Hi All,

A long time ago I used to develop embedded firmware using C. Loved it, stressful as it was. And lo and behold! Here the opportunity comes along to do same again - with a twist: This time I'm not pulling volts and switching ports, I'm developing in C on an embedded Linux OS.

I've heard about and seen Linux, and I've long despised Windoze (as most developers seem to do), so I was excited to try out Linux for myself. However, my masters decided that since we need all the space we can get the Man pages needn't be loaded on our little chip, so you'll probably be hearing a lot from me. Fortunately for me, there seems to be a LOT of help out there.

And hopefully, in future, I can be of benefit to you too

Hi __Ri__ and Welcome at LQ!

Hey welcome RI. Next Man pages or on the web now. Here is link to get you started: http://www.linuxmanpages.com/

Thank you for the link to Man pages, but how can I check whether the limited Linux OS I have installed contains the functionality mentioned in the Man pages? They also seem to refer to add-on libraries that I don't necessarily have installed (with specific reference to netcfg). Unless I don't know what I'm looking at, which is also distinct possibility!!

I need to set static or dynamic IP on demand but all I can find are commandline arguments (which are a b!tch if you have limited space and can't parse all the input and output)

Anyhoo, thanks for the welcome, much appreciated

If your version of linux is numbed down you might have to do some google-ing to find it; unless of course someone here uses your version. I would think that what ever packages you use would be a full version minus the man's. I could be wrong; most the time I think I am (according to my wife). No matter what you are now apart of a great community that is willing to help if/when we can. Good luck and if I have 2 cents to put in I will.

Thank you! Seems I have the complete kernel, but the little add-ons that make life bit easier aren't always included. Luckily I have some cool libraries, such as SDL. I've found a neat way to check whether a network cable is plugged in and active, by running command line function "ethtool eth0" and piping output to text file, which I then parse. Gives me the "link detected: yes/no" answer I was looking for

And for sure, I found that information in an online networking manual which starts with the absolute basics - brilliant! Even though I'm working on Linux, I have to do some embedded stuff on a very basic level. It's fun, but stressful when I can't find the exact thing I'm looking for. But what a sense of achievement when I get the firmware to do exactly what I want

Anyhow, the struggle continues. Some lovely equipment has decided it wants 2-byte parameters to be swopped around (first high-order byte, then low-order byte) before it accepts it. Not the whole package, just any incidental 2-byte parameters. What fun. NOT!

Thanks for the encouragement