Dear Grant Edwards,
In message hdurn4$2bt$1@ger.gmane.org you wrote:
I've read through the U-Boot manual and FAQ, but I still haven't figured out how one downloads via the network an image to a board running U-Boot. Previous projects have used RedBoot, and it provided a couple different mechanisms:
There are many different ways in U-Boot - over serial line, over Ethernet using TFTP or NFS, from a number of different storage devices like MMC/SDCard, USB Mass Storage Devices, harddisks, ...
Both of these methods would work through firewalls and WAN connections (even through satellite links), and could easily be automated in an "updater" utility that is then provided to customers to update images in flash.
You don't have much of authentication in such an envrionment which makes it unacceptable even for mimimum security envrionments. If you need such a szenario, then boot into a (minimal) Linux kernel, and run the update in a real OS.
I can't seem to find out how one accomplishes the same task using U-Boot. The only method I can figure out involve setting up a TFTP server (which is not going to be acceptible to customers), and then typing a series of commands while plugging
Why would this not be acceptable?
Alternatively, you can use NFS (but I guess you will argument that setting up a NFS server is also not acceptable).
into a serial console (also not going to be acceptible to customers). The requirement is to update the image using just
Ah, also not acceptable.
Of course you can kill any system by just excluding all available features as "not acceptable" - without giuving reasons for this, of course. Note that this works fine for many, many others, so you might want to ask yourself if your requirements are "acceptable".
I found mention of netconsole, but I don't see how it's useful since you have to know a-priori the address of the machine from which you want to use it. It would seem that you have to force
You don't have to. You can use broadcasts.
the customer to change the IP address of their machine (not acceptible).
Why am I not surprised that this is not acceptable, either?
Wolfgang Denk