can anyone offer me any advice towards getting a 2.6 kernel on damn small linux? Our system needs to have a 2.6 kernel, gcc, java and X all in around 120MB of flash

Are you sure that Damn Small Linux is really the distribution to use?

If you go to http://www.distrowatch.org and do a search, you'll probably find something else that already has what you require.

Start by installing Damn Small Linux onto a hard disk, compile the extra things you need, and then copy everything except the sources to the flash. I'm not sure what you do about bootloaders on a flash card; someone else will have to answer that.

Do you really need gcc? Damn Small Linux includes tcc (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/packages.html), so you'll have to install gcc instead if you want it. I'd do a build of gcc from source (not exactly a trivial task) and set the CCOPTS to -Os (optimise for size) before building.

As far as the kernel is concerned, just install it from source (“make xconfig” then “make modules modules_install install”). When you configure it, don't include anything you don't need. Again, you might want to consider -Os as a compiler option, or at least -O1, as -O2 will increase the binary size quite a bit.

You can use strip to remove unused information in executables and libraries, which can make them a lot smaller: Another tip is to use gzexe to compress executable files. This will make the files smaller on disk, but take longer to start up.

thanks.

I decided to build something out of a gentoo stage 1 tarball, but have used your suggestions of strip and maybe gzeze. And yes, I do need gcc. I am building this to someone elses specifications, so I dont question what they want.

Thanks for the help