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Lite Linux Distros for a Digital Picture Frame?
bwy asks: "I'm building a digital picture frame, inspired by a story here at Slashdot. Currently, I'm using Red Hat 9 with GDM autologin, icewm, and a slideshow program autostarting. I've installed code to hide the mouse pointer and the 'powerswitch' kernel module to allow the frame to run a proper shutdown (instead of a suspend) when the ATX power switch is pressed. The hardware is an EPIA 5000 with a laptop drive. I think this is overkill, however, and I am a purist. Is there a lightweight distribution that is EPIA friendly? Such a distro shouldn't install GCC, so I'll need all the software as binaries. How would I go about booting from a ramdisk? This would make the 'powerwitch' kernel mod not so important since there is no worry of corrupting the file system." Does anyone have distribution suggestions, or pointers to other information that might be helpful for such a project?
Shouldn't you begin with embedded linux instead of redhat?
The main reason for using Gentoo was that it let me decide exactly what to install. No servers in the background, no rxtra nothing. I was thinking of just deleting gcc and the source after I was done but I never got around to it, thinking I might need it later.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I'd recommend building yourself a simple "run from RAM" setup using Knoppix (or something similar), and install it on a CompactFlash card.
CompactFlash has several data transfer modes, one of which is essentially IDE.
Yes, you can take one of those ultra-cheap PCMCIA->CompactFlash adaptors, rip it apart and solder on a parallel IDE cable (google for it, it's common), and plug it right into your motherboard. I just googled for it myself, and found that CompactFlash-IDE adaptors are now being sold, so you don't even need to get your soldering iron out.
Now you've eliminated the hard drive, so you don't have to worry about the various issues associated with them, and you've eliminated the issue with powering off the device while it's running.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
since you are concerned about the mouse pointer, I presume you are running a full X implementation. Have you considered running this as a framebuffer applicaiton, and not loading X? fbv, fbi and DFBSee are all projects on Freshmeat that may provide you a way to bypass the running of X.
You could also do bootable CD-RWs that you can update the contents of your image library at any time, with any cdrw capable computer.
Just a couple thoughts to kick around.
-Rusty
You never know...
If your On-board NIC supports it, run everything on another PC with BOOTP/NFS if you really want to. You'd be able to change everything on the fly.
Mind you, if everything's setup already, i'd just let it be.
Bye!
Red Hat seems really stuffy for this kind of thing...
.. one uses Pebble (http://www.nycwireless.net/pebble/) and the other gentoo.
I have some teeny boxes (Soekris 4501 and EPIA something)
I'm not sure if Pebble has GUI or X stuff, but it is based on Debian. It is actually optimized for wireless use. It runs read-only off the CF card so it is safe to just cut the power. You can probably hammer that into shape.
Gentoo is something else I'm playing with, using distcc for compiling (i.e., no compiling on the local host, just over the network). The supercoolness of Gentoo is that you can build your own custom profile with all the settings and packages just the way you like them, and reinstall the whole thing from scratch whenever you want. Throw in a wireless card so you can pull the images off a server as well as locally and you've got a cool project.
Take any one of the single floppy rescue bootdisks.
Add a copy of "zgv" (statically compiled, or you'll need to include vgalib and jpeglib)
Write a script that launches zgv with the appropriate parameters. Once you know it works, reinstall lilo so that your script gets run as init.
Total footprint will be perhaps two meg. Make an 'installer' for Linux or windows that dumps this at the start of a bootable CD and then lets the user fill the rest with pictures?
If you really have to have the fancy screen-merges and stuff, you can make up a system with JUST the linux kernel, XFree86, xscreensaver, and the very few libs that these depend on, basically the same way.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Building a picture frame out of a computer more powerful that the early supercomputers.
Next we should make an WiFi enabled toothbrush that can run SETI@Home when idle.
I've been considering building a Digital Picture frame also.
:p)? Anybody have any sugestions, comments, want to tell me I'm an idiot, etc?
I want to be able to insert my CF (SmartMedia, MMC, etc) Card into a "52,000-in-one" USB reader, hit a Transfer button and have the images transfered to my RAID'ed network attached storage (probably a samba share). Then have the option to erase the CF card
Have files renamed based on the EXIF information imbedded in the JPEG headers when they are transfered to the storage server
(for example, 2004-05-25_021544b YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss and if that already exists append a letter), or perhaps the creation date of the image file depending on how hard it proves to read the EXIF info.
A simple interface to go through the pictures would be nice (not sure exactly what's already out there)
I was thinking something along the lines of Hardware buttons along the bottom of the frame, one each for going forward and back a year, month, day, and then per image.
Also maybe a dial to vary the speed of the slide show mode, and a "bookmark image" button...hrm yeah that'd be nice.
The general idea is to end up with a device that even grandma can use to view her pictures, and stick her camera card in and hit one button to transfer the pictures to a automagically backed up, raid'ed server.
Does this sound doable (without an insane amount of work
Some Rights Reserved, (C) 2004 TheMysteriousFuture
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I know: (Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)
'I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds'
I meant unless you can read C looking at the *source* is pretty pointless (my bad). ;)
And by buffer overflows being *easier* I meant more likely to escape detection. A shell being bound to a listening port is something that should *obviously* not be happening in most programs.
As you said it is not as good or as fool proof as a backdoor. But backdoors are much more obvious then buffer overflows. And considering script-kiddies seem to have plenty of tools already for attack buffers, I don't think you have to worry about whether they would attack such a vulnerability.
And no I don't think code auditing efforts are a waste of time, I never said that. I said it is a waste of time for someone to prefer source over binaries (and check some of the source) and somehow think this makes them invulnerable to malware. I doubt one individual could check even the kernel for such things in a reasonable time frame (assuming said individual is not a code god)
If you *need* secure systems you use old code that has been heavily audited, and I would actually recommend OpenBSD.
And the irrsi backdoor was in the source and *not* the binary
Since I personally don't have the time to audit the code in my system, I listen out for security and bug reports and patch my system.
*DIRECTED AT GRAMMER NAZI'S* Oh and you grammer nazi's can go fuck yourselves. Not even man enough to insult my spelling without hiding behind AC status? You truly are a waste of energy.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I chose to use Fedora. I did not load X Windows and instead used fbv from an autologin console. I found it very useful to have lots of console tools (lynx, wget, gcc) available to me. And basically there was no benefit in trying to trim disk usage by a few hundred Meg.
Currently, I'm using Red Hat 9 with GDM autologin...
You can drop GDM and its autologin.
RTF:
man xinit
man su
( hint: su - anon xinit session )
eMoviX/Movix are minidistros which are focused on multimedia display. You can boot and and it'll show audiofiles and movies which are on the same medium. I assume it can also show pictures, but haven't tried it though... I could be interesting as it is rather small and they describe setting up CompactFlash in their tutorials/docs.
I recently finished putting together a digital picture frame. I bought an old IBM thinkpad from eBay ($10) and a power adapter (another $10 from eBay).
This is a 486 with 2 MB of ram and only a floppy drive. A DOS boot disk boots the machine, sets up a ramdisk, copies the pictures to the ramdisk, and then runs a slideshow with pictures from the ramdisk. Totally silent and heat issues are non-existant.
I haven't had time, but I'm just going to make up a couple of disks with different categories of pictures. A nature disk, family disk, etc. I just have to reboot the machine when I want to a different category. I resize all the pictures to 640X480 (resolution of the screen) so they are pretty small (50k) and I can fit quite a few on a floppy.
My next project will be to wire a timer into the display switch that detects movement. Once movement is detected it switches on the display for a preset time. That way I don't have to worry about the screen being on for the 16 hours a day I'm at work or asleep.
My biggest complaint is that I didn't do my research on the laptop. The passive matrix screen really blows.
What, me worry?