Re: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

Re: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[agyhoo]

How does one go about creating a single flash image
(to be programmed into flash using a bulk programmer) for
RedBoot, RedBoot config, Application and Application data
files?

- Anunoy


		
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Re: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[Andrew Lunn]

On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 10:27:30AM -0700, agyhoo wrote:
> How does one go about creating a single flash image
> (to be programmed into flash using a bulk programmer) for
> RedBoot, RedBoot config, Application and Application data
> files?

The way i would do it, is setup one device manually. Then use a JTAG
device to suck out the entire contents of the flash. Then use what
ever convertion tools you need to turn it into the correct format for
the programmer.

        Andrew

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RE: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[Doyle, Patrick]

Thanks for all of the suggestions.  Unfortunately, our flash devices do not
have a JTAG interface.  (I was once told that that was not common -- based
on what I've read on this list, I think I was misinformed).  Anyway, our
volumes don't require that sort of solution.

As for preprogramming the FLASH's outside of the board, we have grand plans
of having our distributor do that for us, with a very bare bones RedBoot
that would work in a number of our products, all of which share a common
processor and FLASH design.  The intent is to build up the board with the
bare RedBoot flash and then load the correct software on it as part of our
manufacturing process.

So, here is my current plan (dreamed up Friday afternoon on the way to the
supermarket and ignored all weekend since then).

I would like to add a feature to RedBoot to enable it to execute an
arbitrary script stored in RAM someplace.  (I haven't looked at the code
recently, but my recollection of the current support for executing an
fconfig'd script makes me think that it should be pretty easy, and may
already be in there).  Once I have that, then my self extracting target
installer would be a RedBoot[RAM] + script + data files all munged together
into a single downloadable image.  The script would look something like

fis init -f
y
fis create this -b 0x80000 -l 0x1234
fis create that -b 0x90000 -l 0x3321

(you get the idea)

What I will need to do is to put together some tools to package this all
together on the host, but I think some combination of binutils and perl
should do the trick.

Comments anybody?

--wpd

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Lunn [mailto:andrew@lunn.ch] 
> Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 1:05 PM
> To: Doyle, Patrick
> Cc: ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com
> Subject: Re: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer
> 
> 
> A couple of completely different solution, with the same theme. 
> 
> For flashes that are not yet actually soldered to the board use a bulk
> programmer.  You just need to supply Manufacturing with one file they
> blast into the flash before mounting on boards.
> 
> Does your device have JTAG. Industrial JTAG programmer will be faster
> than serial port, or JTAG parallel port dongles.  Again you just
> supply them with one image for them to download into the flash.
> 
> I've found that manufacturing understand these sorts of things because
> its nearly all automatic, no brainer. Plug in a cable, hit a button,
> wait till the light goes green.  Having to use a keyboard they don't
> like.
> 
>         Andrew
> 
> 


Patrick Doyle
DSP Design Engineer
(603) 546-2179

 

This communication is from DTC Communications, Inc. and is intended to be
confidential and solely for the use of the persons or entities addressed
above.  If you are not an intended recipient, be aware that the information
contained herein may be protected from unauthorized use by privilege or law,
and any copying, distribution, disclosure, or other use of this information
is prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please
contact the sender by return e-mail or telephone the above number
immediately and delete or destroy all copies.  Thank you for your
cooperation.

 



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Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss

RE: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[Doyle, Patrick]

Thanks for all of the suggestions.  Unfortunately, our flash devices do not
have a JTAG interface.  (I was once told that that was not common -- based
on what I've read on this list, I think I was misinformed).  Anyway, our
volumes don't require that sort of solution.

As for preprogramming the FLASH's outside of the board, we have grand plans
of having our distributor do that for us, with a very bare bones RedBoot
that would work in a number of our products, all of which share a common
processor and FLASH design.  The intent is to build up the board with the
bare RedBoot flash and then load the correct software on it as part of our
manufacturing process.

So, here is my current plan (dreamed up Friday afternoon on the way to the
supermarket and ignored all weekend since then).

I would like to add a feature to RedBoot to enable it to execute an
arbitrary script stored in RAM someplace.  (I haven't looked at the code
recently, but my recollection of the current support for executing an
fconfig'd script makes me think that it should be pretty easy, and may
already be in there).  Once I have that, then my self extracting target
installer would be a RedBoot[RAM] + script + data files all munged together
into a single downloadable image.  The script would look something like

fis init -f
y
fis create this -b 0x80000 -l 0x1234
fis create that -b 0x90000 -l 0x3321

(you get the idea)

What I will need to do is to put together some tools to package this all
together on the host, but I think some combination of binutils and perl
should do the trick.

Comments anybody?

--wpd

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Lunn [mailto:andrew@lunn.ch] 
> Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 1:05 PM
> To: Doyle, Patrick
> Cc: ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com
> Subject: Re: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer
> 
> 
> A couple of completely different solution, with the same theme. 
> 
> For flashes that are not yet actually soldered to the board use a bulk
> programmer.  You just need to supply Manufacturing with one file they
> blast into the flash before mounting on boards.
> 
> Does your device have JTAG. Industrial JTAG programmer will be faster
> than serial port, or JTAG parallel port dongles.  Again you just
> supply them with one image for them to download into the flash.
> 
> I've found that manufacturing understand these sorts of things because
> its nearly all automatic, no brainer. Plug in a cable, hit a button,
> wait till the light goes green.  Having to use a keyboard they don't
> like.
> 
>         Andrew
> 
> 


Patrick Doyle
DSP Design Engineer
(603) 546-2179

 

This communication is from DTC Communications, Inc. and is intended to be
confidential and solely for the use of the persons or entities addressed
above.  If you are not an intended recipient, be aware that the information
contained herein may be protected from unauthorized use by privilege or law,
and any copying, distribution, disclosure, or other use of this information
is prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please
contact the sender by return e-mail or telephone the above number
immediately and delete or destroy all copies.  Thank you for your
cooperation.

 



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Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
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Re: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[Andrew Lunn]

On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 10:50:56AM -0400, Doyle, Patrick wrote:
> Before I go and reinvent the wheel, I thought I would ask if anybody else
> had already solved this problem.
> 
> We have a product that includes RedBoot, two executable binary images, and
> 17 data files that all need to be installed in the Flash Image System
> managed by RedBoot.  The heads up I've gotten from Manufacturing is that
> they are going to throw a fit if we ask them to:
> 
>  1)  run Hyperterm
>  2)  type in "fis load -m ymodem"
>  2a) sometimes, you need to type in "fis load -r -b -m ymodem"
>  3)  Use Hyperterm to select the next file to download
>  4)  type in "fis create filename"
> (By the way -- it's very important that you spell the filename correctly
> here -- if you don't then the product won't work, so make sure that the
> filename matches the one you downloaded)
>  5)  later, rinse, repeat for each of 17 files
> (By the way -- it's very important that you download all 17 of the files and
> install them in flash.  If you take a break for lunch and come back and you
> start off where you ended before, but you forgot one of the files, then the
> product won't work).
> 
> You get the idea :-)

A couple of completely different solution, with the same theme. 

For flashes that are not yet actually soldered to the board use a bulk
programmer.  You just need to supply Manufacturing with one file they
blast into the flash before mounting on boards.

Does your device have JTAG. Industrial JTAG programmer will be faster
than serial port, or JTAG parallel port dongles.  Again you just
supply them with one image for them to download into the flash.

I've found that manufacturing understand these sorts of things because
its nearly all automatic, no brainer. Plug in a cable, hit a button,
wait till the light goes green.  Having to use a keyboard they don't
like.

        Andrew



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RE: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[Doyle, Patrick]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Volker Kamp [mailto:vk@volkerkamp.com] 
> Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 11:10 AM
> To: ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com
> Subject: AW: [ECOS] Self extracting target installer
> 
> What about using a scriptable terminal program like ZOC? You 
> can control all
> the action within a script: typing, downloading, checking 
> replys etc. It
> would save a lot of work.
> Or use "expect" on linux.
> Regards,
> Volker
> 
I thought of that too -- either approach requires a certain amount of
development time (to get the script right, to handle error cases, etc...)
The self extracting installer is more attractive to me because
1) I can give manufacturing a single, revision controlled, file  and know
that everything they produce will be identical (if I've done my job right).
2) Id the intaller does not depend upon a ROM monitor for anything, it could
even upgrade RedBoot from the default one that is preprogrammed in flash.
(Yes, I could write the script to load/download a RAM based RedBoot,
download the new ROM based RedBoot, etc...., but if I write a general
installer, it can do all of that).

--wpd

Patrick Doyle
DSP Design Engineer
(603) 546-2179

 

This communication is from DTC Communications, Inc. and is intended to be
confidential and solely for the use of the persons or entities addressed
above.  If you are not an intended recipient, be aware that the information
contained herein may be protected from unauthorized use by privilege or law,
and any copying, distribution, disclosure, or other use of this information
is prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please
contact the sender by return e-mail or telephone the above number
immediately and delete or destroy all copies.  Thank you for your
cooperation.

 



-- 
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss

[ECOS] Self extracting target installer

[Doyle, Patrick]

Before I go and reinvent the wheel, I thought I would ask if anybody else
had already solved this problem.

We have a product that includes RedBoot, two executable binary images, and
17 data files that all need to be installed in the Flash Image System
managed by RedBoot.  The heads up I've gotten from Manufacturing is that
they are going to throw a fit if we ask them to:

 1)  run Hyperterm
 2)  type in "fis load -m ymodem"
 2a) sometimes, you need to type in "fis load -r -b -m ymodem"
 3)  Use Hyperterm to select the next file to download
 4)  type in "fis create filename"
(By the way -- it's very important that you spell the filename correctly
here -- if you don't then the product won't work, so make sure that the
filename matches the one you downloaded)
 5)  later, rinse, repeat for each of 17 files
(By the way -- it's very important that you download all 17 of the files and
install them in flash.  If you take a break for lunch and come back and you
start off where you ended before, but you forgot one of the files, then the
product won't work).

You get the idea :-)

So I am going to write a single (ROM-monitor-less, so we could even use it
to update the RedBoot stored in FLASH if we needed to), application that
contains as data, the 19 or 20 files that need to be installed in FLASH.
I'll probably even go so far as to compress the data so it doesn't take as
long to download it.  Then I can revision control a single image, which I
give to manufacturing, and they can download and run a single program in
order to load everything on the device that needs to be loaded.

This sounds a lot like a self-extracting archive that we use in the
non-embedded land (does anybody remember "shar" files from Unix anymore?).

Any thoughts?

Patrick Doyle
DSP Design Engineer
(603) 546-2179

 

This communication is from DTC Communications, Inc. and is intended to be
confidential and solely for the use of the persons or entities addressed
above.  If you are not an intended recipient, be aware that the information
contained herein may be protected from unauthorized use by privilege or law,
and any copying, distribution, disclosure, or other use of this information
is prohibited.  If you have received this communication in error, please
contact the sender by return e-mail or telephone the above number
immediately and delete or destroy all copies.  Thank you for your
cooperation.

 


-- 
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss