Product Description
Modern appliances are complex machines with processors, operating systems, and application software. While there are books that will tell you how to run Linux on embedded hardware, and books on how to build a Linux application, Linux Appliance Design is the first book to demonstrate how to merge the two and create a Linux appliance. You’ll see for yourself why Linux is the embedded operating system of choice for low-cost development and a fast time to market…. More >>
Linux Appliance Design: A Hands-On Guide to Building Linux Appliances
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It’s not just easy to read… it’s addictive. Great, thorough examples with wonderful twists will get you started on Linux appliances in no time.
There’s really not much to say besides that if you are even remotely interested or curious about the topic, it’s a must-have.
Rating: 5 / 5
A Very good read for all Embedded Engineers. It covers most of the basics of an Embedded System.
Rating: 4 / 5
Linux continues to increase in popularity and utility among computer enthusiasts. The combined effort of Linux experts Bob Smith, John Hardin, Graham Phillips, and Bill Pierce, “Linux Appliance Design: A Hands-On Guide To Building Linux Appliances” teaches Linux users how to build better appliances for the Linux systems thereby providing them with more types of interfaces, more dynamic interfaces, and better debugged interfaces. Linux users will learn how to build backend daemons, handle asynchronous events, connect various user interfaces, and so much more. Now even the most novice Linux user can add professional network management capabilities to their applications, build a web-based appliance and a command line interface, build a framebuffer interface using infrared controls as input, as well as manage logs and alarms on appliance. If you have a Linux system, then “Linux Appliance Design” will prove an invaluable, indispensable, thoroughly ‘user friendly’ instruction and reference manual for getting the most out of your do-it-yourself designer software.
Rating: 5 / 5
That probably would have been the title of this book if the Marketing Department hadn’t gotten involved.
I was a little disappointed when I first got this book and skimmed through it, because it seemed to be focused on using one particular tool (the RTA SQL library) to implement a particular example product (the ‘Laddie’ alarm system). After reading it though, the book has grown on me considerably. This book does two jobs well: it explains the need for a common core software/system architecture that adapts to a variety of user interfaces (think MVC), and then it covers the implementation of those user interfaces in Linux in detail. As an embedded Linux developer myself, some of the content was well-known, but other chapters on LIRC (infrared control), SNMP and MIBs, and the Linux Framebuffer I find myself referring to regularly. The chapter on linux logging (for errors and debugging) also explained a few things about syslog I hadn’t known before. The best part of the book, though, is the way it constantly focuses on integrating all these disparate interfaces into a cohesive application while avoiding ’spaghetti’ code and architecture. That–not implementation details–is often the hardest part of appliance design, and this book covers it well.
Rating: 5 / 5
First of all, you know that when you see the word “appliance” in this context, you should think more like a router or alarm system (the book uses this as a development framework), not a refrigerator, say. [Although (shudder!) the latter could be a sweet example in the near future.] And, before I write another word I should state upfront: I was a technical reviewer of this book.
I found lots and lots of interest in my “required” reading:
- the authors have developed an API for appliance configuration and control, which they term RTA (Run Time Access). Briefly, a Postgresql library is developed to allow a pseudo-database to store configuration values or issue control commands;
- there’s a intriguing chapter on using an infrared remote control as a device to conrol an appliance. It has neat stuff like the observation that one’s digital camera can “see” the pulses from a remote control. (Try it at home!);
- the authors cover the ins and outs of the Linux framebuffer device, which is very nice to know;
- the information about SNMP in several chapters is probably the clearest and most succinct I’ve ever read on this somewhat complicated (dare I say, miserable?) protocol.
It’s a fact, there’s lot of stuff here you ain’t gonna see anywhere else, and with embedded devices you need all the ideas and techniques you can scrape together anywhere you can find ‘em!
Rating: 5 / 5