Dingux System Installation pack. Contains kernels and rootfs. Uses only first FAT partition on MiniSD card.

Release notes:

Big news. Grab both from the google code download section here.

The installation pack includes the kernel images and a root filesystem in ROMFS format. You just need to place both in the root directory of the first (and most likely only) FAT partition of your miniSD card. No need for ext2/ext3 any longer, which should make Windoze users quite happy.

Another big improvement is console and file transfer. As soon as linux boots your PC will detect a new network card and it will be assigned a network address (by a DHCP server in your A320). Telnet to 10.1.0.2 to get console access, FTP to 10.1.0.2 to transfer files.

Enabling networking in the kernel adds enlarges it noticeably, but this is compensated by the removal of ext2/ext3, which is not longer needed and is quite heavy too.

Dingux will try to run the file “local/sbin/main” in your miniSD on startup, and if it exits it will respawn it. Get your menu application of choice, rename it as “main” and place it in “local/sbin” to get it running on startup.

To system menu application developers, I’d advice to use the exec call to launch other applications. The launched application will replace yours in memory (so the menu won’t be sitting silently in the background waiting for the application to end and using precious RAM), and when it exits your menu will be launched again.

I’ve tried to include as many libraries as possible in the root filesystem. If you need some library not included, link it statically as a temporary solution and email me: I’ll try to include it in the next release.

You should notice an important boot speed improvement. The initialization sequence has been optimized in many ways, but the post noticeable is the active monitoring of the miniSD detection. Now the system waits just as long as needed until the miniSD block devices are created, while before there was a fixed delay of one second (the rootdelay kernel parameter was used and the minimum value you can set is one second).

UPDATE: note that existing applications do not work on this new root filesystem. They will have to be recompiled using the new toolchain. I bet developers will catch up quickly.

http://www.dingux.com/2009/07/system-installation-pack-and-toolchain.html