Embedded Linux engineering sits at the boundary between hardware, operating systems and application software. A production platform must make all three understandable and supportable.
Core platform layers
SoC / Board → Bootloader → Linux Kernel + BSP → Drivers → System Services → Application → Observability
A healthy embedded platform keeps responsibilities explicit. Board-specific code belongs in the BSP and device configuration; application behavior should not depend on undocumented hardware assumptions.
First diagnostic commands
uname -a
cat /proc/cmdline
lsmod
ls /sys/class
journalctl -b --no-pager | tail -100
Production concerns
Review boot reliability, watchdog behavior, persistent logs, update strategy, filesystem integrity, resource budgets and recovery procedures before treating a prototype as a field-ready system.