Minimalistic System

The basis of OGB is a very minimalistic Linux system, that is intended to run only a very limited amount of applications. To support that concept, OGB creates the Linux system from scratch out of the binaries and libraries found on the build system. Except for some hard-to-compile or seldom binaries that are included in the OGB distribution (like isolinux.bin), everything is taken from the build system.

Furthermore, the choice of included programs is limited to the absolute minimum required to run a Linux system. Even SSH is part of a package and can thus be left out if desired. As a result of this minimalistic approach there are no running daemons whatsoever (well, except syslog) and therefore no way of outside interference.

Copy binaries from Build System

Unlike many other mini-Linux system, OGB does not use μClib or BusyBox to reduce the required space or memory footprint. Instead, OGB copies the build systems' files and their dependancies which makes the OGB Linux system an exact copy of the build system regarding OS and program versions.

The OGB distribution does not contain any binary files (except isolinux.bin, which is strictly speaking not part of the running OGB system). This is so by design as OGB should be only a build system and not a Linux distribution of its own. It just helps one to create a mini linux out of your favourite Linux system.

This concept makes OGB a very lean base for various purposes, with OpenVPN gateway machines only one possible use out of many others. The base system is easily enough extended via packages which allows the base system to be very compact while still allowing to do almost any kind of modification to the resulting system in the form of packages.

OGB Modes & Runlevels

An OGB Linux system has to main modes of operation: Production and Debugging. Usually one would make a different media for these two purposes and enable Debugging by adding the debug package.

OGB uses init with the following run levels:

1

Startup — load drivers, initialize system ...

2

Production — run production services (like openvpn, dhcpd ...)

3

Debug — additionally run debug services (sshd, syslog to local file ...)

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last modified 2007-10-12 02:23:35

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