Computer Modifications As I mentioned in a previous post, there is a lot for me to learn about the Gumstix environment. But, I am starting to learn that, because Gumstix is Linux based, a lot of the the different commands and options for setting up the Gumstix are exactly the same as they are for its other text based Linux counterparts.

Changing the Root Password

A good example of this is changing the password. Once I logged in as root, all I needed to do was issue the passwd command and I was able to set the password to whatever I wanted it to be. This is what that process looked like.

# passwd

Changing password for root

Enter the new password (minimum of 5, maximum of 8 characters)

Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.

Enter new password:

Re-enter new password:

Password changed.

Just as a side note, you do not have to use a combination of upper and lover case letters and numbers as mentioned in the prompt.

I also tested to see if the root password change survived both a reboot and a shutdown, power removal, and restart. The changed were kept for all of these tests. Apparently, the changes that I make are stored permanently in the system’s flash.

Preloaded Software

I have discovered that there is a list of preloaded software on the Gumstix. From the website, here is the most up to date list of pre-loaded applications that I could find:

Area	Pre-loaded Software
System	Linux, busybox, hotplug, mtd-utils, pcmcia, u-boot
Communications	Bluez, sshd, hostap-conf, links, lrzsz, ntp, rendezvous, udhcp
Web/Database/Scripting	Boa (an HTTP server) and wget (an http client)
Libraries/Miscellaneous	uclibc
Audio	Aumix, bplay, madplay

Setting up a Development Environment

Since Gumstix is Linux based, I needed to get a development environment running so that I can pick and choose which applications I want to use. There are a number of options that were available to me but I decided on a bit of a unique solution.

I fired up my VMware server and decided to build a virtual Ubuntu server according to the Gumstix website. This way, I could still use my Windows box and not have to build a dedicated system for my Gumstix development.

To set up my virtual development environment, I followed these steps:

Set up a basic Ubuntu server without DNS or LAMP services
Enables the universe and multiverse components for Ubuntu:
- sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup
- sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
- Remove # from before universe and multiverse commands and save the file
Update and upgrade Ubuntu
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get upgrade
Install development tools:
- sudo apt-get install build-essential libncurses-dev bison flex texinfo zlib1g-dev gettext autoconf
Install pre-build dependencies:
- sudo apt-get install subversion wget
Install post-build dependencies:
- sudo apt-get install ckermit tftpd-hpa lrzsz
Checkout the source code from the Subversion website:
- svn co http://svn.gumstix.com/gumstix-buildroot/trunk gumstix-buildroot