Re: Tiny linux

[Adam Megacz]

      BTW, if you want super tiny kernels, check out Microsoft's
(unpatented, surprisingly well documented) LZX compression format.
It's specifically designed to compress x86 machine code, so it beats
out all the general-purpose compression algorithms if the payload is a
binary.  I think libmspack has an LGPL'ed LZX compressor/decompressor.

  - a


ebiederman(a)lnxi.com (Eric W. Biederman) writes:
  Richard Smith <rsmith(a)bitworks.com&gt; writes:
 
  Has anyone tried this to see how small it
compiles down to?
 
 I just looked.  With everything turned off I have built a
 220K kernel. 371K uncompressed but that doesn't count.
 
 It looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel.
 
 Eric
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Tiny linux

      Adam Megacz <adam(a)megacz.com&gt; writes:

  BTW, if you want super tiny kernels, check out
Microsoft's
 (unpatented, surprisingly well documented) LZX compression format.
 It's specifically designed to compress x86 machine code, so it beats
 out all the general-purpose compression algorithms if the payload is a
 binary.  I think libmspack has an LGPL'ed LZX compressor/decompressor.
It looks like it is present in libmspack.  What kind of compression
ration do you get with LZX?  Unless it is noticeably greater than 2:1
the major gains are not to be had with compression.  Currently I use a
stripped down version of UPX when I really want a small self
extracting binary.  The nrv2b algorithm has an absolutely tiny 100
byte or so decompressor.

For the kernel the decompressor is 8K.  Which is significant but it is
again not a major bottle neck.

The target is to see how useful a linux kernel that we can put into
384K.  For use as a boot loader by LinuxBIOS.

Eric