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Self extracting target installer


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

 

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