Hi
Is it possible to install bare minimum QNX OS in a 256 MB flash disk?
I don’t want much of the features and only the bare OS. I analyzed the Installation CD and it had some file specifying the necessary OS files only.
Need your suggestions
Rahil,
A bare minimum QNX O/S can be installed in < 1 MB of disk space (ie your .boot file is essentially a minimum QNX O/S install).
So a 256 MB flash disk is plenty of space. Many years ago when 6.2 was first released we used flash disks that were 16 MB in size with no problems.
Tim
Well thats really a gr8 thing…I’m glad but I still wanna know how can I install QNX. Because when I try to install QNX with the Installation CD, it says it needs minimum 2 GB.
I wonder how will I be able to install QNX on my flash disk.
The OS can be installed in a very small space. The development system is another matter. That’s what the Installation CD does, install the development system. So you will need a system with enough room for the development system. From there you can taylor a small run time.
That’s right, and for creating a custom boot image, you should get the x86-bios BSP (from community.qnx.com) and import it into the IDE, then open the system builder perspective and open the project.bld file. You’ll be most interested in the bsp-x86bios image.
Enjoy!
I have already customised the bsp-x86bios image from the BSP and it works fine. But on a new PC, if I want to use this image, I’ve to boot from the Installation CD-ROM and select Run QNX from CD and then manually partition using fdisk and make a qnx4 partition. Then I place this customised image into the /.boot of the new partition.
But the problem with this method is that the “.ifs” file can’t be more than 3 mb (otherwise it hangs, I’ve also read the post on qnx.com regarding solution of the same problem.) Moresoever, the IMAGE filesystem is loaded in RAM. So, I don’t want to include all my OS files like (libc.so.1 etc.) into the RAM. This will cause performance issues.
I don’t see what your problem is. You have a 256Meg Flash to load a file system onto. Why do you think you need a 3mb .ifs file?
I need some .ifs file to boot the system right. My undestanding is that the contents of .ifs file occupy the RAM rather then the 256M flash.
To put the question in simple words, how do I install QNX 6.4 on 256Meg flash using a QNX Installation diskette.
When I use the Installation disk, it says it requires a minimum of 2 GB and it doesn’t allow me to select any modules like Core OS, Multi-core kernel.
There is a section about that in the documention. The DVD/CD you are trying to install from is for development. To create a run-time target you need to create the image from scracth using the development tools.
There is a run-time CD available, that you could use but it doesn’t allow you to select what you want to install, it just install everything ( minus the dev stuff)
And that isn’t the point anyway; there simply is no need for a 3MB .ifs.
Using the system builder it is easy to tailor the .ifs. All that is required is the USB stack and devb-umass to mount the filesystem on the USB thumb drive.
I finally succeded in building a runtime kit. The full fledged QNX only taked about 125 MB. 