer more hands on, as well as people that just want it to, well be a router, and don't care what's under the hood.

I miss working with junos, the snapshots were a nice feature if something happened to the main configuration. You can probably achieve something similar with lvm2 or xfs/btrfs. Snapshots should be thin anyway.

@@rnts08 agreed, I also recently learned that juniper devices have 2 different storage devices one for recovery based partition slices and your main storage where normal slices are contained. Should your primary fail it’ll try the backup flash chip. Should that fail theres a USB recovery slice.

@@tomazzaman i strongly recommend looking at JunOS / junipers SRX/MX series devices for sure they have some absolutely incredible hardware / software. Can pick up an srx-300 series device off of fleabay for a decent price.

@@tomazzaman i recommend also looking at how steamOS on steamdeck works and how coreOS and how android works. With CoreOS providing basically best customizability in conjunction with best recoverability/ability not to break RootFS

Absolutely. I think it entirely depends on you want to do. I feel like a person whose main computing experience consists of using a Webbrowser and a mail program will have an easier time switching than a person who is very experienced using Mac or windows

That time would be better spent mastering illumos and one of the distributions based upon it.

Kernel*

@@MelroyvandenBerg Are you annoyed yet?

Arch users

@@shapelessed yes xD

@@AchievedZeus574 Linux Mint actually

Can you clarify? Preliminary results of?

@@tomazzaman as in test those special fancy package routing periferals in your mpu. Or if you can get an acceptable speed in practice with x sfp.

Nope, but it's been on my to-do list for a while. Afraid of starting, because it'll pull me in for sure! :) And buildroot is so easy to get started with :)

dont both of those basically force you to use binaries which you might need to build yourself, why going with something like debian, you can rely on already existing ecosystem

From my admittedly limited understanding Yocto is more meant for the use case where you need to target many different hardware architectures or configurations, so it's more flexible but requires much more upfront configuration and has a learning curve reminiscent of a cliff from my dabbling. Build root is essentially the other end of the spectrum, target a single platform and get from zero to a running system as fast as possible, it's also much easier to pick up. Another major difference is that neither of these tools use an existing distro as I understand it, they instead essentially make their own from the kernel and the packages of your choice giving you a lot of control but also more homework.

@@oliverer3 I'm pretty sure that buildroot allows you to create a customized Debian install.

Why use buildroot or yocto when you can just use Debian? There is a reason if not a lot of people do buildroot and yocto tutorials

@@jhirschma the point of buildroot is to automate the creation of a LFS (linux from scratch) system. Debian has its own image building infrastructure

For a few bucks per hour you can get something 2-3 times the size in the cloud. I've definitely learned my lesson from buying pricy workstations that spend 95% of their time doing nothing but running Emacs.

@@capability-snob cloud is the worst solution ever for compiling linux kernel. Must there be a reason for Torvaldis to have a threadripper system instead of going cloud

@@PuOop-j9l because he is building them all the time and by all the time i do mean all the time

How does crosscompiling an ARM kernel on an AMD CPU compare to compiling an X86 kernel on the same CPU?

@@sasjadevries honestly slower idk (of the top op my head) how much but slower. There will always be some slowdown but depending on implementation of cross compilation can be extremely small

I was trying to build Debian from scratch, then I notice the problem is Debian, not Linux. Now I'm a recovering addict, I only use Linux from scratch or Arch.

personnaly im of opinion that most of linux filesystem should be RO (with exception of /etc /var /home) and in fact should be updated trough images like android is

I prefer eating pizza as a way of having fun :D

Memory address where I store the file into. See my previous video, it's all explained there.

Regarding your second point, I actually included stage two *because* most people work on x86. If you work on arm64 and build the filesystem for arm64, then stage two is not needed! As for the modules, I tried to be a more "general" in approach, rather to work specifically for our router, I think that makes it more interesting for a broader audience.

@@tomazzaman I don’t know if your intent was to provide a step by step tutorial or just give a high level overview, but if it was a step by step well done! I must have missed your comment about if you were not cross compiling stage 2 wasn’t necessary. Because your video is so good I can see people trying to parrot your success step by step. As soon as they chroot’d into the ARM files system they leave x86 world and enter ARM world. Right there is where the wheels fall off if they are compiling on x86 and they should understand why. I only wanted to make people aware if they cross compile there may be an issue here. TBH: I did learn several things I never knew, so once again well done. As for the loadable module support, in the development phase its OK when you hit production you don’t want anything on your finished product you don’t absolutely need. Every extra “thing” you include could become a vulnerability so you need to chose wisely. I’ve worked on projects where we had 4MB of flash storage with 8MB of ram, so you have to count every byte in your app (i.e. Do I use punctuation in a warning message or not). In your finished system, you will know what hardware is there an what should not be there. So really loadable module support isn’t needed. From a security standpoint you don’t want the ability for a hacker to add/change a kernel module and then load it. For a KZbin video it doesn’t matter. Once again keep your content coming it is a valuable resource.

Thanks for the kind words and feedback - all is appreciated! 🙌 And I agree regarding the modules, in fact, regarding our product in development, you just nudged me into taking a closer look at what is _really_ needed.

Thank you for the kind comment. It's these that keep me going! 🙌

@@tomazzaman It's a pleasure :)

I run Linux Mint btw

Yes, actually it's the end goal for me, in a manner of speaking.

You could, definitely. It's not one or the other, both are equally valid options.

As long as it's not CoD, we can be friends. 😂

@@tomazzaman God of war Ragnarok 😂

I approve. Already bought it, but haven't had the time to play it yet. Trying to Escape from Tarkov ATM. 😅

@@tomazzaman it does use 175GB after it's uncompressed. This is insane 😭 Tarkov is good but it demands a huge time investment if you want to fully complete a wipe / season

My 6th wipe. But don't tell anyone. 🫡