1 2CRUNCH 0.2 README 6/14/94 3 4Crunch is available via anonymous ftp to ftp.cs.umd.edu in 5 pub/bsd/crunch-0.2.tar.gz 6 7 8WHAT'S NEW IN 0.2 9 10* The prototype awk script has been replaced by a more capable and 11 hopefully more robust C program. 12* No fragile template makefiles or dependencies on the details of the 13 bsd build environment. 14* You can build crunched binaries even with no sources on-line, you 15 just need the .o files. Crunchgen still will try to figure out as 16 much as possible on its own, but you can override its guessing by 17 specifying the list of .o files explicitly. 18* Crunch itself has been bmake'd and some man pages written, so it 19 should be ready to install. 20 21 22INTRODUCTION 23 24Crunch is a little package that helps create "crunched" binaries for use 25on boot, install, and fixit floppies. A crunched binary in this case is 26one where many programs have been linked together into one a.out file. 27The different programs are run depending on the value of argv[0], so 28hard links to the crunched binary suffice to simulate a perfectly normal 29system. 30 31As an example, I have created an 980K crunched "fixit" binary containing 32the following programs in their entirety: 33 34 cat chmod cp date dd df echo ed expr hostname kill ln ls mkdir 35 mt mv pwd rcp rm rmdir sh sleep stty sync test [ badsect chown 36 clri disklabel dump rdump dmesg fdisk fsck halt ifconfig init 37 mknod mount newfs ping reboot restore rrestore swapon umount 38 ftp rsh sed telnet rlogin vi cpio gzip gunzip gzcat 39 40Note carefully: vi, cpio, gzip, ed, sed, dump/restore, some networking 41utilities, and the disk management utilities, all in a binary small 42enough to fit on a 1.2 MB root filesystem floppy (albeit with the kernel 43on its own boot floppy). A more reasonable subset can be made to fit 44easily with a kernel for a decent one-disk fixit filesystem. 45 46The linking together of different programs by hand is an old 47space-saving technique. Crunch automates the process by building the 48necessary stub files and makefile for you (via the crunchgen program), 49and by doctoring the symbol tables of the component .o files to allow 50them to link without "symbol multiply defined" conflicts (via the 51crunchide program). 52 53 54BUILDING CRUNCH 55 56Just type make, then make install. 57 58Crunch was written and tested under NetBSD/i386, but should work under 59other PC BSD systems that use GNU ld. 60 61The crunchgen(1) and crunchide(1) man pages have more details on using 62crunch, and the examples subdirectory contains some working .conf files 63and a sample Makefile. 64 65CREDITS 66 67Thanks to the NetBSD team for a consistently high quality effort in 68bringing together a solid, state of the art development environment. 69 70Thanks to the FreeBSD guys; Rod Grimes, Nate Williams and Jordan 71Hubbard; and to Bruce Evans, for immediate and detailed feedback on 72crunch 0.1, and for pressing me to make the prototype more usable. 73 74Crunch was written for the Maruti Hard Real-Time Operating System 75project at the University of Maryland, to help make for better install 76and recovery procedures for our NetBSD-based development environment. It 77is copyright (c) 1994 by the University of Maryland under a UCB-style 78freely- redistributable notice. See the file COPYRIGHT for details. 79 80Please let me know of any problems or of enhancements you make to this 81package. I'm particularly interested in the details of what you found 82was good to put on your fixit or install disks. Thanks! 83 84Share and Enjoy, 85Jaime 86............................................................................ 87: Stand on my shoulders, : jds@cs.umd.edu : James da Silva 88: not on my toes. : uunet!mimsy!jds : http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/jds 89