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Re: RedBoot porting
- To: Andrew Lunn <andrew dot lunn at ascom dot ch>
- Subject: Re: [ECOS] RedBoot porting
- From: Gary Thomas <gthomas at redhat dot com>
- Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 09:07:28 -0700 (MST)
- Cc: eCos Disuss <ecos-discuss at sourceware dot cygnus dot com>
- Organization: Red Hat, Inc.
On 08-Jan-2001 Andrew Lunn wrote:
>> Have you looked at the flash drivers we already have? They have
>> techniques (running just the flash access functions in RAM) for this.
>> The only complication is when trying to [re]program the flash that
>> is actually executing, i.e. the RedBoot code itself. For that, we
>> use a version of RedBoot designed to run from RAM.
>
> This is ok for development, but not ok for in field upgrades by
> customers/installation people. Do you want me to teach my customers
> how to run a RAM copy of redboot so that they can then upgrade the ROM
> copy? I think not. Customers need something simple like. Boot the
> system as normal, TFTP put this image and press the reset button.
I agree that it needs to be simple. However, there's no reason that
simple [from user's perspective] has to work in any particular fashion.
I could imagine [and I have!] a special RedBoot command which does
all of the steps automatically, including rebooting from the RAM based
version, updating the FLASH and then rebooting the entire system. This
could be done in a fail-safe fashion such that if any step failed, the
system reverts to totally normal operation [all changes reverted].