# Problems with ruby 1.8.6 on uClinux **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 4, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-ruby-1-8-6-on-uclinux/162015 "2009-03-04T22:43:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/85f322/32.png) [@Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Yuri_Klubakov)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-ruby-1-8-6-on-uclinux/162015/1 "2009-03-04T22:43:02Z")
After watching David G.'s RubyConf2008 presentation “Ruby for Embedded Applications” (OpenEmbedded, ruby 1.8.5, Sinatra), I’ve decided to try to use Ruby for my application. Our board has Blackfin processor and we are using uClinux distribution. I was able to successfully build and install ruby-1.8.6-p287. I’ve applied Brian Candler’s patch ([http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/720](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/720)). It’s almost working. I had to free a lot of RAM (30MB) as I was getting errors when ruby was trying to allocate memory. I was even able to serve a simple web application with WEBrick and Ramaze, but it would occasionally crash the Kernel. Now I have to make a decision if it’s worth to pursue it any further. I would appreciate if someone, who has experience with running Ruby on embedded systems (preferably with Blackfin processor), will share his experience to help me make a decision. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/85f322/32.png) [@Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Yuri_Klubakov)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 12:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-ruby-1-8-6-on-uclinux/162015/2 "2009-03-05T12:27:20Z")
Yuri Klubakov wrote: > I was even able to > serve a simple web application with WEBrick and Ramaze, but it would > occasionally crash the Kernel. No userland application should be able to crash the kernel - not even one running as root. So if this is happening, then you have an underlying O/S problem which you need to resolve. You are lucky that Ruby provides you with a way to replicate it 🙂 Once that’s done, you can take a view on how well Ruby works on your platform. FWIW, I have used ruby-1.8.6p36 very successfully on MIPS (Asus) and x86 (Soekris) embedded hardware, both under OpenWrt. The Asus box had 32MB RAM, the Soekris 64MB. No crashes. I see OpenWrt has moved its ruby package forward to 1.8.6p287, but I’ve not tried that. I am still suspicious of later changes made in the 1.8.6 branch, and would suggest p114 as a safer choice. ---
**Author:** ![Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/85f322/32.png) [@Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Yuri_Klubakov)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-ruby-1-8-6-on-uclinux/162015/3 "2009-03-05T21:05:32Z")
On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 6:25 AM, Brian C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Yuri Klubakov wrote: > > > I was even able to > > serve a simple web application with WEBrick and Ramaze, but it would > > occasionally crash the Kernel. > > No userland application should be able to crash the kernel - not even > one running as root. So if this is happening, then you have an > underlying O/S problem which you need to resolve. You are lucky that > Ruby provides you with a way to replicate it 🙂 I know that it’s not supposed to happen. Blackfin processor does not have MMU (memory management unit). I’m not a linux expert, but may be without MMU kernel is not as protected as with it. In my tests I was running an application as root. I’ll try to run it under different account. > Once that’s done, you can take a view on how well Ruby works on your > platform. > > FWIW, I have used ruby-1.8.6p36 very successfully on MIPS (Asus) and x86 > (Soekris) embedded hardware, both under OpenWrt. The Asus box had 32MB > RAM, the Soekris 64MB. No crashes. Thanks for the encouraging information. > I see OpenWrt has moved its ruby package forward to 1.8.6p287, but I’ve > not tried that. I am still suspicious of later changes made in the 1.8.6 > branch, and would suggest p114 as a safer choice. I had problems configuring ruby-1.8.6p287 for Blackfin processor. In the end, I’ve replaced config.sub with the one that comes with ruby-1.9.1, and everything went smoothly. It should not be the cause of my problems. Right? I’ll also try p114 as you’ve suggested. ---
**Author:** ![Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/85f322/32.png) [@Yuri\_Klubakov](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Yuri_Klubakov)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 10:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-ruby-1-8-6-on-uclinux/162015/4 "2009-03-05T22:13:12Z")
Brian C. wrote: > I see OpenWrt has moved its ruby package forward to 1.8.6p287, but I’ve > not tried that. I am still suspicious of later changes made in the 1.8.6 > branch, and would suggest p114 as a safer choice. We’ve been using ruby 1.8.6p114 on OpenWRT for about a year (not the package from OpenWRT, but a custom built one), and it works well for various networking tasks. Very stable, AFAICT. Didn’t try p287. Building native extensions is difficult, though, at least it is in our cross-compile setup. I never did get native sqlite3-ruby to build, and ended up just opening a pipe to the sqlite executable.