Root File System - VeriFone MX800 series Programmer's Manual

Root File System

The Embedded Linux OS is much more than a kernel. A number of significant
applications and modules are required to complete the system. These
applications, libraries and driver modules reside in the root file system.
1
BusyBox - Combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually
find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have
fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that
are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like
their GNU counterparts. BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for
any small or embedded system. BusyBox has been written with size-
optimization and limited resources in mind. It is also extremely modular so you
can easily include or exclude commands (or features) at compile time. This
makes it easy to customize your embedded systems. To create a working
system, just add some device nodes in /dev, a few configuration files in /etc,
and a Linux kernel.
See: http://www.busybox.net/about.html
2
uClibc – A C library for embedded Linux. uClibc (aka µClibc/pronounced yew-
see-lib-see) is a C library for developing embedded Linux systems. It is much
smaller than the GNU C Library, but nearly all applications supported by glibc
also work perfectly with uClibc. Porting applications from glibc to uClibc
typically involves just recompiling the source code. uClibc even supports
shared libraries and threading.
See: http://www.uclibc.org/about.html
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