26 Oct 08 mknod tutorial

mknod is a powerful command with which you can create block or character special files. If you view the man page, you’ll see that you can use it to create block device links and character device links. If you don’t know what these are then don’t worry. The purpose of this tutorial is to explore the FIFO (First In First Out) feature.

A FIFO literally does what it says on the box. The first piece of data to go in is the first piece of data to go out.

The usage of the command is:

Usage: /bin/mknod [OPTION]… NAME TYPE [MAJOR MINOR]

Where MAJOR and MINOR are for the special devices mentioned above.
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Tags: /bin/mknod, beej, block, C, cat, character, device, echo, fifo, first in first out, Linux, major, man, man page, minor, mknod, shell script, special files

05 Oct 08 APNIC Box – Linux on a Mikrotik 532a, Part 3 – Installing Debian, Prebuilt Disk Image

Follow on from 01 Oct 08 APNIC Box – Linux on a Mikrotik 532a, Part 2

The device runs a 2.4.30 kernel on a debian woody (mipsel) environment. If anyone can contribute anything for 2.6.x and debian etch, that would be great.

In this part, I’m going to provide a download link to a prebuilt image which you can write directly onto your own CF card with dd or similar tool. I’m also going to provide a step by step to installing debian yourself without my prebuilt disk image.

Prebuilt image is here:

The prebuilt image also contains a number of scripts and tools that I’ll comment on and come to in later parts.

Now installation instructions:
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Tags: 532a, apnicbox, apt-get, atftpd, CF, compile, cross compile, Custom Kernel, dd, debian, dhcpd, dhcpd.conf installer, forward, initrd, initrd.gz, iptables, ip_forward, kernel, Linux, linuxrc, masquerade, mikrotik, mipsel, mkfs, mknod, mount, partition, prebuild image, routerboard, routerboard 532a, scripts, sed, tftpd, vmlinux, wget