8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A unique look inside the embedded development process, December 13, 2004
This review is from: Embedded FreeBSD Cookbook (Embedded Technology) (Paperback)
When I skimmed 'Embedded FreeBSD Cookbook' (EFC) in the bookstore, I was impressed by the amount of general FreeBSD information it contained. Now that I've bought and read it, I'm glad this book caught my eye. Although EFC is somewhat dated by its use of FreeBSD 4.4 (released Sep 01), I learned more about about FreeBSD internals. I also gained insights into what is needed to create an embedded appliance from the ground up.
EFC describes how the Measurement Computing company used FreeBSD 4.4 to create their Digital Input-Output (DIO) server appliance, built on a Network Engines 'Roadster' platform. The author explains the advantages of embedded systems and why it makes sense to construct them using open source software. He also defends the use of BSD-licensed software to build the DIO.
The best aspect of the book was its direct nature and breadth of coverage. EFC addresses many topics in a clear and concise manner, including processes, daemons, system calls, and library usage. I found this direct and efficient approach a good way to become familiar with subjects covered in much greater depth by books like McKusick and Neville-Neil's 'The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System.'
On the downside, for a reader on the eve of 2005, the book is dated in several respects. EFC's use of FreeBSD 4.x means some of its material no longer applies to FreeBSD 5.x. For example, 5.x uses DEVFS in place of manual device node creation. System source code (like the cdevsw structure in bus_private.h) is often much different. Some code, like ch 2's explanation of forking, works on 4.x but not 5.x. The use of the Java JDK version 1.1.8 really dates the book, as well. Finally, several typos change the meaning of parts of the text. For example, p. 30 appears to show 'gcc -00' (two zeroes) when I believe it should be 'gcc -O0' (capital O, zero) to disable compiler optimizations. Below on the same page, objdump should be passed the '--disassemble' or the '-d' switch, not '-disassemble'.
Overall, I still liked reading EFC. The book gave me plenty to consider, should I ever want to deploy an embedded appliance. Companies like St Bernard do use FreeBSD in their appliances, so perhaps an update by one of their developers would be in order?
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing to do with embedded BSD, January 3, 2006
This review is from: Embedded FreeBSD Cookbook (Embedded Technology) (Paperback)
I have several years of experience working on embedded Linux. I've bought this book, thinking it will help me better understand how to use BSD in an embedded env (like number of embedded linux books available). However, instead on focusing on the embedded side, this book simple describe how to wirte deamons, what's a system call etc. Read Steven's books if you need this kind of training.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Contains Very Little Information Specific To Embedded FreeBSD, March 3, 2010
This review is from: Embedded FreeBSD Cookbook (Embedded Technology) (Paperback)
A complete waste of time and money. This book is misrepresented in what it claims to be about. It contains very little information specific to embedded FreeBSD.
The author should have written much more about minimizing the kernel, limiting memory usage, device driver development, and flash storage issues - because these are the topics that are the most relevent to an embedded system. The discussion about using Tomcat, JSP, and JNI to provide web access to an embedded device - while important - is severely lacking.
A good book about an embedded operating system will explore the problems and trade-offs that a systems developer will have to make. It would also discuss getting the OS to run on a single board computer - such as one of the devboards listed in the FreeBSD ARM project. This book does neither.
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