Linux Appliance Design: A Hands-On Guide to Building Linux Appliances (CD-ROM)

~ Bob Smith (Author), John Hardin (Author), Graham Phillips (Author), Bill Pierce (Author)
Key Phrases: alarm daemon, framebuffer interface, snmptrap command, Back Door, Front Door, Apple Base Station (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Linux Appliance Design shows how to build better appliances--appliances with more types of interfaces, more dynamic interfaces, and better debugged interfaces. You'll learn how to build backend daemons, handle asynchronous events, and connect various user interfaces (including web, framebuffers, infrared control, SNMP, and front panels) to these processes for remote configuration and control. Linux Appliance Design also introduces the Run-Time Access library, which provides a uniform mechanism for user interfaces to communicate with daemons.

Learn to:

Separate your user interfaces from your daemons

Give user interfaces run time access to configuration, status, and statistics

Add professional network management capabilities to your application

Use SNMP and build a MIB

Build a web-based appliance interface

Build a command line interface (CLI)

Build a framebuffer interface with an infrared control as input

Manage logs and alarms on an appliance

Companion CD includes a prototype appliance--a home alarm system--that supports the book's lessons.

About the Author

Bob Smith, John Hardin, Graham Phillips, and Bill Pierce have experience in embedded systems, commercial Linux and BSD appliances, network management systems, and designing software solutions for business problems.

Product Details

• CD-ROM: 385 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press (March 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593271409
• ISBN-13: 978-1593271404
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #448,822 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #9 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Operating Systems > Linux > Applications
  #18 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Mainframes & Minicomputers
  #63 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Microprocessors & System Design > Embedded Systems

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Outside the scope of etc., August 19, 2008

By	Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Bob Smith et al., Linux Appliance Design: A Hands-On Guide to Building Linux Appliances (No Starch, 2007)

Linux Appliance Design is not, for the most part, a bad little book, but it is structurally unsound in one major way. I realize this is a quirk of mine more than anything, and most people who want to read about this sort of thing probably won't mind it, but it bugs me in a major way whenever I encounter it: instead of getting into the nuts and bolts of some parts of the software, the authors chose to go with a ready-made API, and so much of the book's software instruction involves programming that API rather than building something from scratch. If that doesn't bother you, then go right ahead and grab a copy of this. If you'd rather not use someone else's software, on the other hand, the hardware parts of this will be useful, but for the software parts, you'll have to look somewhere else. Not nearly as good-- or comprehensive-- as it could have been. ***

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of quirky, interesting content, April 16, 2007

By	R. Lynch (Berkeley CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Architecting user interface command and control protocols with Linux, February 2, 2009

By	R. D Johnson (Cedar Ridge, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.